Other

We don't really think this is a memorial, but would like to know what it is.

From London Gardens Online: "Upper Mall Open Space is a riverside public garden that occupies part of the former site of the West Middlesex Water Company's waterworks, which were demolished in 1965."

The object could be from the 60s, but what is it?  It's too small for a ventilation shaft, too low, surely, for a stink pipe. The texturing of the cement on the top could be intended to represent water - so a memorial to the Water Company? Mmmm....

2024: We are grateful to Fiona Taylor who contacted us to say she’d found another of these strange bollard-like objects – at Reddit.  It is firmly fixed in the ground close to a flint wall, and the photo shows an electric plug just visible, low, on the inside. The top surface looks correct, with a smooth plate rather than the squiggly cement lines on the one we found. Apart from the fact that it apparently needs fixing, no information is provided. Fiona suggests it might be intended to hold a light which could be right. Most light fittings are light-weight and positioned high up, so this would be a specialised form of lighting.