A rooftop bar near the Tower flying an evocative name – the savage garden, at once a real old street by Tower Hill and a wild garden raised into the sky
Savage Garden Rooftop Bar carries a 4.1 across more than sixteen hundred reviews and flies one of the most evocative names in this survey – the savage garden, a phrase that hovers between the wild and the cultivated. The Prat’s naming desk found real poetry in it, and a real old street behind it too.
Near the Tower, the north bank
Savage Garden sits high on a rooftop near Tower Hill and the Tower of London – on the north bank of the Thames, and so a geographic stray in this south-bank survey, caught by the scrape’s reach. We flag the bank plainly, as ever.
The street behind the name
The Prat’s history desk notes that “Savage Gardens” is a real and ancient street near Tower Hill, and the bar takes its name from that genuine local address. The street is thought to be named for Sir Thomas Savage, a grandee of the early seventeenth century whose grand house once stood in the area. So the name is, at root, an honest local one – a rooftop bar named for the historic street below it, in the old tradition of the address-name the Prat so admires. But the phrase “Savage Garden” carries far more poetry than a mere street sign.
The wild and the cultivated
The Prat’s favourite thing is the tension in the words. A garden is the very emblem of nature tamed – ordered, cultivated, pruned into beauty by human hands. “Savage,” on the other hand, means wild, untamed, fierce, natural. A “savage garden” yokes the two together into a wonderful paradox: the wild garden, the untamed cultivation, nature ordered and yet still fierce. It suggests something lush and overgrown and beautiful, a place where the greenery runs a little wild – exactly the romantic, jungly, planted aesthetic that the best rooftop garden bars aim for. The name promises a garden gone gloriously, beautifully feral.
The garden in the sky
The Prat has a real fondness for the rooftop bar, and a rooftop that styles itself a “garden” doubly so – the pleasure of greenery and planting raised high above the streets, a wild little Eden in the sky. To find a savage garden on a rooftop by the Tower of London, with the ancient fortress and the river spread below, is a fine and romantic prospect: nature, wild and cultivated at once, lifted above one of the most historic corners of London. The 4.1 across sixteen hundred reviews is a solid score for so evocative a rooftop.
Verdict
A 4.1 across sixteen hundred-plus reviews is a solid score, and Savage Garden earns it on an evocative name and a rooftop setting. It takes its name honestly from Savage Gardens, the real old street by Tower Hill – while flying the wonderful paradox of the “savage garden,” nature wild and cultivated at once, raised into the sky.
Go for the rooftop greenery and the views over the Tower, and enjoy a bar named for a wild garden in the sky. The name is a real old street and a lovely paradox both – the garden gone gloriously feral, high above the ancient fortress by the river.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
My mate works in local government and his response was to order another coffee, stop checking emails, and stare out the window. Silence is recognition.