St. Michael and All Angels Memorial Space, London

Size: Approx. 300SQM
The memorial garden responds to the demand for memorial in this unused and poorly structured part of the church’s garden while also being an opportunity to improve the setting of the grade 2 Listed Norman Shaw church and urban realm. It may also celebrate the Nobel Laureate WB Yeats who wrote several of his poems while in residence nearby. At the same time, it will share the space for commemoration with existing memorials nearby (e.g. in both World Wars) and as a new potential repository for ashes.

It is a challenging and sensitive site. It is immediately adjacent to a well-known grade 2 listed church which is the only one of its kind, faces onto a busy roundabout (with issues of noise, safety, movement and careful lighting), trees with TPOs and unstructured planting all adjacent to the main entrance to the listed church which along with the Tabard Inn & stores opposite was originally seen as the community heart of the well-known Bedford Park (later termed the ‘first garden city’).

As well as providing a place for the reflection of a common shared humanity, life and death, the space provides an improved welcome to the church, sensitive signage and is seen as an extension of the civic realm creating a public yet intimate day to day place of quiet and inspiration in the hurly burly of today.