a haven for heroes
Postman’s Park, five minutes’ pleasant walk from The Rookery, our much loved hotel in Clerkenwell, is an inner-city haven with a history. Opened in 1880 next to the then General Post Office, home to the world’s first postal service, it became the location of George Frederic Watts’s Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice.
Watts, a famous English painter with a social conscience, was concerned that ordinary people who had carried out heroic deeds were seldom remembered. In a letter to The Times he cited the case of Alice Ayres, a servant girl who, trapped in a burning house, threw out a mattress to cushion her fall, but instead of jumping ran back inside to rescue three small children before, overcome by fumes, falling from the window to her death.
Some 50 memorial tablets were erected during the lifetime of Watts and his much younger second wife Mary, but the giant bronze statue to Unknown Worth that he planned for the site was never commissioned.
The 2004 film Closer with Jude Law and Julia Roberts was set in the park. Next time you stay with us at The Rookery, do try to find time to pay your respects to the humble heroes commemorated here.
The material prosperity of a nation is not an abiding possession; the deeds of its people are.
GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS