Visit Victoria Embankment Gardens with its Cafe, Bandstand & York Water Gate

Photo: Craig Cross

Craig’s review… There’s a solid fog this morning. I was going to take some photos of the river but I’d need a blow torch to clear it so I’m just going to mope around Victoria Embankment Gardens for a bit. I love this little park. It might even be my favourite park in London. I don’t know why because it’s nothing special – it’s just somewhere to stroll through instead of pinballing past the people on the Strand. It’s always too crowded down the Strand so I use this park as a shortcut past the people.

Photo: Craig Cross

There’s a little cafe in the middle with picnic tables and parasols but the office workers just sit on the benches with their pots and boxes of pasta. They chew, the pigeons coo, and sixty minutes later Big Ben calls them back to work. Luckily I don’t have a job (not a proper job anyway) so he can shout as loud as he likes, I don’t care. I’m just going to sit here and eavesdrop on their conversations.

At the moment it’s all business dudes and women bitching about their bosses. They’ve come here to let off a bit of steam while they’re out of earshot of their colleagues. Two women are currently having a pop at John in accounts who never does what he’s told (he’s an idiot!). He just sits there reading the papers all day and someone should have a word. But who? Not me, she says. It’s not her responsibility. Oh dear… now she’s dropped a big fork-full of saucy pasta onto her jacket because she was being too animated with her hands and that’s all John’s fault as well, apparently – poor old John. I bet his ears are burning this morning.

Photo: Craig Cross

Some people don’t bother eating food during their break and prefer to spend the time exercising instead, and I can see a lot of huffing and puffing by the fitness equipment. They’ve erected all sorts of complicated contraptions over there – florescent yellow machines with levers, pulleys and pedals.

One guy can’t work out how to use it so he’s just doing some star jumps by the tree. Another guy has lifted his heavy leg onto a brick wall so he can do some stretching exercises. If you want something a bit gentler then there’s a table tennis set on the grass but it doesn’t have any bats. No balls either. Just a metal net covered in bird sh*t.

Photo: Craig Cross

York Water Gate

Interestingly this park used to be under water until the Victorians reclaimed the land and built a big sewer underneath. If you want to see where the riverbank used to be 150 years ago then look for the York Water Gate in the corner by the bandstand because that’s all that remains of the Duke of Buckingham’s grand mansion on the waterfront.

Photo: Craig Cross

The stretch of the Strand that runs behind it used to be full of grand mansions (all gone now) and Buckingham used to walk down those wet steps onto his boat. If you walk around the back of it then you can see where he used to wait in the covered arches on either side. The diarist Samuel Pepys is known to have used it too, because his house was in the street directly behind (what we now call Buckingham Street). Sadly his original house isn’t there anymore, but you can still see a couple of memento plaques on the front of Nos 12 and 14.

Statues in Victoria Embankment Gardens

They’ve got some very impressive statues in this park. If you’re a lowly nobody like me then the best you can hope for is a brass plaque on a bench which will say something like “My husband’s dead, but he liked sitting on benches. Hence this bench.” Or, “God bless Mister What’s-his-name. Please say a prayer for him whilst you’re eating your cheese and pickle sandwiches on this bench.”

Photo: Craig Cross

But the people in this park are obviously a cut above because the kind of memorial they’ve erected in here are like the ones in Westminster Abbey. The best ones are for the Scottish poet Robert ‘Auld Lang Syne’ Burns, and Arthur Sullivan (from Gilbert & Sullivan) who bagged himself a plum spot by the Savoy.

Worth a visit? ★☆☆Value for money? n/aGood for kids? ☆☆☆Easy to get to? ★★★

I also recommend… . Whilst you’re in the vicinity of Victoria Embankment Gardens you may as well go and have a look at Cleopatra’s Needle over the road. You might like to combine your visit with a look at the Roman Bath as well

The author Craig Cross owns city-guide.london and has spent the last decade reviewing the capital’s landmarks, attractions and hotels. His guidebook London Squire is available from Amazon. This review was updated on 22nd August 2023