Postman’s Park
Formerly headquarters for the General Post Office of London, and built on the burial grounds of what was St. Botolph’s Aldersgate Church, Postman’s Park is a memorial to those who died heroically, albeit at times unusually.
In 1887 artist George Fredric Watts proposed a memorial to “heroism in every-day life.” It took many years for Watts’ vision to be realized, but finally in 1900, a wall of ceramic plaques commemorating the brave Victorians who had given up their lives for the common man was unveiled in Postman’s Park.Each plaque tells, quite frankly, how the commemorated died. While the accounts can be moving in their forthright simplicity, a whiff of the grimness of Victorian life can be detected through the brightly colored plaques.