Monuments & Ruins

Watts Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice

Fifty-four ceramic tiles to ordinary people who died saving others, under a wooden shelter in a small park.

MemorialsFree

George Frederic Watts, the painter, proposed a memorial to everyday heroism for Victoria's jubilee in 1887 and nobody took it up, so he built it himself in 1900 in a garden behind the General Post Office. Each tablet, by De Morgan and later Doulton, gives a name, a date and a sentence: Alice Ayres, who threw three children from a burning house and fell; a boy who drowned rescuing a friend; a doctor who took diphtheria from a patient. There was room for 120 and fifty-four were placed, the last in 2009 for a man who died pulling a boy from a canal. The park itself is a churchyard of three parishes with the gravestones stacked along the walls.

Where

Postman's Park, King Edward Street, EC1A 7BT

Nearest station

St. Paul's · 3 min walk

Hours

Hours from the page that lists them, checked 4 September 2026.

NearbyMonuments & Ruins

• Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice1 min walk
• Christ Church Greyfriars2 min walk
• Roman fort at Noble Street2 min walk

NearbyOther Categories

• Postman's ParkOutdoors & Nature1 min walk
• Goldsmiths' HallPower & Politics2 min walk
• St Bartholomew's Hospital MuseumMuseums3 min walk

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