Still in the Smithfield area, just off the street called Little Britain, is Postman's Park. The name derives from the employees of the main City Post Office on nearby St Martin-le-Grand who used to frequent it. Today it has merged with the churchyard of St Botolph-without-Aldersgate. (There are three London churches named after St Botolph - the Saxon patron saint of travellers - all appropriately located by the old gates which led out of the City).
In 1900 the artist George Frederic Watts (1817 - 1904) set up a memorial wall to honour ordinary men, women - and children - who had died sacrificing their lives to save others. The stories are told on hand-painted tiles. There are about 50 or so of them, and they make for poignant reading.
No further tiles were put up after the First World War, but people have been known to this day to put up temporary signs in honour of friends and relatives who have committed similar acts of self-sacrifice. The park featured in Patrick Marber's play Closer - also a film with Clive Owen, Jude Law and Natalie Portman (2004). Portman's character adopts the name Alice Ayres - one of those commemorated on the wall. The real Alice has a street named after her in Southwark.
A sign outside St Botolph's states that the Methodist founder John Wesley preached there. The church as it stands today was built around 1790.
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