The Warwick Square Company
Warwick Square officially comprises nearly 250 flats along the North and South Terraces, in the freeholding companies which represent the core membership of the original company. Additional external key-holders who share the right to enjoy our beautiful garden square take our community to over 330 families and individuals.
Our company, encapsulated on the physical area of our garden, has long fostered friendships and encouraged residents and key holders to initiate and support social activities traditionally run by willing volunteers. I am very optimistic that this new website will increase this communal activity by making available in a very accessible way information which was in the past disseminated in a rather less effective manner.
In recent years the communal social life of the garden has, I believe, diminished, in part because the square now has a significant number of non-resident lease-holders, in part because very many of our key-holders are busy and itinerant people who have little time to devote to maintaining the high Victorian tradition of promoting the communal good. Until the creation of this website, events and requests for support have been promulgated through occasional emails or posters. Our new website has the enormous benefit of providing a continuous, and changing, notice board which I hope very much will generate wider enthusiasm from all our key holders to encourage and support events in, and the broader administration of, our historic Grade II listed garden.
The garden relies for strategic management on the elected board, each free-holding company within the North and South Terraces nominating its own representative to attend the quarterly board meeting. These in turn provide members of the key sub-committees of the board, which oversee and drive the main activities: Finance, Garden Maintenance, Social, Tennis, and Monitoring of Local Issues. Every director and every sub-committee member is entirely voluntary and unpaid; many are also very busy in their professional and family lives. All share the belief that our garden is a wonderful asset, which deserves our personal spare time to help maintain it as an oasis in Pimlico.
I hope, therefore, that this website will encourage more key-holders to take an active role in the life of the garden, however little time this might involve. Without a wider range of occasional support, popular events like the Firework Party will simply cease in the future. There is no magic wand to wave, which can generate enthusiastic key-holders to help organise events, or run committees as the director-nominee of their free-holding company. We are exceptionally fortunate to share this beautiful garden, but this benefit comes with an element of responsibility.
I look forward very much to meeting all key-holders in the garden during 2013, as the seasons change and the garden’s atmosphere subtly alters with the climate.
I would finally like to thank most warmly our newest board director, Peter Hill, for his initiative and energy in creating this website. It is exactly the sort of commitment which will allow us all to continue enjoying the social life in one of London’s most beautiful and understated Victorian garden squares.
I and my fellow directors on the board take this opportunity to wish you all a successful and enjoyable 2016.
Best wishes,
Colin Sheaf
Hon Chairman
The Warwick Square Company Ltd