The life and death of Here Lies Geoffrey Barkington

In 2018, the London Festival of Architecture launched a competition to design a series of benches within the City of London, each with a budget of £800. One of the proposed locations was a small park called Jubilee Gardens, situated on Houndsditch, a one-way street close to the busy intersection between London Wall and Liverpool Street.

Houndsditch is named after a ditch that existed along the perimeter of the London wall. There is a debate as to whether deceased hounds were disposed of there, or whether scraps from a nearby abattoir discarded into the ditch attracted scavengers. In any event, dog skeletons were uncovered during construction works in the 1980s.

The footprint of Jubilee Gardens is about the size of a tennis court and the space backs onto the rear facade of a substation. In 2018, the other three sides were defined by a heavy stone wall with dumpy piers infilled by metal railings. Dense box hedges were growing out of waist-high brickwork planters and reaching through the bars. Inside, benches faced a central stone plinth, with a row of steps on each side and a similar raised planting bed on every corner, each topped with a fir tree trimmed into a neat cone.

I was working as an assistant at Prewett Bizley Architects when the competition was announced, and their office was a short walk from Jubilee Gardens. During the same period, I shared a house with friends who regularly looked after a pampered dachshund called Geoffrey. He had even appeared in Vogue, so I am told. I’m not sure whether my decision to prematurely memorialise Geoffrey’s departure was out of disdain for his bourgeois lifestyle but his plot had been reserved within the Houndsditch pet cemetery.

My competition entry was for a bench that formed Geoffrey’s gravestone. Initial sketches depicted an extruded silhouette of a dachshund, much like one of Julian Opie’s farm animals. Robert Prewett (of Prewett Bizley) suggested inverting this silhouette through a solid block, and thus the absence of the dog became expressed within the concrete. The monolith was to be located centrally upon the plinth, giving the impression perhaps that the park had been built around the memorial. The headstone inscription read:

Here Lies Geoffrey Barkington of Houndsditch
10^th December 2003 to 16^th September 2017
Aged 98 Dog Years

My delight at being selected as a competition winner very rapidly turned to fear once I realised what I had volunteered to do. A contractor suggested to me making concrete was like ‘baking a cake’; unfortunately my pastry skills were lacking and casting fine detail was much more difficult than anticipated. An architect at Groupwork, which had recently completed its Upper Street project, informed me they had tested various specialist concrete mixes at UCL; I had no such privilege.

Furthermore, the bench also had to be cast on its side, and a rough calculation revealed the concrete would weigh about one tonne. Once the cement had hardened, someone would have to flip the concrete block, bring it to Jubilee Gardens, then carry it up the steps onto the plinth. Additionally, the dachshund cutout meant that the weight was spanning 2m and required engineered steel reinforcement.

Finally, the bench had to be made for £800, and in under six weeks. This seemed an impossible task and I called anyone who might be able to help. Every spare minute was spent speaking to an increasing catalogue of people about how I needed to cast a concrete gravestone for an imaginary dog. When the City of London requested a method statement for the install process, what they received was vaguely plausible and deniably vague.

University of Westminster, where I remained a student, offered the use of its workshop. It could produce the shuttering but had limited capacity to pour the concrete and no means of transporting the bench to Houndsditch. A bemused technician CNC-cut 12 50mm-deep Styrofoam dachshund silhouettes.

A structural engineer that Prewett Bizley had worked with previously designed the steel reinforcement within the concrete so that it could be formed by hand. Exasperated housemates questioned when the increasingly rusty lengths of rebar were to be removed from our hallway carpet.

Finally, I spoke to Tarmac, of road surfacing fame, to see whether it might be willing to supply the concrete. I was informed it was currently providing a ‘lean’ mix for casting entrance signs at Kilnbridge, a concrete specialist in east London. Happily, Kilnbridge director Dermot McDermott really liked dogs. Tarmac agreed to supply the concrete and Kilnbridge cast the bench, even laser-cutting a stainless-steel plate for the inscription. Neither party requested any remuneration; everyone seemed to think the whole escapade was some sort of strange joke that had gone too far, which in many ways it was.

Somehow, approximately a month and a half after the fateful call from the London Festival of Architecture, the bench arrived at Houndsditch. One might assume that the installation would be routine, which perhaps would have been the case if I had measured the distance between the gateposts and not the brickwork piers. A nervous forklift driver had to raise the concrete block six feet off the ground to clear the posts on either side. After a hair-raising and incredibly slow crawl, Here Lies Geoffrey Barkington entered Jubilee Gardens.

All of the commissioned benches were photographed shortly after installation. In a stroke of good fortune, Maxwell the dachshund was strolling down London Wall the day prior to the shoot and was volunteered to participate. Shortly afterwards Here Lies Geoffrey Barkington became the cover image for the benches project when they were published in Dezeen, the Architects’ Journal and the Evening Standard. Wallpaper chose another image, as they were clearly cat people.

Following installation, the benches were to become the property of the City of London Corporation, with the intention they would remain in place for only three months. There was no requirement for the designer to arrange for the removal of the benches, which in retrospect was perhaps an oversight. Months went by and the London Festival of Architecture contacted me to ask what to do with Geoffrey. They were struggling to find a suitor to collect a concrete monolith dedicated to a fictional dog.

It seemed to me that the easiest solution was for it to stay in Jubilee Gardens. Stella Ioannou, founder of Sculpture in the City, also recommended the bench should be retained in place. After some debate with the City of London Corporation, there was tacit acceptance that the bench could remain. Jubilee Gardens was due to be redeveloped in the near future, at which point a final decision would be made. It was always a temporary installation, but some things by design are less temporary than others.

Over the coming years Here Lies Geoffrey Barkington was frequently captured on Instagram by passers-by and became a minor pilgrimage for dog lovers. It was a Pokestop on Pokemon Go and appeared in a bestselling guidebook, London, A Guide for Curious Wanderers. City tour guides regularly paused at the bench to pay their respects and tell the story of Houndsditch.

The redevelopment of the park commenced in 2024. The new space, designed by Studio Weave, set the fence inboard from the street to soften the boundary. Boxy planters with clumpy hedges were substituted for an undulating wildflower meadow. The plinth and square geometry were removed in favour of a meandering stone path. The planning application revealed that, following the work, Geoffrey’s memorial would be reinstated next to the new entrance.

The bench was placed on a timber pallet outside while the landscape works took place. A tour guide contacted me to ask what had happened to it, and the editor of The Londonist tweeted about Geoffrey’s exhumation. I checked in on the dejected pooch now and then, sitting rather forlornly within a green plastic traffic barrier on the corner of Houndsditch, and watched and waited as the sculpted mounds of earth were formed and reclaimed paving was relaid.

And then he was gone ...

The hoarding had moved and all that was left a shadow on the asphalt. There was an immediate empty feeling, where Geoffrey’s departure felt absolute, even if some part of me hoped that maybe he was being stored for reinstatement. I emailed Studio Weave who informed me that they ‘thought’ the bench was no longer due to be reinstalled. They referred me to the council, who cooly replied that Here Lies Geoffrey Barkington had been ‘recycled’. Somehow the euphemism for crushing the bench into rubble felt all the more barbaric.

And so, I find myself writing this obituary for a memorial to a fictional deceased dog. Geoffrey, I think you made people smile, brought some humanity to the City and meant a lot to those who helped to bring you into existence. You were taken before your time and without the dignity you deserved. Farewell, Geoffrey Barkington, this time for real.

Here Lies Geoffrey Barkington of Houndsditch
6^th June 2018 to 10^th September 2024
Aged 42 Dog Years