West Smithfield Garden

I must stop reading London history texts as I keep finding things I then have to go and investigate. the original purpose of usually.
In the Middle Ages this was a plain, grassy space just outside the city walls, known as Smooth Field, where
horses were sold. A cattle market was established in 1638 and remained until 1855, when it was moved to Islington.
But before that??? Smithfield was a place of public execution for over 400 years. Here heretics, rebels and criminals were burnt, beheaded or boiled.
In 1305 Braveheart William Wallace was hanged, drawn and quartered after being dragged there behind a horse.
In 1381 Wat Tyler, leader of the Peasants’ Revolt, gathered his army there and was stabbed by the Mayor of London. The injured Tyler was taken to the hospital at St
Bartholomew’s Church but was soon dragged out again
and beheaded.
The gallows were moved to Tyburn in the 15^th century but Smithfield was also used for the executions of religious martyrs. More than 200 Protestants were burnt at the stake during Queen Mary’s reign in the 1550s.
Nasty stuff and yet today the area is a peaceful, hidden corner of London — but one with a terrible past.
The statue of the young woman here has a wedding band soldered to her finger because the Superintendent at the time could not find the owner and thus created history by placing it here she’s also represented fertility since 1873.