Redcliffe Square Gardens

Redcliffe Square Gardens sits on land that was once simple farmland and market gardens. Before this neighborhood was built in the eighteen sixties, the path now known as Redcliffe Gardens was merely a rustic dirt track called Walnut Tree Walk. The square was designed as part of the massive Gunter estate, a development project led by Robert Gunter. The architect George Godwin, working alongside his brother Henry, drafted the plans for the elegant, stucco-fronted terraces that surround the gardens. Godwin chose the name Redcliffe to honor his professional ties to the famous St Mary Redcliffe church in Bristol. In nineteen forty-nine, the Gunter family gifted the freehold of these gardens to the local borough for free. They included a specific condition that the peaceful, tree-lined character of the space must be preserved forever for public enjoyment. Today, the gardens remain a quiet sanctuary with mature London plane trees that date back to the original nineteenth-century planting.