Pryor's Bank Gardens *

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

Pryor's Bank Gardens are within the overall site of Bishop's Park (q.v.). The house and garden, adjacent to All Saints Church (q.v.) were sold by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to the local Fulham Vestry in 1894 for £4,000. The river wall was extended to Putney Bridge and the area was cleared and laid out to extend Bishop's Park. Pryors Bank was a large and extravagant house with battlements and turreted chimneys that was built c.1837 for Thomas Baylis and William Letchmore, two antiquaries, and its numerous rooms were filled with the curiosities they had collected. They sold the house in 1841 to another antiquary. The grounds were described in the auctioneer's advertisement of 1841 as 'laid out in imitation of Dropmore, grottos, arbours and fountains diversify the scene and a terrace walk extending 250 feet along the Thames affords an opportunity of enjoying the passing scenery of the river'.

After the property was purchased by the Vestry, the house was demolished in 1897, because, as was reported in the Fulham Chronicle of 22 June 1900, it was 'unfit for public purposes and no amount of reconstruction or alteration would make it suitable or safe'. In its place a grandiose mock-Tudor refreshment pavilion, with a veranda overlooking the garden to the south, was built on the site, designed by C Botterill, the Borough Surveyor. In addition to the refreshment room it also housed a public reading room and had staff accommodation on the first floor. It was later used for council, then as private offices. The formal garden was largely preserved and Pryor's Bank Gardens opened in 1900 as an extension of Bishop's Park. Below the house was the riverside Embankment Walk with gardens south, east and west of the house.

When the gardens opened the east garden comprised an area of lawn with roses and the central fountain, but the roses were largely removed in 1953 when modern statuary was installed in commemoration of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Four statues were presented to the Council for the east garden by artist James Wedgwood RA (d.1961), who had his studio at 10 Fulham Park Gardens between 1935 and 1957. The statues depict Adoration (1940), Grief (1941), and Protection (1946) in Portland stone, and Leda (1944) in Caen stone. They were joined in 1963 by another statue in Portland stone, Affection (1948) by Hermon Cawthra, who also had a studio nearby. At the centre of the formal garden is the fountain with three tiers, the top basin supported by three fish, which is thought to have been erected when Fulham Vestry acquired the site in 1894. The lawn in front of the pavilion has specimen trees and shrubs and west of the house are rising formal terraces now planted with rose gardens, flagged paths and low retaining walls, but up until the mid-1970s there was an area of ornamental bedding displays that commemorated a different event each year with the Fulham coat of arms. West of the rose garden is a further raised paved garden where a memorial was erected in 1997, dedicated to local residents who fought in the Spanish Civil War with the International Brigade in 1936-39.