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Architecture

St Mary’s Cemetery Battersea London + Pique

Necropolis in the Megalopolis  

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Chapels © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

It’s a sculpture park in a wild garden. What’s not to love? St Mary’s Cemetery in Battersea may run parallel with the busy shopping street of Northcote Road but it’s an elevated world away, a sanctuary of foxes and squirrels running amok among the crumbling statues and long grass. A place of reflection, one can almost hear Montserrat Caballé’s Prayer floating through the dense foliage. It’s also the perfect setting for a Savannah style picnic provided by local supplier Pique. Named by Tatler as one of “London’s most luxurious readymade picnic hamper companies”, Pique is based beside the former Von Essen Hotel Verta at Battersea Heliport.

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Gravestones © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Trees © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Branches © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Roses © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Gravestone © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Lancet Gravestone © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Angel © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Rose © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Urn © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Wild Garden © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Figure © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Tombstones © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Grave © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Nameplate © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Columns © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary’s Cemetery was laid out in 1860 to 1861 on part of the Bolingbroke Grove House estate which had been sold two years earlier. Burials had ceased in the churchyard of St Mary’s which is situated two kilometres away along the Thames next to Montevetro. Parish surveyor Charles Lee was appointed to lay out the ground and design two chapels and lodge.

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Cross © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Survey of London Volume 49 edited by Andrew Saint states, “The little twin mortuary chapel range remains the chief feature of the cemetery, a building of simple charm and quiet Gothic details. The chapels, one for Anglicans, one for other denominations, are placed on either side of a tall pointed archway, above which sits a meagre bellcote. Each chapel is lit by a lancet at one gabled end and a rose window at the other, but these are switched round so that the east and west elevations are asymmetrical.” The Church of England chapel and the ecumenical chapel each have a gross external area of 39 square metres.

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Name © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Categories
Luxury People Restaurants

Marcus Wareing +Tredwell’s Covent Garden London

 Walking Carefully

Tredwell's Covent Garden Dining Room © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Turnmills. Treadmills. Tredwell’s, It’s rude to name drop but we haven’t been to a Marcus Wareing restaurant since lunch some time ago with a heritage architect, an architectural historian and a museum dame at The Gilbert Scott. So how thrilling to be back at one. Despite it being the second of two school nights out in a row. The previous evening was dinner at the O+C Club with a Country Life contributor. It’s rude to place name drop but we haven’t had such good John Dory since dinner at Cliveden, back in its Von Essen heyday. Incidentally the name John Dory is derived from the French Jaune Doré which means golden yellow, the colour of the fish. Anyhoo, Tredwell’s it is. Thankfully this restaurant is far enough along Upper St Martin’s Lane not to be illuminated by the neon nightmare of Leicester Square. Ignore the critics; the place is fab. Especially so in the company of a hotelier soon to be hotelier and restaurateur, a restaurateur, a realtor and an interior designer. “A dash of Art Deco is the whole rage” apparently. Blah blah blah. Inchbald naturally comes up in conversation. When worlds collide, past and present merge. We’re full of the joys tucked into an intimate booth. Fresh, colourful and photogenic, the food is pretty decent too. Sometimes, there’s art in simply living. After a negroni aperitif on the rocks, two courses turn out to be filling enough.  The usual Malbec, this time 2010 Flechas de los Andes (£51). Chef Marcus Wareing comes up trumps with fish cake, confit egg, roast garlic aioli and salsa verde (£8.50) followed by roasted monkfish, squid, prawn orzo (£26). Favourite line of the night, “I’ve packed a suitcase in my suitcase for shopping in New York.”

Tredwell's Covent Garden Starter © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley