Barn Elms Park

Leader's Gardens is a small public park lying along Putney Embankment between the towpath to the Thames and the surrounding late C19th/early C20th housing. The Putney riverside was used by boatmen and for boat building from at least the C17th, and for rowing from c.1830. Although there was a towpath by the late C18th, the Embankment as it exists today was laid out c.1890 as a recreational area by the Putney parish surveyor, J C Radford, who was also responsible for the slipway serving various rowing clubs, the bridge over the Beverley Brook and Leader's Gardens, which opened to the public in 1903. Radford was also surveyor to the Leader Estate in west Putney. The residential development came a little later than the layout of the Embankment and gardens. At the towpath entrance to the park the original cast iron gate and piers are in good condition, as are the original railings along the riverside, which feature very dynamic finials.

Putney was settled from early times. There was Roman occupation here and Lower Richmond Road may have been a Roman Road. Putney Lower Common remained open pasture and farmland, and is contiguous with Barnes Common. Land began to be enclosed from at least the C15th but in 1871 the Wimbledon and Putney Commons Act was passed and the Wimbledon and Putney Conservators, established to preserve the commonland, prevented further encroachment. The common is generally open grassland with mature trees around it, mainly plane trees and chestnuts. Cricket is played in the summer and a fairground visits on bank holidays and in this way the common still offers the traditional activities that were long associated with commons before urbanisation and enclosure overtook them.

In 1855 3 acres of land of Putney Lower Common were bought by the local Burial Board from Earl Spencer, Lord of the Manor, for this small cemetery. It was established by 1858 on the edge of Putney Lower Common and Barnes Common, and remains visually part of these open spaces. It has ornate railings and gates on Lower Richmond Road, and is otherwise bounded by brick wall, with intermittent railings along the east. The rag stone chapels and lodge were designed by Barnett and Birch in 1855 and built by a local firm of builders, W and R Aviss, whose family tomb is in the cemetery. There are some interesting historic tombs, including that of Sir Alfred Dryden (d.1912), a descendent of John Dryden, the poet. The cemetery is now closed for burials except within privately owned graves. There are a variety of trees including yew and the cemetery is wooded towards the north where the boundary wall abuts Barnes Common.