Greenwich Park has opened a new café, naming it after a key figure in the abolition of the slave trade who lived close by.

The Ignatius Sancho Café is in Vanbrugh Yard – a new public space in the southeast corner of the park, at the top of Maze Hill.

The café was formerly a private home and sits within a newly-landscaped area of the park which used to be a concrete service yard. 

Accessible toilets, a volunteer hub and a community kitchen garden have also been built. 

The project is part of the wider Greenwich Park Revealed scheme, which is also recreating 17th-century grass steps on the hill beneath the Old Royal Observatory. 

The café is run by Benugo, which also runs the park’s kiosks and the Pavilion Café near the observatory. It is open from 8am – 6pm daily, serving freshly-made pastries and cakes, toasted sandwiches, flatbreads, wraps, salads as well as ice cream and sundaes.

Sancho was the first known black Briton to have voted in an election, and was the first to have his letters published. 

After arriving on a slave ship from New Granada at around the age of two in 1731, he grew up enslaved by a family in Greenwich, before receiving an education and gaining employment with the Montagu family, and eventually starting his own business as a shopkeeper. 

Throughout this time, Sancho also composed music, acted, wrote plays and became a celebrity in Georgian London.

Flower bed and buildings in Greenwich Park
An old service yard has been turned into a public space. Image: Royal Parks

Greenwich Park manager Clare Lanes said: “We are thrilled to be opening this brand-new café and to be able to transform this private yard into a beautiful, landscaped space for park visitors to enjoy, while providing new facilities for our important and valued volunteers.

“We are pleased to use this opportunity to recognise Ignatius Sancho as a key figure from British history and hope that naming the café after him will generate conversations and further discovery of his story – and who knows, maybe inspire a famous local writer in the future.”

The old Deptford dockyard, just down the hill from the park, played a key role in the slave trade, and many of those connected with slavery lived in comfortable mansions around Blackheath. A campaign group is hoping to open a museum about slavery in Deptford.

In 2021 a plaque was installed on a house in Maze Hill where Olaudah Equiano, another abolitionist, once lived, while Sancho is also remembered in memorials to the southwest of the park.

As well as funding from Royal Parks, which runs Greenwich Park, the café was also paid for by a grant from the Parks for People programme, which is jointly funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the National Lottery Community Fund.