Coram's Fields *

Site on The National Heritage List for England, Parks & Gardens, for Register Entry see https://www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list

This is the site of the Foundling Hospital established by Captain Thomas Coram in the 1739 to provide a home for destitute and abandoned children. The Trustees of the Foundling Hospital purchased 56 acres in Lamb's Conduit Fields from Lord Salisbury for £6,500 and planned to develop the surrounding estate to provide ground rents to support the hospital and also to retain the open situation. The Foundling Hospital was built in the centre of the land in c.1742-53 by Theodore Jacobsen with later alterations and additions. The original building had a large forecourt with a broad walk flanked by lawns. Gardens were laid out north of the Hospital extending to St George's Burial Grounds. Two early benefactors of the Hospital, which was instantly successful, were Handel and Hogarth, and Dickens regularly attended services in the hospital chapel. Samuel Pepys Cockerell was appointed to develop the area surrounding the Hospital and his plan of 1790 included two squares on either side of the Hospital, which became Brunswick Square on the west and Mecklenburgh Square to the east (q.q.v). The main hospital buildings were demolished in 1926 when the Hospital sold its London property and moved out of London. The forecourt buildings were retained.

A new headquarters for the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children was built at 40 Brunswick Square on the site of the Hospital gardens. Coram's Fields was bought by money raised by public subscription to be preserved as a children's playground in perpetuity. The site is owned and managed by an independent charitable Trust. Single-storey colonnaded Georgian buildings enclose the play ground. The Memorial Pavilion in the centre was built as a playground shelter in 1936 in memory of Harold Vyvyan and Vere Harmsworth, designed by L H Bucknell, a brick building with copper roof. It has a relief of children at play and a clock and weathervane on the roof. The basic layout of the playground is similar to that of the C18th with a grand sweep hard surface path up the middle of the site and extensive lawns on either side enclosed by an inner and outer circle of mature London plane trees, which are some of the best examples of free-growing planes in central London. The playground was set out in 1936 by LCC architects. Substantial refurbishment took place in the 1950s to repair the war damage to the colonnades at which time the decision was also taken to enclose the south end of the east and west colonnades to create more indoor space for children’s activities. Substantial improvements to the listed building and landscape of the park have been completed since 2000 with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund and other major Trusts.

The Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England was established in 1984 and was commonly called English Heritage. In April 2015 it split into 2 separate entities, Historic England (HE), which continues to champion and protect the historic environment, and the English Heritage Trust, whose role is to look after the 400+ historic sites and monuments owned by the state. HE manages the National Heritage List for England (NHLE) that includes over 400,000 items ranging from prehistoric monuments to office blocks, battlefields and parks, which benefit from legal protection.