The Gardens Remembered

A Memory of Uxbridge.

I am puzzled as to which year this photo was taken. It must have been very late fifties because my earliest memory of The Rest Garden, as we called it, was when it was still recognizeable as a graveyard. The gravestones (many of them) still stood surrounded by long grass although many of them unreadable. There were no organized flower beds but in the spring it was one mass of daffodils. The gateway, on the corner of Cross St and Windsor Street, was built of brick and already leaning dangerously. There was a stone plaque over the gate (I think the gates had gone) dating from the reign of Queen Anne again largely obliterated by time. The convertion to a garden as such was a gradual process. The gravestones were moved to the side walls and stacked two or three deep. The lawns were then laid out in an orderly fashion with pathways and benches. As far as I know the graves themselves were left undisturbed. Later on all the gravestones were removed and I think the graves also and the ground deconsecrated.
It was, as you can see from the photo, a peaceful haven with the timbered buildings of Cross St preserving the feel of the old village as it had once been. The brutal destruction of Cross St and a motorway taking its place left the gardens high and dry as the centre of a traffic circus. The removal of the war memorial from the entrance to Park Rd and opposite RAF Uxbridge to the Rest Garden was both uninspired and irreverent. it was mostly hidden by the trees and largely unapproachable due to traffic. It is also ruined the proportions of the gardens I have read that there is an RAF Uxbridge museum and wonder if it has been moved back to near its original site. If not I wish the museum would start a petition to have it done.