Whittington Gardens - Upper Thames Street, London, UK - Municipal Parks and Plazas on Waymarking.com

The London Gardens Online website tells us about the garden:

The Whittington Garden is named after the Lord Mayor Richard Whittington (d.1423) who was buried in St Michael Paternoster Royal Church, which he had rebuilt at his own expense in 1409. An earlier church of 1219 is referred to in C13th documents. He also founded a college and almshouses on which he bestowed the rights and profits of the church, having been granted a piece of land for the purpose by City of London. This church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London and rebuilt by Wren by 1694, its steeple erected in 1713. The Wren church is set back from the main road behind Whittington Garden, which is laid out in two parts, separated by hedge. One part is grassed, railed and locked and the other is largely paved, with seats, small fountain and shrubs. In Roman times the site of the gardens was on the riverbank and later had buildings connected to the fur trade, but these were demolished after bomb damage in World War II.

The Corporation of London acquired the site in 1955, ownership of part of it being exchanged in 1956 for the graveyard of St Martin Vintry, a parish that was united with that of St Michael Paternoster Royal after the Great Fire of 1666. St Martin Vintry dated from the C12th with a churchyard in existence by 1211, lost due to the widening of Upper Thames Street in the 1960s. The parish of St Michael Queenhithe was amalgamated in 1875 and that of All Hallows the Great in 1894. The garden was laid out in 1960, the original layout having an open paved area to the west, with low brick walls to the north, a few trees and flowerbeds, and to the east a railed lawn with flower beds and a single tree. A small fountain was erected in the west area in the late 1960s; the east section is now surrounded by hedge and flower beds have gone. Since the 1960s some planting has been added alongside the church.