Cutlers Gardens (Devonshire Sq)

Cutlers Gardens, now renamed Devonshire Sq. is an office development with generous landscaping on the historic site of East India Company Warehouses. The area from the C2nd to C4th was used for burials and later as rubbish pits. In c.959-979 AD King Edgar had granted land here, known as Portsoken, to the Cnihtengild, 13 medieval knights who were required to undertake three tasks, on land, water and below ground. The knights gave up the land when the Holy Trinity Priory was founded at Aldgate in 1108, and the monks used part of the site for their convent garden. By the C16th this garden was built over by housing and by 1700 Cutlers Gardens was covered with tenements, craft workshops and small industries. In 1768 the East India Company purchased land to the south of New Street and in 1769/71 its Old Bengal Warehouse was built; additional land was purchased and more buildings were added to the east in 1792-1800, and the complex was further extended in the south-west in c.1820 by which time it covered some 2.025 hectares. The buildings were designed by the Company's successive surveyors, who included Richard Jupp, George Wyatt, Henry Holland and S P Cockerell. In 1833 the Company's monopoly of trade with China had ended and in 1836 the St Katharine's Dock Company purchased the warehouses. In 1909 they were purchased by the Port of London Authority who used them until 1976. In 1978 Greycoat Estates Ltd and The Standard Life Assurance Company purchased and began development of the site largely for offices, with a combination of new build and restoration of some of the old buildings by architects Richard Seifert and Partners. Gates and railings were designed by Quinlan Terry, and the development won The Times Award for Archaeology in 1981 and other awards from the City Heritage Society and the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association in 1982. The development was opened as Cutlers Gardens by the Lord Mayor, but has since been renamed Devonshire Sq.

Landscaped courtyards were part of the overall scheme, designed by Russell Page. From the main entrance an avenue paved with cobble setts was laid out in a fan-shape motif, either side of which were miniature hornbeams in raised beds planted with ivy. The main courtyard, Central Court, had plane trees and, set into an area of grass, a sculpture by Denys Mitchell commissioned by Standard Life Assurance Co., commemorating the 13 knights. It was unveiled on 21 November 1990 by the Lord Mayor of London. West Court originally had formal landscaping with a cobbled surface, lime trees in ivy-covered beds, flower beds, shrubs, tubs with laurels bushes and a fountain at the south end with 6 illuminated miniature fountains as well as further flower beds of box-hedged roses and laurel trees. Initially managed by Knight Frank, management of the estate was taken over by Devonshire Sq, some re-landscaping undertaken and provision of a range of catering, retail and other visitor facilities.