Lambeth

The archbishop's palace, the hospital where nursing was first taught, and the riverbank facing Parliament.

Lambeth is named for a landing place: lambhyth in Old English, the hythe where lambs were put ashore. The archbishops of Canterbury have kept a house here since about 1200, on the bank directly opposite the Palace of Westminster, a boat across the water being the quickest way to reach the king. Lambeth Palace still stands behind Morton's Tower, the red brick gatehouse finished in the 1490s, and the library inside it, founded in 1610, is among the oldest public libraries in England.

Two buildings beside it were saved by being turned into museums. St Mary-at-Lambeth, the parish church in the palace's shadow, was due for demolition in 1972 until two gardeners came looking for the tomb of the Tradescants, father and son, who collected plants for Charles I and are buried in the churchyard; it has been the Garden Museum since 1977. North along the river, St Thomas' Hospital arrived in 1871 with the nurses' training school Florence Nightingale had founded in 1860, the first secular school of its kind anywhere, which is why her museum stands on this bank.

The newest thing here is the longest. The National Covid Memorial Wall runs half a kilometre along the embankment facing Parliament: a hand-painted heart for every death, begun by bereaved families in March 2021 and gone over by volunteers since. Behind it lies Archbishop's Park, the palace's old grounds, opened to the public in 1901. William Blake wrote Songs of Experience on Hercules Road, where he lived for ten years from 1790; the house is long gone.