Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Postman's Park

Postman's Park
This nomination predates the introduction in April 2014 of article-specific subpages for nominations and has been created from the edit history of Today's featured article/requests. 
 * This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page. 

The result was: scheduled for Today's featured article/July 30, 2013 by BencherliteTalk 09:11, 17 July 2013‎ (UTC)



Postman's Park is a 0.67 acre park in the City of London, adjacent to the site of the former head office of the General Post Office and a short distance north of St Paul's Cathedral. Opened in 1880 on the site of the former churchyard and burial ground of St Botolph's Aldersgate church, it expanded over the next 20 years to incorporate the adjacent burial grounds of Christ Church Greyfriars and St Leonard, Foster Lane, and nearby land previously occupied by housing. A shortage of space for burials in London meant that corpses were often laid above existing graves and covered over with soil instead of being buried, and thus Postman's Park, as an interment site for over 800 years, is significantly elevated above the streets which surround it. Since 1900 it has been the location of the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, a monument erected by George Frederic Watts to ordinary people who died saving the lives of others who might otherwise have been forgotten. In 1972, key elements of the park, including the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, were grade II listed to preserve their character. Following the 2004 film Closer, Postman's Park experienced a resurgence of interest, as key scenes were filmed in the park.

Anniversary, 2009 FA: 3 pts, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:19, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

*Oppose - the anniversary of the park is on October 28th. Simply south...... fighting ovens for just 7 years 09:09, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Support: a wealth of detail about a little plot of land. Remarkable. Praemonitus (talk) 03:21, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Support' I had an ancestor buried at St Botolph's and went to look at the area last time in London....a "yes" vote for nostalgia's sake.... Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:59, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Gerda should have explained that the anniversary is that of the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice in the park. BencherliteTalk 09:56, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
 * There are numerous dead links in the article. Simply south...... fighting ovens for just 7 years 19:03, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Weak suppport. "Support" because I was the one who originally suggested that 30 July would be an appropriate date; "weak" because a 113th anniversary isn't particularly significant, and because two related articles (Alice Ayres and List of tablets on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice) have already appeared. Regarding date relevance, as those with long memories may be aware I've always been a strong critic of the "liturgical calendar" approach to TFA ("It's the fourth of July, we need to have an article about the USA"), and personally feel the only anniversaries that should be commemorated by Wikipedia are those of genuine significance ("would Google consider giving this topic a Google Doodle?" is a good pointer). That said, if you're going for date relevance 30 July is the key date in the park's history. All that happened on 28 October 1880 was the conversion of the St Botolph's burial ground into a public open space, which was an utterly non-notable event (urban burials were banned in most European cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, creating literally tens of thousands of plots of land which were no longer used as burial sites but because they were consecrated land couldn't easily be built on, so ended up as public open spaces). The notability of Postman's Park derives exclusively from its association with George Frederic Watts and the Memorial, which was unveiled on 30 July 1900; this was also the date that the park gained its present shape. – iridescent  09:52, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for explaining, - let's see if there will be a Google Doodle as for Kafka ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:05, 5 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Support want to thank the contributors to this article, despite several years of living in London, I did not know much about this park or until I read the article (now living in the States). --ColonelHenry (talk) 17:35, 8 July 2013 (UTC)