Vicarage Gardens

Vicarage Gardens is a small public garden laid out in the early C20th below Putney Bridge Approach, and was once the garden of the old vicarage of All Saint's Church (q.v.) and adjacent to the churchyard. The Vicarage moved to its current location to the north of Sir William Powell's Almshouses (q.v.) between 1915 and 1921, when the old house was demolished and the public garden laid out. The OS of 1866 shows the old vicarage with a large garden laid out with trees, beds and paths, but by 1886 the site was much reduced in size by the construction of Putney Bridge Approach. The old vicarage existed on this site from before 1430, when it is referred to in Court Rolls of the Manor of Fulham. In a Report of the Commissioners of the Augmentation of Livings, 1647-58, it had 'orchards and garden' worth £16 a year. Charles James-Feret in his 'Fulham Old and New' describes the vicarage grounds, which were over an acre, before the building of the bridge: 'the garden once boasted some enormous trees, in which the crows used to build. Some of the trees and shrubs here were propagated from the celebrated arboretum at Fulham Palace. Against the walls of the houses in Bridge Street grew some fine pear trees. This part of the grounds, separated from the lawn by a hedge was used as a vegetable garden.'

By 1915 the Grand Theatre was built on the portion of land divided off by the new roadway. The site of the former vicarage was close to where the War Memorial was erected c.1921. The Memorial has a bronze statue representing Peace and a kneeling cherub, the work of Alfred Turner, a commemorative Roll of Honour set into the wall, and iron gates. The public garden is well-laid out and has 2 large plane trees, rose beds, and shrub borders with a kiosk, now boarded up.