Little Dorrit Playground

There has been a church on the site since the C12th although the present church of St George the Martyr dates from the C18th. It is often referred to as 'Little Dorrit's Church' because Charles Dickens' character was baptised and married here. In 1816 the small churchyard was enlarged by Act of Parliament but it was eventually closed for burials in 1853 and was converted into a public garden in 1882. When Tabard Street was extended to Borough High Street, part of the churchyard was lost, and the detached portion was re-opened as public gardens in 1902, now called St George's Garden. The north boundary wall originally formed the southern boundary of Marshalsea Prison, where Dickens' father was incarcerated. The garden has been re-landscaped and has a number of gravestones in one corner.

Red Cross Garden formed part of Octavia Hill's pioneering social housing scheme here, which consisted of two rows of cottages and a community hall, designed by Elijah Hoole. The garden predated the buildings and was laid out in 1887, the opening ceremony taking place in 1888. It was created to provide 'an open air sitting room for the tired inhabitants of Southwark' and had an elaborate layout of curved lawns, flower beds and serpentine paths, an ornamental pond with fountain, bandstand and covered children's play area. There were once two mosaics in the garden, that depicting 'The Sower' remains, restored in 1956 and again in 2005. During WWII the railings were removed for the war effort and the caretaker dismissed, and by 1948 the layout of the garden had disappeared. Sir Sidney Cockerell writing to The Times of his visit in July 1948 found 'a desolate flat space part of it newly asphalted'. The garden appears treeless in a photograph of 1965, although some trees were subsequently planted. It was not until 2005 that it was restored to much of its original layout through the work of Bankside Open Spaces Trust with support by local people and funding from HLF and Southwark Council. It reflects its Victorian origins as a community garden and combines C19th and ecological planting.

Crossbones Memorial Garden commemorates the former burial ground for 'single women' of Bankside, also known as 'Winchester Geese' for being licensed to work by the Bishop of Winchester. Not permitted to be buried in hallowed ground, it is believed that the unconsecrated plot designated as their burial ground was on this site, with references to its existence from at least 1598. The burial ground closed in 1853 and the site remained vacant but had various uses over the years. In the 1990s, when it was partly excavated for the Jubilee Line extension, 148 skeletons were uncovered, reputedly less than 1% of the total burials. Between 2006-2012 the Friends of Crossbones created a secret guerrilla garden on the site, and since 2015 it has been transformed into a memorial garden, in collaboration with Bankside Open Spaces.