The history of Jubilee Gardens is a long and fascinating one, though prior to World War II it was mostly wharves and warehouses serving barges and boats on the river Thames. London’s South Bank was heavily bombed during the war and as a result the area was ripe for transformation.
Festival of Britain
The site of Jubilee Gardens first appeared on the public radar in 1951 when it was the location of the Festival of Britain’s prime building, the Dome of Discovery, as well as its striking temporary landmark: the Skylon. The only permanent building constructed for the Festival of Britain was the Royal Festival Hall. Those on the Jubilee Gardens site were temporary and when they were dismantled after the Festival closed the site became a car park. It also for a time housed a city centre terminal and check-in point for London’s Heathrow Airport but remained in use for car parking until 1977 when a new park was laid out by the Greater London Council in celebration of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. HM Queen Elizabeth II opened the first Jubilee Gardens on the South Bank on 9th June 1977.
A changing South Bank
The construction of the Jubilee Line extension and of the Golden Jubilee Bridges in the late 1990s had a serious impact on the Gardens, leading to increasing local pressure for their refurbishment. This pressure increased with the opening of the London Eye and improvements to the South Bank Riverside generally which led to a huge increase in visitors to the area.
After many years of community pressure for the Gardens to be improved, a Steering Group was established in 2003 comprising local resident and business representatives, Lambeth Council and the Greater London Authority. With intense community engagement and extensive consultation, it developed a brief and mounted an international design competition for a new Jubilee Gardens.
The competition winner was West 8, a cutting-edge landscape architecture practice based in Rotterdam, responsible for ground-breaking urban parks and public spaces worldwide.
Re-landscaping in 2012
The West 8 design proposal for Jubilee Gardens secured planning consent in 2010 and the necessary funding was secured to enable a contract to be let in 2011, so that the new landscape could be delivered in time for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the 2012 London Olympics.
Major funding came from the London Mayor and Lambeth Council, the latter secured under section 106 planning agreements with Shell and The London Eye. There were further contributions by charitable trusts including the 29 May 1961 Trust, The Gosling Foundation and The Hobson Trust.
The contract for the re-landscaping was carried out by Frosts Landscape Construction Ltd, overseen by a Project Board consisting of Lambeth Council, Southbank Centre, the Jubilee Gardens Trust and Transport for London, on behalf of the Mayor. A local business organisation, South Bank Employers’ Group, project managed the design, planning and implementation process, with extensive local community participation throughout.
Community-led charity
The Gardens are part of the Southbank Centre estate – the freehold owner is the Arts Council. It was a condition of the substantial Shell and London Eye section 106 funding that responsibility for the management and maintenance of the Gardens should pass to a local trust and the Jubilee Gardens Trust was formed and registered as a charity in 2008. In May 2012 this community-based charity took on full responsibility for the management and maintenance of the new green space under a long lease from Southbank Centre.
Queen Elizabeth inaugurated the new Jubilee Gardens when she visited the site in October 2012, 35 years after she opened the first Jubilee Gardens created for her Silver Jubilee in 1977.
