The latest in the series in which we ask you to identify where in London this picture was taken and what it’s of. If you think you can identify this picture, leave a comment below. We’ll reveal the answer early next week. Good luck!
Congrats to Jameson Tucker who correctly placed this in the gardens which now occupy the site of the former church of St John Zachary which lie, as Mike Paterson correctly pointed out, near the Goldsmiths’ Hall.
In fact, the gardens, located at the corner of Gresham and Noble Streets in the City (opposite the Goldsmith’s Hall), are also known as the Goldsmith’s Garden and were laid out following bomb damage during the Blitz (the church of St John Zachary had been destroyed in the Great Fire of London and not rebuilt).
The gardens were redesigned in 1957 by landscape architect Sir Peter Shepheard and have been added to and amended over the years since (including by landscape architect Anne Jennings in the mid-Nineties).
The iron arch, which was commissioned by the Blacksmith’s Company and put here in 1994, features the leopard’s head which is the hallmark of the Goldsmiths’ Company Assay Office, the premier hallmark in the UK (the term hallmark dates from the 15th century when London craftsmen were first required to bring their creations to the Goldsmiths’ Hall for verification and marking although the mark of the leopard’s head has been in use since the early 1300s).
For more on the Goldsmiths, see www.thegoldsmiths.co.uk.
St John Zachary gardens, off Gresham street, in the City. There’s another gold cat in the gateway into the gardens, too.
I walk past it every day, and I still couldn’t tell you exactly where it is.
At or very near Goldsmiths’ Hall?