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                       THE LONDON BURIAL GROUNDS




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[Illustration: Author’s Mark]


[Illustration: ST. PETER’S, CORNHILL, IN 1817.]




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                       The London Burial Grounds

                      NOTES ON THEIR HISTORY FROM
                         THE EARLIEST TIMES TO
                            THE PRESENT DAY

                                   BY

                           MRS. BASIL HOLMES



           “Thou that intendest to the Church to Day,
           Come take a turn or two, before thou go’st.
           In the Churchyard; the Walk is in the way.
           Who takes best heed in going, hasteth most:
              But he that unprepared rashly ventures,
              Hastens perhaps to seal his Death’s Indentures”
                                GEORGE HERBERT



                              ILLUSTRATED


                                 LONDON

                            T. FISHER UNWIN

                               MDCCCXCVI




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                         [All rights reserved.]




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                    “First learn to love one living man;
                Then may’st thou think upon the dead.”
                                    Wordsworth.




                        TO THOSE
                           WHO LOVE THE LIVING
                     I Dedicate
                       THESE DETAILS OF
                         THE DWELLINGS OF THE DEAD.




              “October sheds the leaf and April brings it;
               So one flower fadeth and another springs;
               Earth renovates itself.”
                                 H. Bonar.




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                                CONTENTS


             CHAP.                                     PAGE

                   INTRODUCTION                          13

                I. BRITISH AND ROMAN BURYING-PLACES      23

               II. THE GRAVEYARDS OF PRIORIES AND        30
                     CONVENTS

              III. THE CATHEDRAL, THE ABBEY, THE         53
                     TEMPLE, AND THE TOWER

               IV. THE CITY CHURCHYARDS                  74

                V. LONDON CHURCHYARDS, OUTSIDE THE       90
                     CITY

               VI. PEST-FIELDS AND PLAGUE-PITS          117

              VII. THE DISSENTERS’ BURIAL-GROUNDS       133

             VIII. BURIAL-PLACES OF FOREIGNERS IN       153
                     LONDON

               IX. HOSPITAL, ALMSHOUSE, AND WORKHOUSE   171
                     GROUNDS

                X. PRIVATE AND PROMISCUOUS CEMETERIES   187

               XI. THE CLOSING OF THE BURIAL-GROUNDS    209
                     AND VAULTS

              XII. GRAVEYARDS AS PUBLIC GARDENS         226

             XIII. THE CEMETERIES STILL IN USE          250

              XIV. A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE             263


    APPENDIX.


                A. LIST OF BURIAL-GROUNDS IN EXISTENCE  279

                B. LIST OF BURIAL-GROUNDS WHICH HAVE    321
                     DISAPPEARED

                C. CHURCHES AND CHAPELS WITHOUT         329
                     BURIAL-GROUNDS, BUT WITH VAULTS
                     UNDER THEM

                D. HOW TO LAY OUT A BURIAL-GROUND AS A  331
                     GARDEN

                E. THE DISUSED BURIAL-GROUNDS ACT,      336
                     ETC.




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                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                1. ST. PETER’S, CORNHILL               _Frontispiece_

                2. TUMULUS AT HAMPSTEAD                  25

                3. ROMAN MONUMENT FROM LUDGATE           27

                4. BURIAL OF A MONK                      34

                5. PLAN OF PRIORY OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW     37
                     THE GREAT

                6. CRYPT OF ST. MARTIN LE GRAND IN       39
                     1818

                7. CRYPT OF ST. JOHN’S, CLERKENWELL      45

                8. REMAINS OF BERMONDSEY ABBEY ABOUT     48
                     1800

                9. PAUL’S CROSS                          57

               10. ELM ON SITE OF PAUL’S CROSS           60

               11. ST. MARGARET’S, WESTMINSTER, AND      63
                     THE ABBEY CHURCHYARD ABOUT 1750

               12. GREAT CLOISTER, WESTMINSTER           64

               13. ST. PETER’S CHAPEL IN THE TOWER       69
                     ABOUT 1750

               14. THREE COFFIN LIDS FROM THE TOWER      71

               15. ALLHALLOWS’, STAINING                 79

               16. CRIPPLEGATE CHURCHYARD ABOUT 1830     80

               17. ST. MILDRED’S, BREAD STREET           83

               18. PLAN OF ST. BENET FINK IN 1834        84

               19. THE CHURCHYARD OF ST. BENET, PAUL’S   86
                     WHARF, 1838

               20. ALL SAINTS’, WANDSWORTH, ABOUT 1800   93

               21. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY TOMBSTONE          96

              21A. NINETEENTH-CENTURY TOMBSTONE          97

               22. SHOREDITCH VILLAGE                   100

               23. ST. PANCRAS VILLAGE                  101

               24. ST. GILES IN THE FIELDS              107

               25. SITE OF ST. KATHARINE’S DOCKS        112

               26. ST. MATTHEW’S, BETHNAL GREEN, 1818   113

               27. TOTHILL FIELDS PEST-HOUSES           123

               28. STEPNEY CHURCHYARD                   126

               29. SITE OF THE BREWER’S GARDEN ABOUT    128
                     1830

               30. DEADMAN’S PLACE BURIAL-GROUND        129

               31. UNION CHAPEL, WOOLWICH               137

               32. FRIENDS’ BURIAL-GROUND, WHITECHAPEL  143

               33. WHITFIELD’S TABERNACLE               145

               34. WESLEY’S MONUMENT                    149

               35. A CORNER OF THE JEWISH CEMETERY,     154
                     MILE END

               36. JEWISH CEMETERY, FULHAM              158

               37. JEWISH BURIAL-GROUND BEHIND BETH     160
                     HOLIM HOSPITAL

               38. JEWISH CEMETERY, MILE END            161

               39. FLEMISH GROUND, CARTER LANE, ABOUT   163
                     1817

               40. EAST HILL BURIAL-GROUND, WANDSWORTH  169

               41. CHRIST’S HOSPITAL CLOISTERS          172

               42. THE LONDON HOSPITAL GRAVEYARD        175

               43. CHELSEA HOSPITAL GRAVEYARD           177

               44. VIEW FROM THE WHITE HORSE STREET     179
                     ALMSHOUSES, STEPNEY

               45. THE BURIAL-GROUND IN NEWGATE GAOL    190

               46. PEEL GROVE BURIAL-GROUND             198

               47. VICTORIA PARK CEMETERY               199

               48. VICTORIA PARK CEMETERY (MEATH        203
                     GARDENS)

               49. ST. ANN’S CHURCHYARD, SOHO, IN 1810  211

               50. BATTERSEA CHURCHYARD ABOUT 1830      221

               51. ST. JAMES’S CHURCHYARD, PENTONVILLE  223

               52. CHURCHYARD OF ST. GEORGE’S IN THE    229
                     EAST

               53. ST. BOTOLPH, ALDGATE                 234

               54. ST. JOHN’S GARDEN, BENJAMIN STREET   239

               55. ALLHALLOWS’, LONDON WALL             243

               56. A CORNER OF ST. JOHN’S               247
                     BURIAL-GROUND, HORSEFERRY ROAD

               57. PROPOSED CEMETERY, WORMWOOD SCRUBS   253

               58. NORWOOD CEMETERY ABOUT 1851          254

               59. TOMB OF PRINCESS SOPHIA              258

               60. GROUP OF TOMBSTONES IN KENSAL GREEN  261
                     CEMETERY

               61. SHEEP IN THE SAVOY CHURCHYARD ABOUT  268
                     1825

               62. THE COLUMBARIUM AT KENSAL GREEN      271

               63. SPA FIELDS PLAYGROUND                275




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                              INTRODUCTION


IN looking one day at Rocque’s plan of London (1742-5) I noticed how
many burial-grounds and churchyards were marked upon it which no longer
existed. I made a table of them, and traced their destiny, and the
result of this research was printed in the First Annual Report of the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, which was issued in 1884. I
then went further, and commenced to draw up a list of all the
burying-places, of which I could find any record, still existing, or
that had ever existed in London. It was no easy task. A return drawn up
by the late Sir Edwin Chadwick in 1843, for the use of the Parliamentary
Committee which sat to consider questions relating to the sanitary
condition of the labouring classes, contains a most valuable, though not
perfectly complete, table of the graveyards in actual use at that date.
Then there are the returns of the grounds closed by order in Council in
1853 and 1854, and still open for interments in 1855, which are also
very useful. There is a return, dated June, 1833, purporting to show all
the “Places of Burial belonging to each Parish or Precinct under the
Authority of the Bishop of London,” and all the “Places of Burial
belonging to Dissenting Congregations within the Bills of Mortality,”
&c., with their size, and the annual number of burials in them. This,
when I found it, I thought would be a great treasure, but I soon
discovered such entries as the following: “Three letters have been
addressed to the Officiating Ministers of the parishes of St. Benet,
Gracechurch, St. Martin, Ludgate, and St. Margaret, Westminster,
respectively; but no return has been received from either.” “The united
parishes of Allhallows, Bread Street, and St. John the Evangelist, not
being under the authority of the Bishop of London, I have not any return
to make.” “I beg to add that there are several other places used as
burial-grounds in this parish (Stepney) belonging to Jews, Dissenters,
and others, of which I have no official cognizance, and to which, in
fact, I have no access,” &c. And with regard, generally, to the second
part of the return, the following simple remark is made: “The Secretary
of State is not able to ascertain the Places of Burial belonging to
Dissenting congregations within the Bills of Mortality.” In 1839 Walker
described the condition of 47 of the most crowded metropolitan places of
interment, and the Parliamentary Committee which sat in 1842 heard
evidence about these and some others. In Maitland’s “History of London”
there is a list of 64 burial-places used in the year 1729, and not
included in the Bills of Mortality. Some of these are outside London,
and some are only vaults under buildings. I have also kept a list of
about fifty books which I found of use, although in many of them only a
few burial-grounds are mentioned or described. And this, with the
addition of various ancient and modern maps and plans of London and its
environs, is the material upon which I have had to work. But as it is
never safe to take anything on trust, nothing but actual perambulations
and inquiries on the spot could show the present size and condition of
the burial-grounds, and even several that are marked on the ordnance
maps have been built upon since they were published, as, for instance,
the German ground in the Savoy, the additional ground to St. Martin’s in
the Fields, and Thomas’ ground in Golden Lane, all of which have
disappeared.

I have had some curious experiences while graveyard-hunting. At first I
was less bold than I am now, and was hardly prepared to walk straight
into private yards and look round them until asked my business and
driven to retire. “My business” it is best not to reveal ordinarily. If
one mentions that one is looking at a place because it was once a
burial-ground the fact will generally be stoutly denied, and sometimes
in good faith. But it is not unusual for an employé innocently to
acknowledge that there are bones under the ground upon which he is
standing, whereat his master, if he knew of it, would be very angry. For
it must be remembered that it is to the interest of the owner of a yard
to keep the circumstance of its having been used for interments in the
background, and he is not pleased if, when he wants to put up a wall or
enlarge a shed, he is stopped from doing so by the enforcement of the
Disused Burial-Grounds Act of 1834, as amended by the Open Spaces Act of
1887.

I inquired of an old man once, in a court in Shoreditch, whether he
remembered a graveyard existing by the workhouse.

“No,” he said.

I noticed a newer part of the building, evidently a recently erected
wing, and asked him how long it had been built.

“Oh, I moind,” said he, “when they was buildin’ that, they carted away a
ton of bones.” Here was the evidence I was seeking for.

One day a sleepy old Smithfield butcher, whose work-time was the night,
and whose sleeping-time was the morning, was specially kept awake until
10 o’clock in order to see me, as he could remember the extent of a
certain burial-ground before it was done away with. The information he
was able to supply was very useful, but it was hard to keep him to the
point, as the poor old man, once roused to remember the past, would
persistently revert to the cottages which used to stand on the adjoining
plot of land, and which ought, he said, to have come into his own
possession if he had not been in some way defrauded out of his lawful
inheritance.

It is often necessary, in order to see a graveyard, to go into one of
the surrounding houses and ask for permission to look out from a back
window. Such permission is sometimes refused at once, sometimes it is
most kindly given. I remember arousing a divided opinion upon this
matter by knocking at the door of one of the upper rooms in the
almshouses in Bath Street. I wanted to see the ground used as a garden
by the inmates of the St. Luke’s Lunatic Asylum in Old Street, and which
was at one time a pauper burial-ground for the parish. The old man did
not at all like my invading his room, but the old lady was most affable,
and had much to say upon the subject. At any rate I saw what I wanted,
and made my mental report, but I left the old man grumbling at my
unnecessary intrusion, and the old lady in smiles. I hope she did not
suffer for her kindness.

If one asks to go into a burial-ground, it is generally imagined that
one wants to see a particular grave. I have been supposed to have “some
one lyin’ there” in all quarters of the metropolis, and in all sorts of
funny little places. I have been hailed as a sister by the quietest of
Quakeresses and the darkest of bewigged Jewesses, by the leanest and
most clean-shaven of ritualistic Priests, and by the bearded and buxom
Dissenter. I remember, however, knocking at the gate of one Jewish
ground which the caretaker was unwilling to let me enter. She asked me
the direct question, “Are you a Jewess?” I had to say no, but happily I
was armed with the name of a gentleman who had kindly told me to mention
it in any such difficulty. It answered, and I was allowed in. One day I
climbed a high, rickety fence in a builder’s yard in Wandsworth in order
to see over the wall into the Friends’ burial-ground. No doubt the men
in the place thought me mad,—anyhow they left me in peace.

I have often been assured that there is no possibility of a particular
enclosure ever becoming a public garden by those who live, at a low
rent, in the neighbouring cottage, on condition that they keep watch
over the ground. Alas, before many months are over, they find that the
wires have been pulled somehow or other, and that their precious yard is
no longer available for their fowls to run in or for their clothes to
dry in, but is invaded by their neighbours and their neighbour’s
unwelcome children. “They come four times a year to clear away the
weeds.” That is the sort of caretaking that some burial-grounds are
subjected to; and on the other 361 days in the year all sorts of rubbish
is deposited in them.

Twice I have had mud thrown at me, once by a woman in Cable Street, E.,
and once by a man in Silchester Road, W., but these were wholly
unprovoked attacks, in fact mere accidental occurrences. For my general
experience has been of the greatest consideration and politeness. I have
never been out of my way for the sake of idle curiosity, but have not
hesitated to go down any street or court or to knock at any door which
was in my way, and I have never had cause to regret it. An appearance of
utter insignificance and an air of knowing where you are going and what
you want, is the passport for all parts of London; and I have seen young
men and maidens, one moment indulging in the roughest play, the next
moment step off the pavement to let me pass. The clergy and others
always seem to think their own people the very worst. “You don’t know
what this neighbourhood is like,” I have heard over and over again, and
I am thankful I don’t. But as far as a superficial knowledge of the
streets goes they seem to be all much the same—north, south, east, and
west—and their frequenters too. To the children, at any rate, one need
never mind speaking. Poor little souls; they say “Miss,” or “Mum,” or
“Missus,” or “Teacher,” or “Sister,” or “Lady,” but they never answer
rudely.

Gravediggers and gardeners in cemeteries are generally communicative
people, who do not at all mind stopping their work for a bit, and
enlarging on the number of funerals, &c., which they daily witness. They
speak of the actual headstones and monuments by the surnames engraved
thereon, as, for instance, “Brown,” “Smith,” &c., and will point out a
particular grave as “four behind Smith over there, Smith is the tall
stone by the path; or if you look next to Wallace which has the shrub on
it,” and so on.

It is interesting to trace on maps of different dates the rise and fall
of a graveyard. First there is the actual field, which on some
particular day was acquired for the purpose. Then there is the
burial-ground formed and in use. Then the plot appears to be vacant—put
to no purpose, or used as a yard. Lastly buildings are on it, and the
graveyard has quite disappeared. One difficulty to be encountered needs
much study to overcome; it is the different names by which the same
ground is called in different books or plans. For instance, Chadwick
mentions in his list one called St. John’s, Borough, whereas the proper
name for this same ground is Butler’s burial-ground, Horselydown. As
another instance, and there are scores, it may be mentioned that the
Peel Grove burial-ground was called in some returns the North-east
London Cemetery, in others Cambridge Heath burial-ground, and in others
Keldy’s ground. Occasionally a graveyard is described as being “near the
free school,” or in some such vague terms, and it needs a knowledge of
the districts and the buildings in them, past and present, to be able to
locate some of these grounds which I have ventured to call “obscure.”

Since 1883, as complete a list as I could make of the London
burial-grounds has appeared in the Reports of the Metropolitan Public
Gardens Association, and I have, from time to time, been asked for
information about the more obscure ones. In the summer of 1894 the
London County Council instructed its Parks Committee to make a return of
all the burial-grounds existing in the County of London, with their
size, ownership, and condition. Having been applied to for information
and assistance, I offered to undertake the work. It involved some
additional research at the British Museum, and a fresh perambulation.
The offer being accepted I commenced the task in February, 1895, and
sent in the return in June, accompanied by 60 sheets of the ordnance
survey (25 inch to the mile), upon which the grounds were marked in
colours, viz., those still in use blue, those disused green, those
converted into public recreation grounds green with a red border. I gave
the number existing in the County and City of London as 362, of which 41
were still in use, and 90 were public gardens and playgrounds. This did
not include churches and chapels with vaults under them, but without
graveyards. It must also be remembered that the area was strictly
limited (as it is in this work) to that of the metropolitan boroughs, or
the administrative County of London with the City. The cemeteries in the
county do not represent all the parochial ones. There are, for instance,
those of St. George’s, Hanover Square, and Kensington at Hanwell, the
Paddington Cemetery in Kilburn, the Jewish at Willesden, and very many
more just outside the boundary, not to speak of a large number in what
is called “London over the Border,” which to all intents and purposes is
still London, although separated by the River Lea, and governed by the
West Ham Corporation.

The kindly notice taken of the return, which was published by the
Council in October, 1895, has encouraged me to prepare the present
volume, in which there is scope for a general view of the subject, for
further historical details, and for particulars of those grounds which
no longer exist.

The more public interest is brought to bear upon the burial-grounds, the
more likely is it that they will be preserved from encroachments. The
London County Council has special powers to put in force the provisions
of the Disused Burial-grounds Act, and it has the record of their actual
sites on the plans prepared by me. It is for the public to see that
these provisions are carried out, not only for historical, sentimental,
and sanitary reasons, but also because each burial-ground that is
curtailed or annihilated means the loss of another space which may one
day be available for public recreation; and considering that land, even
in the poorest part of Whitechapel, fetches about £30,000 per acre, it
is easily understood of what inestimable value is a plot of ground which
cannot be built upon.

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                               CHAPTER I

                    BRITISH AND ROMAN BURIAL-PLACES.

             “Where now the haughty Empire that was spread
              With such fond hope? Her very speech is dead.”
                                         WORDSWORTH.


EVERY chronicler of London history who can lay claim to be called an
antiquarian, from Fitzstephen, Stow, and Pennant, to the Rev. W. J.
Loftie and Sir Walter Besant, has tried to gather up the fragmentary
evidence which from time to time has come to light, and to form some
picture of the condition of London in the earliest times. Many have gone
in largely for invention, and have weaved what they supposed to be
circumstantial stories from discoveries of the most trivial kind, but
these fictions are not worthy of repetition. As it is only with the
evidences of the places of interment in London that this chapter has to
deal, it is not possible to go into the question of the Roman roads,
walls, villas, gardens and camps, of which traces have been found,
although these relics really form the most interesting of the ancient
remains, or “remarkables” as Maitland calls them, belonging to the
several parishes.

A few tumuli scattered over London are supposed to mark the sites of
British burial-places, Stukeley imagined he had discovered one by Long
Acre, but the evidence is not trustworthy. Certainly there are some
artificial mounds in Greenwich Park, which were opened in 1804 by the
Rev. James Douglas, and found to contain spear-heads, beads, pieces of
cloth, hair, &c., and there is the well-known one in Parliament Hill
Fields, Hampstead, which the London County Council excavated in 1894.
From the few broken pieces of human workmanship which were brought to
light in this excavation, it was conjectured that the mound was an
ancient British burial-place of the early bronze period, but no
particular name can be associated with it. It is now railed round for
its better protection, and planted with shrubs.

The Romans buried their dead outside their cities, often on each side of
the highways immediately beyond the walls and gates, and they adopted
this plan, to a certain extent, in Britain. But it must be remembered
that Roman London, as first designed and built, was far smaller than
that which is enclosed within the line of the city wall of which
fragments still remain, and therefore some sepulchral monuments have
been discovered inside this wall and its gates, as, for instance, near
St. Martin’s, Ludgate, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, in Camomile Street and
Lombard Street, and by the churches of St. Mary at Hill and St.
Dunstan’s in the East. Near Dowgate some excavations made by Wren
brought to light what were then thought to be British graves, but as
there were Roman urns at a still lower level the matter was rather
difficult of solution.

[Illustration: THE TUMULUS AT HAMPSTEAD.]

The largest number of sepulchral remains have been found on the east
side of the City, commencing at Bishopsgate and Moorfields, and
extending to Wapping on the south, and Sun Tavern Fields, Shadwell, on
the east; and it is not improbable that a cemetery of considerable size
occupied all this district in Roman times. In 1756 many earthen urns,
containing ashes, burnt human bones, and coins, were dug up in a field
“called Lottesworth, now Spitalfield,” close to the present site of
Christ Church, Spitalfields, together with some stone coffins and
remnants of wooden ones which probably dated from British or Saxon
times; and on many occasions during the last century, urns,
lachrymatories, monumental stones, &c., were discovered in different
spots in the district above mentioned. In many cases the monumental
stones were erected to the memory of soldiers from various legions of
the army, and on a few of them the inscriptions are still legible. Some
of the Roman remains discovered in London are in the Guildhall Museum;
the one represented in the accompanying picture, which was found near
Ludgate, is with the Arundel marbles at Oxford. A few single graves have
been identified among the traces of the gardens and villas which
immediately surrounded the Roman Fort.

The following description of what Sir Christopher Wren found in St.
Paul’s Churchyard, on the north side of the Cathedral, is interesting.
“Upon digging the foundation of the present fabrick of St. Paul’s, he
found under the graves of the latter ages, in a row below them, the
Burial-places of the Saxon times—the Saxons, as it appeared, were
accustomed to line their graves with chalk-stones, though some more
eminent were entombed in coffins of whole stones. Below these were
British graves, where were found ivory and wooden pins, of a hard wood,
seemingly box, in abundance, of about six inches long; it seems the
bodies were only wrapped up, and pinned in woollen shrouds, which being
consumed, the pins remained entire. In the same row, and deeper, were
Roman urns intermixed. This was eighteen feet deep or more, and belonged
to the colony when Romans and Britons lived and died together.” (From
Wren’s “Parentalia.”) The remains found in the north-east corner of the
churchyard were the best preserved.

[Illustration: ROMAN MONUMENT.]

Some evidences of a Roman cemetery have also been discovered on the
south side of the Thames, in Snow’s Fields, Bermondsey, Union Street,
Newington, and the burial-ground in Deverell Street. This district was
probably the place of interment for those who lived in the small suburb
which was growing up on the south side of the Bridge or Ferry. On
Blackheath there have also been found traces of Roman burial, and in
1803 several urns were dug up in the Earl of Dartmouth’s garden, but
they were supposed by some authorities to be the remains of the Danes
who were encamped in that neighbourhood.

Such are the very scanty traces that have hitherto been brought to light
relating to the burial-places of those who were amongst the worthiest
pioneers in the making of London, and who occupied it before the time of
the Christians who founded the earlier priories and churches. For as
soon as these Christian institutions were established, it became the
practice to bury the dead inside them or around them, and the cloisters
and burial-grounds of the priories, and the churchyards and vaults of
the churches, took the place of the more distant cemeteries and the more
scattered graves.

Roman London is buried with British, Saxon, and Danish London, far below
the surface of nineteenth-century London, and Longfellow might have been
writing its epitaph when he described the ruins under the sea—

                    “Hidden from all mortal eyes
                     Deep the sunken city lies;
                     Even cities have their graves!”

The dedications of the London churches mark historical periods, and
there are a few names, such as St. Olave and St. Magnus, which are of
Danish derivation, but of the Danish interments in London very few
traces remain. Beyond the remnants found at Blackheath, and the belief
held by some chroniclers that the church of St. Clement Danes was so
named because it stood in a plot of ground where the Danes were buried,
only one discovery of any importance has been made. On the south side of
St. Paul’s Churchyard, in digging the foundation for a new warehouse a
few years ago, a relic was found with the following Runic inscription on
it, which Mr. Loftie thinks must have belonged to an early stage of the
Danish conquest, “Kina caused this stone to be laid over Tuki.” A
tradition used to prevail in Fulham that human remains, which have been
discovered at different times in the neighbourhood of the river, were
survivals of the Danish invasion, although the actual skeletons found
there in 1809 (on the property of the Earl of Cholmondeley) seemed, from
coins, daggers, &c., which were with them, to belong to the time of
Charles I.

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                               CHAPTER II

                THE GRAVEYARDS OF PRIORIES AND CONVENTS.

                “Gone are all the barons bold,
                   Gone are all the knights and squires,
                 Gone the Abbot stern and cold,
                   And the brotherhood of friars;
                      Not a name
                      Remains to fame,
                 From those mouldering days of old!”
                               LONGFELLOW.


FITZSTEPHEN’S statement that “there are in London and the suburbs 13
churches belonging to convents, besides 126 lesser parish churches,” is
not a very satisfactory one, as he does not proceed to name these
several churches, or to tell his readers with what establishments they
were connected. However, he was probably under the mark in putting the
first figure at thirteen, for even in his time, and certainly very
little later, there were many more than thirteen monastic and conventual
buildings in London, and each had its church or chapel. The chief
amongst these establishments which existed in London in the twelfth
century, and which were made between that time and the dissolution of
the priories in the days of Henry VIII., were:—

                        _Inside the City Walls._

1. The Greyfriars or Franciscans, succeeded by Christ’s Hospital.

2. The Blackfriars or Dominicans in the west.

3. The Crossed or Crutched Friars, by Fenchurch Street.

4. The Augustine Friars, by Broad Street.

5. St. Helen’s Priory of Nuns, Bishopsgate Street.

6. The Priory of Holy Trinity, Aldgate.

7. The Priory and Sanctuary of St. Martin’s le Grand.

8. Elsing Spital, London Wall.

9. The Priory of St. Augustine Papey.

10. St. James’s Priory, the Hermitage in the Wall, Monkswell Street.

11. The Priory of St. Thomas Acon, Ironmonger Lane.

12. The Fraternities who had the care of St. Paul’s Cathedral, including
the brotherhood of All Souls, specially connected with the Charnel
Chapel.


                       _Outside the City Walls._

13. The Whitefriars or Carmelites, south of Fleet Street.

14. The Abbey and the Convent of Westminster.

15. A Brotherhood of St. Ursula at St. Mary le Strand.

16. A Brotherhood of the Trinity, without Aldersgate.

17. The Knights Templars, in the Strand.

18. The Priory of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, at
Clerkenwell.

19. The Black Nuns of St. Mary’s, Clerkenwell.

20. The Benedictine Priory of St. Bartholomew, with St. Bartholomew’s
Spital, West Smithfield.

21. The Carthusian Priory of the Salutation, subsequently the
Charterhouse.

22. St. Mary Spital, without Bishopsgate.

23. The Nunnery of the Minoresses of St. Clare, the Minories.

24. The Cistercian Abbey of St. Mary of Grace, beyond the Tower.

25. St. Katharine’s Hospital, by the Tower.

26. The Convent of St. Leonard, at Bromley-by-Bow.

27. The Priory of St. Mary Overie, Southwark, with a “House of Sisters.”

28. Bermondsey Abbey.

29. The Nunnery of St. John the Baptist, Holywell.

30. The Convent of St. Mary Rounceval, Charing Cross.

A very complete list of the ecclesiastical institutions will be found in
Brewer’s “Beauties of London and Middlesex,” vol. ii. p. 39.

Some of these brotherhoods were but small, and were mendicants; and they
may not have had special burial-places of their own. In other cases
burials may have only taken place in the priory churches, which were
always much sought after for the purpose by outsiders, or in the
cloisters. But most of the conventual establishments had a cemetery of
considerable size—“the cloister garth,” and peeps are given us now and
then, by old writers, of the practices at the burial of the monks and
nuns.

In the Church of the Crutched friars were two Dutch Fraternities, one of
which was named in honour of the “Holy Blode of Wilsuak,” and among
their rules and orders is the following:—

“Also when any Brother or Suster of the same Bretherhede is dede, he or
she shall have 4 Torchys of Wex of the Bretherhede, to bring the Body in
Erthe: And every Brother and Suster shall come to his Masse of Requiem,
and offer 1d and abide still to the Tyme the Body be buryed, uppon Pain
of a l. Wex, yf he or she be within the Cite.”

[Illustration: BURIAL OF A MONK.
(_From a Harleian Manuscript_).]

Burials did not always take place in the evening, as might be imagined
from the mention of torches and tapers, but often after mass, before
dinner, and always with as little delay as possible. The written
absolution was placed on the body of the monk or nun, and buried with
it. Very solemn they seem to have been, these monastic funerals,
especially when the body to be buried was that of an abbot, a prior, or
a canon, with the procession of monks, the lighted tapers, the
sprinkling of holy water, the chanting of psalms, the singing of the
requiem mass, and the ringing of the bell. Strype gives a detailed
account of the finding of four heads in pots or cases of “fine pewter,”
in a cupboard in the wall of the demolished building which belonged to
the Black friars, when the rubbish was cleared away after the Great Fire
of London. They were embalmed or preserved, and had tonsured hair. He
imagined that they were the heads of “some zealous priests or friars,
executed for treason ... or for denying the King’s Supremacy; and here
privately deposited by these Black Friars.” It is probable that these
heads were afterwards bought and taken to the Continent to be exhibited
as holy relics. The City must have been a strange place in the
thirteenth century, with the numerous churches and the very large
priories and convents hedged in by narrow streets of wooden houses,
where, even in those early days, men were busy, in their own several
manners, in getting money. Neither the monks, nor the nuns, nor the
mendicant friars were always exemplary in their behaviour, but at any
rate the charitable works done at that time—the care of the sick, the
prayers for the evil, the prayers for the souls of the dead, the
building of the churches and the hospitals—were carried out by them, and
we cannot imagine how we could have got on in our matter-of-fact
generation without their efforts and their work. It is also pleasant to
look back occasionally and to try and picture the life led in the more
secluded priories outside the City, surrounded by fields and close to
the Holy Wells, where there was time for prayer and meditation and good
deeds.

              “Yes, they can make, who fail to find,
                 Short leizure even in busiest days;
               Moments, to cast a look behind,
                 And profit by those kindly rays
               That through the clouds do sometimes steal,
               And all the far-off past reveal.”

Of the cloister garths there is very little which remains intact. The
burial-ground of the Greyfriars is now the quadrangle of Christ’s
Hospital, but few traces of the old cloisters are left there. Of the
grounds attached to Westminster Abbey I shall speak in the next chapter.
That of St. Bartholomew’s Priory, West Smithfield, was built upon many
years ago. The site of the priory cemetery and that of the canons are
marked on the accompanying plan, but

                 “Time has long effaced the inscriptions
                   On the cloister’s funeral stones,”


and nothing is left to us except glimpses of the customs which used to
take place there. The history of the establishment, founded by Rahere
about 1113, is comparatively well known, owing to the recent efforts
that have been made to restore what is left of the noble Norman Church.
But there is not much remaining of what was once an extensive group of
buildings except the choir of the original church, with its restored
lady-chapel, crypt, and transepts. The nave has gone, and its site is
marked by the churchyard, the bases of the pillars being buried among
the bones. Leading out of the south transept is the “green-ground,”
another small churchyard, and a paved yard on the north side of the
church was once the pauper ground.

According to a writer in the _Observator_ of August 21, 1703, the
cloisters of the priory and the space which still existed there became
the resort of very low characters, “lords and ladies, aldermen and their
wives, squires and fiddlers, citizens and rope-dancers, jackpuddings and
lawyers, mistresses and maids, masters and ’prentices” meeting there for
lotteries, plays, farces, and “all the temptations to destruction.” Stow
describes far more respectable gatherings in “the churchyard of St.
Bartholomew,” when the scholars from St. Paul’s, Westminster, and other
grammar schools used to meet for learned disputations, for proficiency
in which garlands and prizes were awarded; but these meetings finally
degenerated into free fights in the streets, and had to be discontinued.

[Illustration: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew The Great.]

Some of the priory burial-grounds have survived in the parish
churchyards, or at any rate parts of them have. The churchyard of St.
Catherine Cree, in Leadenhall Street, is the successor of the
burial-ground of Holy Trinity Priory, the church itself having been
built in this cemetery. It was originally called Christ Church, which
got corrupted to Cree Church, and so on. The churchyard is associated
with the performance of miracle plays, moralities, or mysteries, and it
was probably in this place that some of the latest of these shows were
held. They are frequently mentioned by different chroniclers from the
tenth to the sixteenth centuries. Such events as the Massacre of the
Innocents, the Shepherds feeding their flocks on Christmas Eve, and the
scenes in the history of St. Catherine, &c., were usually portrayed
inside the churches; but Bishop Bonner put a stop to this practice in
1542, after which time stages were erected by strolling players in
streets, by the wells, and in private houses. In London the churchyards
seem to have been frequently used for the purpose, and in an old parish
book belonging to St. Catherine’s was the following entry, quoted in
“Londinium Redivivum”:—“Receyved of Hugh Grymes, for lycens geven to
certen players to playe their enterludes in the churche-yarde from the
feast of Easter, An. D’ni. 1560, untyll the feaste of Seynt Mychaell
Tharchangell next comynge, every holydaye, to the use of the parysshe,
the some of 27s and 8d.” The miracle plays were a prelude to a more
advanced form of dramatic representation, and after the establishment of
the theatres we hear no more of them. The modern “flower service”
originated, I believe, in the church of St. Catherine Cree, having been
instituted by Dr. Whittemore.

[Illustration:
S. EAST            S. WEST
VIEW OF THE CRYPT ON THE SITE OF THE LATE COLLEGE OF
St. MARTIN LE GRAND.
_Discovered in clearing for the New Post Office_
THE CRYPT OF ST. MARTIN LE GRAND IN 1818.]

Recent discoveries have shown that the priory cloister of the Augustine
Friars was immediately to the north-east of the Dutch Church in Austin
Friars. St. James’s Priory, the Hermitage in the Wall, had a graveyard
under the wall, on the other side of which was, and is, the churchyard
of St. Giles’, Cripplegate. Huge warehouses and offices now cover its
site. The burial-ground of the Priory of St. Thomas Acon, in Ironmonger
Lane, where pilgrims were buried who died on their visits to the chapel
in honour of Becket, has also disappeared; but that of the priory of St.
Augustine Papey survives in the little churchyard of St. Martin Outwich,
in Camomile Street, which was presented to the parish by Robert Hyde in
1538, while the nuns of St. Helen’s were probably buried in what is now
St. Helen’s Churchyard, Bishopsgate Street, which used to be, according
to Stow, much larger.

No trace is left of the burial-places of the monks of Elsing Spital, the
Crutched Friars, the White Friars, or the Black Friars, or of that of
the splendid priory and sanctuary of St. Martin le Grand; they have gone
with the buildings, of which only slight traces remain here and there,
such as the porch of St. Alphege, London Wall, which belonged to Elsing
Spital Priory. Probably they all had burying-grounds within their
precincts. The crypt of St. Martin’s was opened out in 1818, and a very
perfect stone coffin found in it, when the present Post Office Buildings
in Foster Lane were erected. The churches themselves were always much
resorted to as places of interment by those who were not connected with
the priories, especially the four magnificent churches, all of which are
now gone, of the Greyfriars, the Whitefriars, the Blackfriars, and the
Augustine Friars. The Dutch church is the successor to the nave of the
last named. The site of the Greyfriars’ church is occupied by the
present church and churchyard of Christ Church, Newgate Street. Here
were buried Margaret, second wife of Edward I., Isabella, Widow of
Edward II., Joan Makepeace, wife of David Bruce, King of Scotland, and
Isabella, wife of Lord Fitzwalter, the Queen of Man, besides the hearts
of Edward II. and Queen Eleanor, the wife of Henry III., and, according
to Weever, the bodies of “four duchesses, four countesses, one duke,
twenty-eight barons, and some thirty-five knights,” in all “six hundred
and sixty-three persons of quality.” Malcolm states that ten tombs and
140 gravestones (the fine monuments at the east end of the church) were
destroyed and sold, in 1545, by Sir Martin Bowes, Lord Mayor, for fifty
pounds.

I have given a list of the principal convents and priories outside the
city. The site of St. Katharine’s is buried in the Dock, and that of St.
John the Baptist’s, Holywell (by Curtain Road, Shoreditch), has also
gone. The churchyards of St. Mary, Bromley, and St. Saviour, Southwark,
are the survivals of the conventual burying-places; the cemetery of the
nuns at Bromley was on the south side of the church, and upon its site
Sir John Jacob built the Manor House, the bones being put under the
house. But about two hundred years later (1813) the greater part of this
site was again added to the churchyard, and re-consecrated. The
burial-ground of Westminster Convent, with the Abbot’s garden, have
given place to the district and market of Covent Garden. The houses in
White Lion Street and Spital Square are on the site of the cemetery or
garth of St. Mary Spital. Here, after it ceased to be used for
interments and before it was built upon, Spital Square was an open plot
of ground with a pulpit in it and a house for the accommodation of the
Lord Mayor and Corporation when they came on their annual visit to hear
the “Spital Sermon.” Of the priory church of the Knights Hospitallers of
St. John of Jerusalem, in Clerkenwell, very few traces remain. The
beautiful old crypt, lately cleared of coffins and restored, is older
than the priory church (which was built over it), and dates from 1080 or
1090. The truly magnificent church was consecrated in 1185, the present
structure occupying merely the site of the choir, the nave having
probably extended the length of St. John’s Square, and, together with
the other buildings of the priory, it was pulled down at the
Dissolution. The exact site of the cloisters and burial-ground is
unknown. The present churchyard of St. John’s is a small, narrow one at
the eastern end, from which steps lead down into the ancient crypt.
Here, between the years 1738 and 1853, about 325 bodies were buried, or
rather the coffins were stacked, for they were above the floor. In 1893
a faculty was procured for their removal, and all the remains were
reverently conveyed to Woking, a vellum document recording the fact
being placed in the vestry of the church. The crypt is open to the
public on the first Saturday in each month. Its complete restoration is
still in hand. I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. H. W. Fincham for
the picture of St. John’s Crypt, and also for that of the garden in
Benjamin Street, E.C.

The Nuns’ burial-ground at Clerkenwell, and part of the beautiful
cloister, existed until about one hundred years ago in the garden of the
Duke of Newcastle’s house, and its site is now occupied by the houses on
the west side of St. James’s Walk, a little north-east of St. James’s
Church. The Convent of St. Mary Rounceval was superseded by
Northumberland House, subsequently pulled down when Northumberland
Avenue was made; and the churchyard of Holy Trinity, Minories (now
merely a part of the road) _may_ be a relic of the Nunnery of the
Minoresses of St. Clare. The Priory Church of St. Mary Overie (over the
ferry) was purchased from the king by the parish in 1539, and has since
been the parish Church of St. Saviour, Southwark, henceforth to be the
Cathedral of South London.

[Illustration: CRYPT OF ST. JOHN’S, CLERKENWELL.]

In the Crace Collection at the British Museum there is a plan, made by
William Newton, purporting to show London in Elizabeth’s time, in
picture form. He marks the priories with their burial-grounds, but I
doubt if it is very trustworthy. In Van den Wyngaerde’s beautiful view
(1550), reproduced by the Topographical Society in 1881, and the
original of which is in the Bodleian Library, several of the conventual
churches appear, not the least interesting being that of “S. Maria
Spital.”

The Cistercian abbey of St. Mary of Grace and the Carthusian priory of
the Salutation were built on plague burial-grounds. (See Chapter VI.)
The former has disappeared under the site of the Royal Mint, the latter
survives in the Charterhouse. Probably they were very insanitary, but
such, according to Dean Farrar, was the case with all the conventual
establishments, and much accommodation was provided for sick monks.

Lastly we come to Bermondsey Abbey, the ancient and once famous
settlement of Cluniac monks in the ea or eye (island) of a Saxon named
Bearmund. Almost all traces of the abbey buildings have disappeared,
though a good deal existed at the commencement of this century. There
are some fragments of old windows and doorways among the shabby houses
south of Grange Walk, and some pieces of the wall in the churchyard of
St. Mary Magdalene. A considerable portion of the Abbey burial-ground
was added to this churchyard in 1810. Amongst the benefactors of this
establishment were William Rufus, Henry I., and King Stephen, and many
eminent people were buried in the priory church, while much of great
historic interest is connected with the history of Bermondsey Abbey.

                  *       *       *       *       *

The modern representatives of the ancient monasteries and nunneries lack
the antiquarian flavour which is so attractive to us, and yet there is a
certain interest attaching to them. But I have only to deal with their
burial-grounds, and therefore need mention very few.

[Illustration: THE REMAINS OF BERMONDSEY ABBEY ABOUT 1800.]

The third volume of Knight’s “London” commences with the following
words:—“It is a curious circumstance, and one in which the history of
many changes of opinion may be read, that within forty years after what
remained of the magnificent ecclesiastical foundation of the Abbey of
Bermondsey had been swept away, a new conventual establishment has risen
up, amidst the surrounding desecration of factories and warehouses, in a
large and picturesque pile, with its stately church, fitted in every way
for the residence and accommodation of thirty or forty inmates—the
convent of the Sisters of Mercy.” The writer of the article refers to
the convent by the Roman Catholic Chapel in Parker’s Row, built in 1838.
The chapel, with a small graveyard given in 1833 or 1834, existed
previously. The garden of the convent was used for burials until August,
1853, but there appear to be no gravestones in it, and it is a
neatly-kept ground between two schools, whereas the graveyard on the
east side of the church is untidy. Another disused burial-ground is
behind the Roman Catholic Chapel in Commercial Road. Here the tombstones
are laid flat, and the ground forms a garden of considerable size for
the use of the priests.

On the north side of King Street, Hammersmith, just east of the Broadway
Station, is the large red building known as the Convent of the Sacred
Heart, a seminary and establishment erected by the late Cardinal Manning
on the site of a Benedictine convent which was founded, according to
some authorities, before the Reformation, and according to others during
the reign of Charles II., and which included the Sisterhood of the
English Benedictine Dames and a famous school, where many ladies of
distinction received their early education. Brewer, in his “Beauties of
London and Middlesex” (1816), thus describes the burial-ground of this
convent: “The gravestones are laid flat on the turf, and the sisters are
placed, as usual, with their feet to the east; the priests alone having
the head towards the altar. There are several inscriptions on the
stones, of which we insert the following specimen:—Here lies the body of
The Right Reverend Lady Mary Anne Clavering, late Abbess of the English
Benedictine Dames of Pontoise, Who died the 8th day of November, 1795,
in the 65th year of her age.” Cardinal Manning disposed of this little
cemetery, which was by the lane on the east side, when erecting the
present buildings. “It was dug up and done away with,” according to the
statement of one of the sisters at present in the convent.

But two similar burial-grounds are still to be found in this immediate
neighbourhood, one is disused and the other is in use. The former is
behind the Convent of the Good Shepherd in Fulham Palace Road, only
about 14 by 12 yards in size, and closed a few years ago. The latter is
at the extreme end of the garden of Nazareth Home in Hammersmith Road,
under the wall of Great Church Lane. It is even smaller than the one in
Fulham Palace Road, and has been in use for upwards of forty years, but
as only the sisters are interred here it would appear to be still
available for about another twenty years. The graves are in neat rows, a
small cross is on each, with the name (or the adopted name) of the
sister whose body lies beneath. It forms a little enclosure in the large
space and garden behind the buildings of the Home, where many children
are taught and many old people live. Another enclosure contains their
poultry, and another a cow. The whole establishment is very interesting,
and not the least interesting part of it is this little cemetery, of the
existence of which, in all probability, very few of the inhabitants of
the surrounding streets have any knowledge.

I have visited one other convent burial-ground, and in each case it is
necessary to go through the ceremony of being peeped at through a
grating, and, when admitted, passed along passages and through rooms
while the doors are locked behind, and only granted permission to see
what I want after some time of waiting and a large amount of
explanation. I have been since told that I was singularly favoured by
being admitted into the Franciscan Convent in Portobello Road, where the
Mother Superior herself most kindly took me to see the little cemetery,
explaining that it was “sanctioned by the Home Secretary,”—of which I
was well aware. It is a charming little corner of a very pretty garden,
a triangular grass plot edged with trees, not above a quarter of an acre
in extent. It was formed in 1862 and first used in 1870, only five
burials taking place in twenty-three years. It is, of course, merely for
the interment of the nuns who, having given up the world and shut
themselves into the convent, find their last resting-place within its
precincts.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                              CHAPTER III

          THE CATHEDRAL, THE ABBEY, THE TEMPLE, AND THE TOWER.

                 “The Saints are there—the Living Dead,
                    The Mourners glad and strong;
                  The sacred floor their quiet bed,
                  Their beams from every window shed,
                    Their voice in every song.”
                                  KEBLE.


THERE is one burial-ground in London which has received a large share of
attention, and which has really been thought worthy of lengthy and
detailed notices in histories of the metropolis—I mean St. Paul’s
Churchyard. The words convey a very distinct meaning to us now. They
suggest Messrs. Hitchcock and Williams, and a number of other firms with
large premises, a constant stream of vans, carts, omnibuses, cabs, and
bicycles passing between Ludgate Hill and Cheapside or Cannon Street,
and a neat garden with flower-beds, seats, and pigeons under the shadow
of the great Cathedral—Wren’s “monument”—which is so different from any
other cathedral, and yet so suitable for the centre of the largest city
in the world. Just as St. Paul’s Cathedral was not always as it is now,
so St. Paul’s Churchyard is also vastly changed. Underneath the soil are
the graves of Britons, Saxons, and Romans; and I have already referred
to these, and have pointed out how far back into obscure history we can
trace this particular graveyard.

Many books have been written about St. Paul’s; Dugdale’s is the best old
history, and perhaps Dean Milman’s is the best modern one. The stories
of its foundation, of the shrine of St. Erkenwald, the disastrous fire
of 1136, the Boy Bishops, the chained bibles and the commotion they
aroused, the difficulties of the Reformation, and finally the other
“Great Fire” of 1666, which led to the rebuilding of the Cathedral, not
again as a Gothic structure, but somewhat after the style of St. Peter’s
at Rome, have all been told again and again. The crypt of the Cathedral
was the parish church of St. Faith, and that of St. Gregory stood where
the clock tower now is, at the west end. The site of St. Gregory’s
Churchyard is within the posts in front of the west door, where Queen
Anne’s statue stands, while the parish of St. Faith had a piece at the
eastern end of the Cathedral, and, according to Newcourt, another piece
was allotted to St. Martin’s, Ludgate Hill. It is to Dugdale that we are
chiefly indebted for a knowledge of what old St. Paul’s, with its
windows and monuments, was like—and a splendid church it must have been.
He was an eminent antiquary who, thinking that the chief ecclesiastical
buildings in England would suffer from the Civil War, made a most noble
pilgrimage, and drew the monuments, copied the epitaphs, and took notes
of the arms in windows, on walls, &c., in St. Paul’s and Westminster
Abbey first, and subsequently in Ely, Norwich, Peterborough, Lincoln,
and a number of other cathedral, conventual, and parish Churches. The
work he did at St. Paul’s was of exceptional value, owing to the ravages
of the Great Fire.

The Cathedral has been surrounded by such interesting buildings as a
Bishop’s Palace, the Chapter House and Library, a Bell Tower, several
Chantries, a Charnel House, and St. Paul’s School, founded by Dean
Colet, and which, some years ago, was totally destroyed, reappearing as
a meaty-red structure of huge dimensions (where the foundation scholars,
or “fish,” are in a small minority), in the uninteresting district of
East Hammersmith, which is misnamed West Kensington.

St. Paul’s Churchyard extended, especially on its northern side, farther
than it does now. Part of it was known as Pardon Church Yard, or
“Haugh,” in which was a chapel founded by Gilbert Becket, rebuilt by
Dean Moore in Henry V.’s time, and surrounded by a rich cloister with
pictures of “The Dance of Death” painted by Machabre in it, somewhat
like the ones still existing on the bridge at Lucerne, and with very
fine monuments to those buried beneath. In 1549 the cloister, the
chapel, the charnel house, the paintings, and the tombs were all cleared
away by the Protector Somerset, the materials being used for his new
mansion in the Strand, and the bones from the charnel house (Stow says
one thousand cartloads) were reinterred in Finsbury Field. The
churchyard seems to have been first entirely enclosed by a surrounding
wall in 1285.

[Illustration: PAUL’S CROSS and Preaching there

_Paul’s Cross or preaching place, was erected in the form it appears in
the plate, about the year 1449, by Thomas Kempe, then Bishop of London,
on the site of a more antient cross, which had been destroyed by an
earthquake in 1382. Its name first occurs in the year 1259, when Hen.
III commanded the Mayor of London to oblige all the city youth of a
certain age to take the oath of allegiance at Paul’s Cross, to him and
his heirs. From this period it was, for several centuries, used for
almost every purpose political as well as ecclesiastical, and is
continually noticed in history. It was destroyed by the Lord mayor of
London, Isaac Pennington, in consequence of a vote of Parliament, in the
year 1643._

PAUL’S CROSS.]

But perhaps the most interesting object in the churchyard was Paul’s
Cross, which existed as far back as the reign of Henry III., if not
earlier. From that time until 1643, when it was ruthlessly destroyed by
order of Parliament, it formed a notable monument, round which the
religious history of London and of England centred itself. Paul’s Cross
was an outdoor pulpit at the north-east corner of the Cathedral—“a
pulpit cross of timber, mounted upon steps of stone covered with lead,”
from which “announcements and harangues on all such matters as the
authorities in Church or State judged to be of public concern were
poured into the popular ear and heart.” It seems to have been used to
preach sermons from as early as 1299, and men professing all shades of
the Christian faith have discoursed there, miscreants have done penance
there, bishops and clergy have renounced heresies, excited throngs have
gathered round excited preachers, and tricks and delusions, called
miracles, have been exposed there. Latimer and Ridley frequently
occupied the pulpit, and “proclaimed to crowds of eager listeners that
testimony which they both afterwards sealed with their blood.” During
the time of the reforming struggles of our Church the pulpit at Paul’s
Cross played an active part, and those who preached there in the reign
of Mary had to be protected from the populace by the Queen’s guard. In
1628 James I. came in state to hear a sermon from Bishop King, and
Charles I. listened to another discourse from Paul’s Cross in 1630. It
is said that after its demolition an elm-tree marked its site, but even
this has long since disappeared.

[Illustration: ELM ON SITE OF PAUL’S CROSS.]

Yet the Churchyard was not only a religious centre, but was also a very
worldly one. Many unseemly scenes used to take place there, and the
ground was walled in because it was becoming the resort of those who did
not behave themselves properly. The following account from Maitland
gives us a sad, if a lively, picture of the times: “In the year 1569 a
Lottery was set on Foot in St. Paul’s Churchyard, where it was begun to
be drawn at the West Door of the Church on the 11th of January, and
continued incessantly drawing Day and Night till the 6th of May
following.” The Cathedral itself was put to a variety of unsuitable
uses, and was made a judgment-hall for foreign heretics who were
condemned to be burnt at Smithfield. The author of a tract written in
the second half of the sixteenth century describes the south aisle as
being used “for usury and popery, the north for simony, and the
horse-fair in the midst for all kinds of bargains, meetings, brawlings,
murthers, conspiracies; and the font for ordinary payments of money.”
Traffic in benefices was largely carried on there, and the middle aisle
(Paul’s Walk) was a rendezvous, every morning and afternoon, for a
fashionable and eccentric medley. Thus was the chief temple in London
treated as vilely as the Temple at Jerusalem, and there are those now
living amongst us who wish to see our English churches used for secular
purposes!

With one mighty blow the whole building was destroyed, and the beautiful
Gothic Cathedral became a heap of cinders. It is told in “Parentalia”
how, under the direction of Wren, the new St. Paul’s arose like a phœnix
from the ashes of the old church. From an interesting print of 1701 it
appears that the churchyard was even then a fashionable promenade, but
it is improbable that the building itself, in its new form, was ever
subjected to such abuses as the old one had been. I have heard Wren’s
churches described as “religious rather than Christian,” but as time
goes on the architecture seems to be more appreciated. Wordsworth has
said:—

                  “They dreamt not of a perishable home
                   Who thus could build,”


but he has also told us that the Cathedral is—

              “Filled with mementoes, satiate with its past
               Of grateful England’s overflowing Dead”—

and herein lies its chief interest.

No one has done his duty by St. Paul’s who has not been in the crypt.
Dr. Donne’s monument, which dates from before the fire, has been brought
up and placed in the south aisle of the choir, amongst those of bishops
and deans, but some fragments of other tombs from old St. Paul’s are
still in the crypt, besides many tablets and monuments of later date.
There was for many years a prejudice against admitting memorial
monuments in the Cathedral at all, but one being erected to the memory
of John Howard, the reformer, the spell was broken. Several old stones
on the floor of the crypt have no graves below them, those they
commemorate having been buried outside in the churchyard, but now the
few internments that take place are under the floor of the building, Sir
Frederic (Lord) Leighton’s being the newest grave. Here also lie Sir
Nicholas Bacon, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir
Christopher Wren, Dean Colet, George Cruikshank, Opie, West, Turner,
Lord Napier of Magdala, Lord Mayor Nottage (who died in office in 1885),
Bishop Piers Claughton, and many other notable persons. There is one
division where there are gravestones in memory of past vergers of the
Cathedral. Directly under the dome are the remains of Nelson, in a
coffin made from wood of the _Victory_, enclosed in a sarcophagus
originally intended for Cardinal Wolsey, but put aside as he was not
considered worthy of it, and subsequently brought out and altered to
suit Lord Nelson. Close by is a larger sarcophagus containing the
remains of the Duke of Wellington.

[Illustration: ST. MARGARET’S AND THE ABBEY CHURCHYARD ABOUT 1750.]

The Churchyard is no longer a fashionable resort, but it has been a very
useful one since 1879, and many are the visitors who may always be found
sitting there, while the pigeons fly amongst the tall and smoky columns.
The Rev. H. R. Haweis says the Cathedral should be washed. He is right,
no doubt, but “stately Paule” still remains black.

Neither the graveyard of the Knights Templars, the great rivals of the
Knights Hospitallers at Clerkenwell, nor the garth of the Abbey of St.
Peter, have had a record so varied as that which clings round St. Paul’s
Churchyard. The Temple Church, especially the round portion of it, is
most ancient and interesting, but it has been much injured by the modern
representatives of the Templars who have denuded the walls of many rich
old monuments. The part of the churchyard which is immediately round the
church is closed and turfed and has some fine old stone coffins in it.
The northern part is paved and gravelled and is added to the public
thoroughfare, the chief object in it of general interest being the grave
and monument of Oliver Goldsmith.

We go on, along the Strand, past Charing Cross, until we reach the
“minster in the west,” or the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, which was
built in the Island of Thorney. It is probable that the whole space now
occupied by the Abbey and St. Margaret’s and their churchyards was at
one time used for interments. At present the Abbey Churchyard and that
of St. Margaret’s (where at times a fair used to be held) are in one.
They are neatly turfed and open to the public, and they form a simple
but suitable base for the glorious old buildings which rise from them.
On the south side of the Abbey are the large and small cloisters, with
their grass plots and their ancient stones, while, according to Brayley,
a part of Covent Garden Market is on the site of what used to be the
burial-ground of the Westminster Convent. Portions of the cloisters are
among the most ancient and interesting corners of the Abbey buildings,
and the sight of them carries us back in thought to the days of the
abbots and monks, who used to pace to and fro under the vaulted roof.

It is not, however, the burial-places outside the Abbey, but the church
itself, round which the most thrilling associations gather. Here again
the story has been often repeated, and if there are any of my readers
(though I doubt if there can be one) who do not know what venerable
tombs are contained there, they would do well to visit the Abbey, and
not to rest until they have been carefully shown the treasures in Henry
VII.’s Chapel. Beaumont sang—

                 “Think how many royal bones
                  Sleep within these heaps of stones....
                  Here’s an acre sown indeed
                  With the richest, royallist seed.”

From the shrine of Edward the Confessor and the tomb of Edward III. to
the tablet in memory of Charles Dickens and the stone over the grave of
Charles Darwin, they are one and all of the deepest interest, and it is
perfectly needless for me to refer to the monuments here. Every
Englishman is—or should be—proud of these relics, of the beautiful
Chapel, the Poets’ Corner, and the hallowed nave and aisles.

[Illustration: GREAT CLOISTER, WESTMINSTER.]

It is true that there are too many monuments in Westminster Abbey; a
memorial chapel in which some of them (especially the huge statues from
the north transept) could be put, would be very advantageous. But, at
any rate, they are not likely now to be much further added to, and from
the old, royal tombs, there is not one fragment of mosaic or one
splinter of stone which we should not grieve to lose. Sir Godfrey
Kneller, the painter and the friend of Pope, did not wish to be interred
in the Abbey because “they do bury fools there.” But his monument is not
missed amongst the tombs of England’s greatest children, her kings and
queens, her bishops and deans, her statesmen, her soldiers, her poets,
her artists, and her philosophers. The whole building is one grand
memorial. There may be “fools there,” but they sink into utter
insignificance, for “saints are there, the living dead.”

[Illustration:
_The South East Prospect of the Chapel Royal of St. Peter in the Tower._
ST. PETER’S CHAPEL IN THE TOWER ABOUT 1750.]

To pass from the Abbey to the Tower is like passing from honour to
shame, and yet amongst those who were imprisoned, executed, and buried
in the great fortress and palace which became the state prison of
England, many were innocent of the crimes for which they were punished,
and many deserved to rest in Westminster even more than some of those
who were interred there. There were four recognised burial-places
connected with the Tower, the churchyard of St. Peter ad Vincula, the
vaults under the church, the vaults “behind the church,” and the outer
graveyard. The last named was a narrow strip by the eastern wall,
probably used for the burial of the humbler members of the numerous
households which composed the Tower precinct. This ground was demolished
when the Tower Bridge was made, being required for the wide approach
thereto. It is also probable that burials took place in a somewhat
promiscuous fashion in other parts of the fortress. We know, for
instance, that the young Princes, after they had been smothered, were
buried at the foot of the staircase of the White Tower, “meetly deep in
the ground, under a great heap of stones,” from whence their remains, or
what was supposed to be their remains, were moved to Westminster Abbey
in 1674 by Order of King Charles II.

In St. Peter’s Church were buried the headless bodies of many a noble
prisoner who was executed close by, with the remains of others who died
during their confinement in the Tower—the Earl of Arundel, the Dukes of
Somerset, Monmouth, Norfolk, and Northumberland, Queen Katherine, poor
innocent Anne Boleyn, her brother, Lord Rochford, the Countess of
Salisbury, Catherine Howard, and a great many more whose names are
recorded in English history. The chapel is not as beautiful as it might
be, and the graveyard attached to it is little more than a part of the
great Tower courtyard, but the sad memories connected with it will
always hallow this spot. In the quaint little church of Holy Trinity,
Minories, supposed by some to be a survival of the Abbey of the
Minoresses of St. Clare, there is still shown what is said to be the
head of the Duke of Suffolk, the father of Lady Jane Grey. It is in a
glass case, preserved like leather, some hair still clings to the scalp,
while the false blow of the executioner can be clearly seen just above
the place where the head was severed from the trunk. The verger keeps
this marvellous relic locked up in a pew; it is a sort of detached
fragment of the history of the Tower.

[Illustration: THREE COFFIN LIDS FROM THE TOWER.]

I feel that I have done but very scant justice to those London
burial-places which contain the ashes of the most illustrious dead. But
I have no wish to go over ground already trodden by far worthier
chroniclers than myself, and I therefore commend to all who desire to
know more about the Cathedral, the Abbey, the Temple, and the Tower, the
many excellent books which have been written upon their history, such as
Dean Milman’s “Annals of St. Paul’s Cathedral,” Dean Stanley’s
“Memorials of Westminster Abbey,” and a number of more ancient and more
modern works which especially relate to these buildings and to the
monuments they contain. The Kyrle Society has recently published a
capital little guide to the Cathedral, which can be bought with the
tickets to view the crypt, the whispering gallery, &c., and which also
serves as a handbook to the monuments in the nave and aisles.

                “Death lays his icy hands on kings:
                     Sceptre and crown
                     Must tumble down,
                 And in the dust be equal made
                 With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

                     All heads must come
                     To the cold tomb,
                 Only the actions of the just
                 Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.”
                                J. SHIRLEY.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                              CHAPTER IV.

                         THE CITY CHURCHYARDS.

         “Such strange churchyards hide in the City of London.”
                                        DICKENS.


I HAVE already referred, in Chapter I., to the different areas occupied
by the City of London at different periods. But the City, as we know it
now, averages, roughly speaking, a mile and a half from east to west and
three-quarters of a mile from north to south. It includes a considerable
space outside the old wall, and the boundary line is very irregular,
except on the southern side, where is the “silent highway.” It is
governed by the Corporation, and its ancient wards are represented by
Aldermen, while the Lord Mayor commences his year of office by a public
procession through the streets on November 9th, supported by his
dignified companions, the Sheriffs.

The City of London is the Office of the World. Its highways represent
untold wealth, and its byways reek with poverty and dirt; it contains
the most bustling thoroughfares and the most retired corners; it is full
of business and affairs up to date, and yet teeming with antiquarian
interest, and relics of ancient history. As on one side of a busy road
we have Cannon Street Station and on the other side the venerable
“London Stone,” so the City churches, with their old-world churchyards,
are wedged in between huge modern warehouses, offices, and public
buildings; “churchyards sometimes so entirely detached from churches,
always so pressed upon by houses; so small, so rank, so silent, so
forgotten—except for the few people who ever look down into them from
their smoky windows. As I stand peeping in through the iron gates and
rails I can peel the rusty metal off, like bark from an old tree. The
illegible tombstones are all lopsided, the grave-mounds lost their shape
in the rains of a hundred years ago, the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-tree
that was once a drysalter’s daughter and several common-councilmen, has
withered like those worthies, and its departed leaves are dust beneath
it.... Sometimes, the queer hall of some queer Company gives upon a
churchyard such as this, and, when the Livery dine, you may hear them
(if you are looking in through the iron rails, which you never are when
I am) toasting their own Worshipful prosperity.... Sometimes, the
commanding windows are all blank, and show no more sign of life than the
graves below—not so much, for _they_ tell of what once upon a time was
life undoubtedly.”

Poor little churchyards, they are so insignificant, and many of them are
even more shrunken than when Charles Dickens visited them. Thus we hear
of an injunction being sought for to restrain the would-be reformer from
cutting off a two-foot-wide strip of St. Martin Orgar’s ground to make a
dry area behind the houses in Crooked Lane; and the Commissioners of
Sewers possess the right, and sometimes use it, of curtailing a
churchyard in order to widen a road. In 1884, for instance, they gave
£750 for a piece at the eastern end of Allhallows’ Churchyard, London
Wall. The remainder of that little ground is now a public garden, laid
out in 1894 by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, and is a
quiet resting-place in the busy thoroughfare, with a piece of the
ancient City wall still existing in it. Most of the churchyards
“entirely detached from churches” are the sites of the burned buildings,
which were used as burial-grounds for the amalgamated parishes—for the
mournful calamity of 1666 visited the churches of London with “peculiar
severity,” 89 of them being destroyed, 51 of which were rebuilt by Wren
and his followers, and 35 of which were not replaced. All the City
churchyards are now protected from being built upon by the Disused
Burial-grounds Act of 1888, but that Act has not yet been read to
include the sites of the churches themselves which are from time to time
removed, and which have all had interments in the vaults underneath
them. The site of Allhallows’ the Great, Upper Thames Street, was
recently sold to a brewery company, but has not yet been built upon,
because it is thought that an injunction will be served upon the builder
and that it will be made a test case.

Of the burial-grounds attached to the Cathedral, the Temple, and the
churches which are the survivals of the priories, I have already
written; apart from these one of the oldest of the churches founded in
the City is sometimes supposed to be that of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard
Street. The present building, which is threatened by a railway company,
is by Hawksmoor, but a church existed on the site in very early days. In
St. Peter’s, Cornhill, is a tablet, the authenticity of which is
certainly open to grave doubt, recording the fact that a church was
erected on this spot by Lucius in A.D. 179, but the genuine history of
the foundation can only be traced as far back as 1230. The burial-ground
of St. Benet Sherehog, in Pancras Lane, marks the site of a church
dating from Saxon times, dedicated to St. Osyth,—Size Lane, which is
close by, being a survival of the name. The City churches still
standing, of which the whole or a part date from before the Great Fire,
are St. Bartholomew’s the Great; Allhallows’, Barking; the Temple; St.
Helen’s, Bishopsgate Street; and St. Catherine Cree, Leadenhall Street,
all connected with priories; and St. Bartholomew’s the Less; St. Giles’,
Cripplegate; St. Olave’s, Hart Street; St. Ethelburga’s, Bishopsgate
Street; St. Andrew’s Undershaft, Leadenhall Street; and Allhallows’,
Staining, Star Alley.

The church of St. Bartholomew the Less, of which but a very small
portion of the tower is ancient, is within the Hospital enclosure, and
the churchyard is smaller than it was, some of it having been thrown
into the paved courtyard. St. Ethelburga’s churchyard is a quaint little
courtyard with a few tombstones in it, only approached through the
church and vestry. In St Andrew’s Undershaft (or “under the maypole,”
which used to be suspended on the houses in St. Mary Axe) the monument
of John Stow is to be found—poor Stow, whose survey of London is the
foundation for all modern histories. The adjoining churchyard is very
small. That of Allhallows’, Barking, has lately been entirely covered
with building materials, owing to the restoration of the church. It was,
according to Stow, “sometime far larger.”

The churchyard of St. Olave’s, Hart Street (Dickens’ St. Ghastly Grim),
is an interesting one. The church itself is one of the most beautiful
pieces of ecclesiastical architecture in London—a small Gothic building,
admirable in its proportion. The old gate of the churchyard has skulls
and cross bones on it, and in this ground were interred a vast number of
the victims of the plague of 1665, which is said to have taken its
origin in this parish in the Drapers’ Almshouses.

[Illustration: ALLHALLOWS’, STAINING, 1838.]

Of the church of Allhallows’, Staining, only the tower remains, in the
centre of a neatly-kept little burial-ground. This was the model for the
churchtower in “Old London” at the exhibition at South Kensington in
1886.[1] The churchyard of St. Giles’, Cripplegate, the church which
contains the monument to Milton, has a long and varied history. It is
well known to antiquarians, as the valuable relic, the postern of the
City wall, is situated in it. The story of this ground is one of
additions and encroachments, and it has found a careful chronicler in
Mr. Baddeley, a former churchwarden. The addition running south was
called the “Green Churchyard,” a name which we find repeated in other
parishes—for instance, it was given to the higher portion of the
churchyard of St. James’, Piccadilly, and to the little piece by St.
Bartholomew the Great, approached through the present south transept.
The gravestones at St. Giles’ have been laid flat, and the ground is
neatly kept and generally open, but not provided with seats for the
public. Until Michaelmas, 1640, “the military” used to be trained in
this churchyard.[2]

Footnote 1:

  In 1873 a crypt was made under the tower, in which were deposited the
  remains from Lambe’s Chapel, St. James’s in the Wall, Monkswell
  Street.

Footnote 2:

  Malcolm’s “Londinium Redivivum.”

[Illustration: CRIPPLEGATE CHURCHYARD ABOUT 1830.]

There were four churches in the City dedicated to St. Botolph, a pious
Saxon who built a monastery, in 654, in Lincolnshire. It is a little
curious that all the four churchyards are now public gardens—St.
Botolph’s, Bishopsgate; St. Botolph’s, Aldgate; St. Botolph’s,
Aldersgate; and St. Botolph’s, Billingsgate, The last-named church was
not rebuilt after the Fire, and the site of one of its churchyards, the
“lower ground,” is now occupied by a new warehouse with red heads on the
frontage, on the south side of Lower Thames Street. What remains of the
“upper ground” is a small, three-cornered, asphalted court, open to the
public, with seats, a drinking fountain, and a coffee stall. The
charming little garden in Aldersgate Street includes three churchyards,
that of St. Botolph, an additional one for St. Leonard’s, Foster Lane,
and an additional one for Christ Church, Newgate Street, which is at the
western end, and was given to the parish in 1825 by the Governors of
Christ’s Hospital when the Great Hall was built and a small
burial-ground at the north-west corner of the buildings could no longer
be used. The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association laid out Aldgate
churchyard in 1892; it is much appreciated, and is maintained by an
annual grant from the charity funds of the parish. A melancholy incident
took place here in September, 1838, when two men, a gravedigger and a
fish-dealer, lost their lives in a grave by being poisoned with the foul
air. The grave was a “common one,” such as was often kept open for two
months until filled with seventeen or eighteen bodies. It may safely be
said that all the City burial-grounds were crowded to excess. Their
limited area would invite such treatment, and it was only natural that
the City parishioner should choose to be interred in the parish
churchyard, unless the still greater privilege were afforded him of
being buried in the vaults under the church. The other churchyards in
the City which have been laid out for public recreation are those of St.
Paul’s Cathedral; St. Olave, Silver Street; Allhallows, London Wall; St.
Katherine Coleman, Fenchurch Street; St. Mary, Aldermanbury; St.
Sepulchre, Holborn; and St. Bride, Fleet Street; while the churchyard of
St. Dunstan in the West, situated in Fetter Lane, is the playground of
the Greystoke Place Board School; and that of St. James, Duke Street, is
the playground of the Aldgate Ward Schools.

[Illustration: ST. MILDRED’S, BREAD STREET, ABOUT 1825.]

Most of the remaining City churchyards are quiet little spaces,
surrounded by huge warehouses. Many are only approached through the
churches, and are invisible from the road. St. Mildred’s, in Bread
Street, is unfortunately used as a store-yard for ladders of all sizes,
and it seems, from the accompanying illustration, to have been turned to
account many years ago, while the very small piece that remains by the
tower of St. Mary Somerset, Thames Street, where the Weavers of Brabant
used to hold their meetings, is full of old iron, &c. One or two are
private gardens, such as St. Michael’s Churchyard, Queenhithe. Others
have been paved and added to the public footway, such as that of St.
Mary Abchurch, their extent being still visible. This is the Case with
the churchyard of St. Michael Bassishaw, in Basinghall Street. The
ground is now part of the pavement, but the two large trees which grew
in it are still flourishing. On the site of the churchyard of St. Benet
Fink, in Threadneedle Street, is Peabody’s statue. The untidy little
yard in Farringdon Street, which is used as a volunteer drill-ground,
was once an additional burying-place for St. Bride’s, Fleet Street. It
was given to the parish in 1610 by the Earl of Dorset, on condition that
no more burials should take place in the southern part of the churchyard
which was opposite his house. The house was destroyed by the Great Fire
and the churchyard used again. The graveyard of St. Christopher le
Stocks is the garden of the Bank of England, and Timbs states, although
he does not vouch for the authenticity of the story, that the mould for
the burial-ground of Whitfield’s Tabernacle in Tottenham Court Road was
brought from this churchyard, “by which the consecration fees were
saved.”

[Illustration: GROUND PLAN OF ST. BENET FINK IN 1834.]

Of the City churchyards which have been completely annihilated, apart
from other kinds of burial-grounds within this area, there must have
been at least forty. And this destruction has been due to the
dissolution of the priories, the formation of new streets, and the
invasion of the railways. Norden mentions three churches in Farringdon
Ward Within which have gone—St. Nicholas in the Fleshshambles (which was
in Newgate Street), St. Ewans (south of Newgate Street), and St. Genyn
within St. Martin le Grand. When Queen Victoria Street was made the
churchyards of St. Mary Mounthaw, St. Nicholas Olave, and St. Mary
Magdalen, Knightrider Street, disappeared; that of St. Michael, Crooked
Lane, a plot of land given by one Robert Marsh and consecrated in 1392,
was sacrificed for King William Street; and that of St. Benet, Paul’s
Wharf (now the Welsh Church), where Inigo Jones was buried, for St.
Benet’s Hill. A complete list of them will be found in the Appendix.
Cannon Street Station of the South Eastern Railway covers the churchyard
of St. Mary Bothaw; and for Cannon Street Station of the District
Railway that of St. John’s, Cloak Lane, was destroyed, the human remains
being “dug up, sifted, put in chests with charcoal, nailed down, put one
on the top of the other in a brick vault and sealed up for ever, or
rather till some others in time come to turn them out again.” Part of
the General Post Office is on the churchyard of St. Leonard, Foster
Lane; the Mercer’s Hall is on that of St. Thomas Acons, where the
pilgrims were buried; the Mansion House Station is on that of Holy
Trinity the Less; and the Mansion House itself is on that of St. Mary
Woolchurch Haw, in which a balance used to stand “for the weighing of
wool.”

[Illustration: THE CHURCHYARD OF ST. BENET, PAUL’S WHARF, 1838.]

Most of the existing churchyards have but few tombstones left in them,
several have none at all. But some of them can still boast of fine
trees, which add much to the interest and picturesque appearance of the
City streets, and I hope it may be a long time before those in
Stationers’ Hall Court, under which there were vaults belonging to St.
Martin’s, Ludgate, and in the churchyards of St. Peter Cheap, Wood
Street, and St. Dunstan in the East, cease to grow and flourish.

We want to see all of these little churchyards opened to the public and
provided with seats. The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association is
always ready to put them in order, but it is difficult to secure their
maintenance. The parish funds which might be available for such a
purpose have been so cut down and diverted by the Charity Commissioners
that it is, in many cases, impossible for any provision to be made for
the upkeep of the churchyard, small though the cost may be. But I trust
that this difficulty may be, before long, removed, and then we may
expect a great improvement in the condition of the City churchyards
which have all been closed for burials for upwards of forty years, and
which are so singularly well suited for conversion into “outdoor
sitting-rooms” for those who can take a few moments of rest from their
work in the surrounding offices and warehouses. And they are worthy of
the utmost respect, for they contain the ashes of some of the noblest
citizens of London, some of its greatest benefactors and its hardest
workers, those who have helped, stone by stone, to raise the great city
to the height to which it has attained in its influence in the world.

In 1668 the Lord Mayor “issued out a Precept, commanding, amongst other
wholesome orders ... that the Inhabitants, Householders, and others
concerned, should not throw or suffer any Ashes, Dirt, or other Filth,
to be cast out ... before any Church or Churchyard ... upon pain of 20
shillings.” But in 1896 we need visit very few of these same churchyards
before we come to one in which rubbish of all kinds is allowed to
accumulate and to remain. Yet they are sacred spots, consecrated
ecclesiastically and historically, and instead of being permitted to
sink into the oblivion of insignificance they should all be made
beautiful in memory of the dead and for the benefit of the living, for
in them are “the tombs of the wealthy and the humble heaps of the poor.”
The Old Society for the Protection of City Churches and Churchyards did
something towards their preservation, and lately a new City Church
Preservation Society has been formed, the Chairman of Council being Mr.
H. C. Richards, M.P., and the Hon. Secretary the Rev. Rowland B. Hill.
It has already displayed most praiseworthy activity, and is, at the
present time, endeavouring to save the church of St. Mary Woolnoth, in
Lombard Street (built by Hawksmoor) from being demolished for a railway
station. There is a very small churchyard attached to this church.

And it may be interesting here to give particulars of a case in which
the decision arrived at is valuable to those who are fighting the battle
of protection. In the Session of 1881 the London School Board, through
the Education Department, introduced a Bill, called the Elementary
Education Provisional Order Confirmation Bill, for the purpose of
acquiring compulsory powers over the burial-ground in Bream’s Buildings,
Fetter Lane, belonging to the church of St. Dunstan in the West, and
which adjoins the Greystoke Place Board School. The rector and
churchwardens, supported by the vestry of the parish, entered an
opposition to the Bill, and appeared against it before the Committee of
the House of Lords. Their opposition was entirely successful (and it
must be remembered that the Disused Burial Grounds Act had not then been
passed), and the London School Board was merely given a right of way to
the school through the graveyard. The costs of the opposition amounted
to £236 12s. 10d., which was charged upon the poor rate. The auditor
disallowed the charge, but on appeal to the Local Government Board it
was sanctioned.

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                               CHAPTER V

                 LONDON CHURCHYARDS, OUTSIDE THE CITY.

                   “I will lay me in the village ground,
                There are the dead respected.”
                               H. K. WHITE.


THERE are few spots in England more peaceful, more suggestive, and more
hallowed than our village churchyards, when they are treated with that
reverence which is their due. I have many in my mind now, but I will try
to think of one only “where the churchyard, grey with stone and green
with turf, holds its century of dead,” where “side by side, the poor man
and the son of pride, lie calm and still.” The church is grey and
ivy-grown. Its broad tower, that has weathered many a storm, is half
hidden amongst tall trees bursting into leaf, which hold, high up in
their branches, the nests of the cawing rooks. Far below winds the
gentle river, between wide stretches of meadow-land, and there is the
old one-span bridge with the picturesque cottages of the village
following each other down to it and up again, and in the background of
the picture are the sheltering, sheep-covered hills. An old gabled
parsonage adjoins the church, and the pathway which leads to it is
through the peaceful sleeping-place of those whose tired bodies have
been laid upon “the pillow of the restful earth.” The birds are making
music in the trees, the gentlest of vernal breezes stirs the air, and
from the seat in the venerable porch I can look out upon that quiet
scene in the “lengthening April day.” Green grass, long and sweet, is
growing amongst the “grey tombstones with their half-worn epitaphs,” and
is trying to hide the primroses and the early bluebell buds which are
peeping from the ground, for there

                          “the flowers of earth
                  Their very best make speed to wear,
                And e’en the funeral mound gives birth
                  To wild thyme fresh and violets fair.”

It is so green and fresh, so calm and sweet a spot in which to await the
resurrection morn, that we can understand what Keble felt when he said,

                 “Stoop, little child, nor fear to kiss
                  The green buds on this bed of death.”

As there is “no fear in love,” so there should be no “fear” in death,
for death is but our translation into the presence of the greater love
“which passeth knowledge.”

Our London churchyards of to-day were once village churchyards, and were
attached to quiet old churches which, with a few neighbouring houses,
stood far away from the town and were encircled with fields. There are
many now living who can remember walking from the City to St. Mary’s,
Islington, by a footpath through the meadows, and such was also at one
time the case with Paddington, St. Pancras, Hackney, Shoreditch,
Stepney, Bow, Bromley, Rotherhithe, Lewisham, Camberwell, Wandsworth,
Battersea, and many other parishes. It is difficult to realise it now,
and yet it is only in the present century that they have been merged
into the great metropolis, and separated by many miles of houses from
the hedges and fields. Nor is it long since the village stocks were
moved from several of the churchyard gates.

Most of the original parish churches have been replaced, some of them
more than once. The oldest ones now in existence are St. Saviour’s,
Southwark, Stepney, Bow, Chelsea, Fulham, the Savoy, Westminster (St.
Margaret’s), Lambeth, Deptford (St. Nicholas’), and Putney, with the
tower of old Hackney Church. Many of the others belong to the eighteenth
century. In the tenth year of the reign of Queen Anne the number of
houses in the districts adjacent to the City having increased so
rapidly, it was enacted by Parliament that fifty new churches should be
built “for the better Instruction of all in the Principles of
Christianity,” and for “redressing the inconvenience and growing
mischiefs which resulted from the increase of Dissenters and Popery.” In
order to raise the necessary funds it was agreed to levy an additional
duty of two shillings per chaldron “upon all Coals and Culm” that were
brought into London, and two shillings per ton upon weighable coals for
a term of 137 days, after which for eight years the duty was to be three
shillings per chaldron and per ton. But although some old churches were
rebuilt or repaired at that time, only ten new ones were erected, such
as St. Anne’s, Limehouse, St. George’s in the East, St. Luke’s, Old
Street, and St. John the Evangelist’s, Westminster.

[Illustration: ALL SAINTS, WANDSWORTH, ABOUT 1800.]

Descriptions of the churchyards attached to these churches are not easy
to find, nor were they of any great interest, except that many notable
men were buried in them. Yet there is one point in connection with them
that is interesting, and it is that although the churches are in the
severe and sometimes almost grotesque style of architecture of Gibb,
Hawksmoor, and others, yet in the eighteenth century it was customary to
erect headstones over graves with elaborately carved designs.
Eighteenth-century tombstones have hour-glasses, scythes, cherubs’
heads—blowing or smiling or weeping—elaborate scenes, generally
allegorical of the flight of time, and epitaphs upon which much thought
and care were expended. With the nineteenth century the carved
tombstones disappeared.[3] St. Paul’s churchyard,

Footnote 3:

  This subject has been carefully gone into by Mr. W. T. Vincent, who
  has quite lately brought out a book upon the designs on carved
  tombstones.

Deptford, contains many quaint specimens, and here also is a “shelter,”
the roof of which was the old pulpit sounding-board, But the older
churchyards, those which may be more rightly described as the merged
village churchyards, have been pictured from time to time.

[Illustration: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY TOMBSTONE.]

One of Mr. Loftie’s original ideas is to describe London as known by
Stow, Norden, and Shakespeare, who lived and wrote at about the same
time, _i.e._, 1600. I do not mean to say that he tells us what the
burial-grounds were like in that day, for no historian of London ever
seemed to think it worth while to do more than refer to one here and one
there, or I should not have ventured to put forward this work at a time
when we are satiated with histories of the metropolis; but I will, for a
moment, adopt his plan. It is impossible to read _Hamlet_ and the vivid
description of the gravediggers who played at “loggats” with the skulls
and bones, while they drank and sung, without coming to the conclusion
that Shakespeare had witnessed the very same practices in the graveyards
in his day as were exposed and stopped no less than two and a half
centuries later, when “skittles” were played with bones and skulls at
St. Ann’s, Soho, and other churchyards. But I cannot entirely give up
the idea that Shakespeare walked in some churchyards which awoke
peaceful and reverent thoughts in his contemplative mind.

[Illustration: NINETEENTH-CENTURY TOMBSTONE.]

Stow scarcely mentions the churchyards at all. He and his later editors
give up many pages of his survey to inscriptions copied from monuments,
some being from tombstones in the churchyards, but most being from the
tablets in the churches, and he occasionally refers to the gift by
citizens of pieces of ground for graveyards, these being mainly in the
City itself. Perhaps, however, it may not be out of place to quote from
one or two passages which give us an idea of the condition of the open
land immediately adjoining the City, and which point to the fact that
such parish churches as lay beyond this land must indeed have been rural
and remote.

We read in the edition of 1633 that “filthie cottages” and alleys
extended for “almost halfe a mile beyond” Whitechapel Church, “into the
common field.” He also refers to the fine houses, with large gardens,
which were being built round the City, where former generations, more
benevolently inclined, had erected hospitals and almshouses. He mentions
the “wrestlings” that took place at Bartholomewtide by “Skinners Well,
neere unto Clarkes Well.” This Clarkes Well, or Clerkenwell, “is curbed
about square with hard stone: not farre from the west end of Clarkenwell
Church, but close without the wall that encloseth it.” ... “Somewhat
north from Holywell (Shoreditch) is one other well, curbed square with
stone, and is called Dame Annis the cleere; and not far from it, but
somewhat west, is also another cleere water, called Perilous Pond,
because divers youths (by swimming therein) have been drowned.” Stow
most carefully enumerates the wells and conduits of the City and its
surroundings, several being “neere to the Church.” And it is a fact that
many wells, conduits, and pumps in and around London were—and some still
are—not only in close proximity to the churchyards, but actually in
them. The water from St. Clement’s Well and St. Giles’ Well came through
the burial-grounds. The site of the Bride’s Well, which gave the name to
the precinct and the hospital, is still marked by the pump in an alcove
of the wall of St. Bride’s Churchyard, Fleet Street. There was a pump by
St. Michael le Querne and one in the churchyard of St. Mary le Bow,
against the west wall of the church. There was a well in the crypt of
St. Peter’s, Walworth, a pump in Stepney Churchyard, and another in St.
George’s in the East, to which his parishioners used to resort for
drinking water until the Rev. Harry Jones, during a cholera scare, hung
a large placard on it, “_Dead Men’s Broth!_” and Dickens used to picture
the departed, when he heard the churchyard pumps at work, urging their
protest, “Let us lie here in peace; don’t suck us up and drink us!”

[Illustration: THE VILLAGE OF SHOREDITCH.
(_From Aggas’ Plan, 1560._)]


[Illustration: ST. PANCRAS VILLAGE.
(_From Rocque’s Plan_, 1746.)]

And Norden, what did he say? His plan of London, like the one by Aggas
and later ones, gives us a picture of the remoteness of the outer
parishes. Here is his description of old St. Pancras Churchyard:
“Pancras Church standeth all alone, as utterly forsaken, old and
wether-beaten, which, for the antiquity thereof, it is thought not to
yield to Paules in London. About this church have bin many buildings now
decayed, leaving poor Pancras without companie or comfort, yet it is now
and then visited with Kentishtowne and Highgate, which are members
thereof.... When there is a corpse to be interred, they are forced to
leave the same within this forsaken church or churchyard, when (no
doubt) it resteth as secure against the day of resurrection as if it
laie in stately Paules.” It would indeed be curious to see what Norden
would think now of this churchyard, with the Midland Railway trains
unceasingly rushing across it, and the “dome” and “trophy” of
headstones, numbering 496, not to speak of the stacks and walls of them
round about, which were moved into one part of the ground when the other
part (Catholic Pancras) was acquired by the railway company. Poor
Pancras is not forsaken now, it is in the midst of streets and houses,
and what remains of the churchyard is full of seats and people.

This particular ground, with others in the same neighbourhood, were
famed later on as the scenes of the operations of body-snatchers, as is
evident from Tom Hood’s rhyme, entitled “Jack Hall,” from which one
verse will be sufficient:—

                 “At last—it may be, Death took spite,
                  Or jesting only meant to fright—
                  He sought for jack night after night
                             The churchyards round;
                  And soon they met, the man and sprite,
                             In Pancras’ ground.”

When Jack Hall is himself dying, and twelve M.D.’s are round him,
anxious for his body, he tells them:—

                         “I sold it thrice,
                          Forgive my crimes!
                   In short I have received its price
                         A dozen times.”

Timbs in his “Romance of London” gives a detailed account of the first
indictment for body-stealing—the act taking place at St. George the
Martyr ground (behind the Foundling Hospital) in 1777. But it must be
remembered that, although at one time body-snatchers or resurrection-men
carried on a brisk trade, yet where one body may have been disinterred
for hospital use one hundred were removed to make room for others.

The churchyards in London to which a somewhat rural flavour still clings
are, perhaps, those in the extreme south east, such as St. Nicholas’,
Plumstead, and St. John the Baptist’s, Eltham, which, together with Lee
and Tooting Churchyards, are still used for interments, St. Mary’s,
Bromley-by-Bow (originally the chapel of St. Mary in the Convent of St.
Leonard), with its beautiful altar tombs, and St. Mary’s, Stoke
Newington. There is something particularly picturesque about the last
named, with the old church in its midst. Mrs. Barbauld lies buried here,
and a lady whose death was caused by her clothes catching fire, upon
whose tombstone this very quaint inscription was placed:—

    “Reader, if you should ever witness such an afflicting scene,
    recollect that the only method to extinguish the flame, is to stifle
    it by an immediate covering.”

All the parish churches had their churchyards, the only ones not
actually adjoining them being those of St. George’s, Hanover Square, St.
George’s, Bloomsbury, and St. George the Martyr, Queen Square, where the
first body interred was that of Robert Nelson, author of “Fasts and
Festivals.” Some were added to many times, some have been seriously
curtailed. The largest of the churchyards are Stepney, Hackney, and
Camberwell. That of St. Anne’s, Limehouse, had a strip taken off it in
1800, when Commercial Road was made, that of St. Paul’s, Hammersmith,
was similarly curtailed in 1884. The present churches of Hammersmith and
Kensington are far larger than their predecessors, and therefore the
churchyards dwindled when they were built. St. Clement Danes and St.
John’s, Westminster, once stood in fair-sized churchyards; now, in each
case, there is only a railed-in enclosure round the church. But one of
the most serious shortenings was at St. Martin’s in the Fields. In fact,
of those buried from this particular parish, few can have been
undisturbed, except, perhaps, in the cemetery in Pratt Street, Camden
Town, now a public garden, which belongs to St. Martin’s. One of the
parochial burial-grounds is under the northern block of the buildings
forming the National Gallery, another one is lost in Charing Cross Road,
while a third one (now a little garden) in Drury Lane was so
disgustingly overcrowded that no burials could take place there without
the disturbance of other bodies, which were crowded into pits dug in the
ground, and covered with boards. But to return to the churchyard itself,
the burial-ground immediately surrounding the church, where Nell Gwynne
and Jack Sheppard were buried. A strip on the north side and a piece at
the east end still exist, flagged with stones, and were planted with
trees, provided with seats, and opened to the public by the Metropolitan
Public Gardens Association in 1887. But once there was a large piece of
ground on the south side, where now there is none, called the Waterman’s
Churchyard. Its disappearance is accounted for by the following
inscription on a tablet on the church wall:—

    “These catacombs were constructed at the expense of the
    Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Woods and Forests, in exchange for
    part of the burial-ground of this parish, on the south side of the
    church, given up for public improvements, and were consecrated by
    the Lord Bishop of London on the 7th day of June, 1831.”

In _The Sunday Times_ of June 12, 1831, these vaults are thus
described:—

“The new vaults under St. Martin’s burying-ground are the most capacious
structure of the sort in London. They were opened on Tuesday, at the
consecration of the new burial-ground. They consist of a series of
vaults, running out of one another in various directions; they are
lofty, and when lighted up, as on Tuesday, really presented something of
a comfortable appearance.” After relating something about the size and
number of the arches, the quantity of coffins they would hold, &c., the
description closes with these words: “Crowds of ladies perambulated the
vaults for some time, and the whole had more the appearance of a
fashionable promenade than a grim depository of decomposing mortality.”

This account reminds me very much of the ceremony which took place after
the opening of St. Peter’s Churchyard, Walworth, as a garden, in May,
1895. The Rector had kindly provided tea in the crypt, a huge space
under the church where gymnastic and other classes are held. This crypt
used to be full of coffins lying about at random, with a well in the
centre, but a faculty was obtained for their removal to a cemetery. The
scene on the day to which I refer was a very gay one. Where, a few
months previously, there had been coffins and dirt, there was a well
white-washed building, lighted with plenty of gas, lace curtains between
the solid pillars and low arches, a number of little tables with tea,
cakes, &c., and many brightly-attired girls to wait on the visitors, who
enjoyed their refreshment to the enlivening strains of a piano.

[Illustration: THE VILLAGE OF ST. GILES’ IN THE FIELDS.
(_From Aggas’ Plan_, 1560.)]

The churchyard of St. Giles’ in the Fields is a very interesting one. It
might well be now called St. Giles’ in the Slums, although of late years
the surrounding streets have been much improved and the worst courts
cleared away. Before there was a church of St. Giles’ there was a
lazaretto or leper hospital on the spot, and what is now the churchyard
was the burial-ground attached thereto. As a parish the settlement seems
to date from 1547, but the hospital was founded 200 years earlier, and
was entrusted to the care of the Master and Brethren of the Order of
Burton St. Lazar of Jerusalem, in Leicestershire. The churchyard, which
holds many centuries of dead, was frequently enlarged, Brown’s Gardens
being added in 1628, until the parish secured an additional
burial-ground, in 1803, adjoining that of St. Pancras. And yet it is
barely an acre in extent. It is related in Thornbury’s “Haunted London”
that in 1670 the sexton agreed to furnish the rector and churchwardens
with two fat capons, ready dressed, every Tuesday se’nnight in return
for being allowed to introduce certain windows into the churchyard side
of his house. But it could not have been a pleasant churchyard to look
at. It was always damp, and vast numbers of the poor Irish were buried
in it (the ground having been originally consecrated by a Roman
Catholic), and it is hardly to be wondered at that the parish of St.
Giles’ enjoys the honour of having started the plague of 1665. And the
practices carried on there at the beginning of this century were equal
to the worst anywhere—revolting ill-treatment of the dead was the daily
custom.

Now the churchyard is a public garden, Pendrell’s tombstone being an
object of historical interest, the inscription upon which runs as
follows:—

    “Here lieth Richard Pendrell, Preserver and Conductor to his sacred
    Majesty King Charles the Second of Great Britain, after his Escape
    from Worcester Fight, in the Year 1651, who died Feb. 8, 1671.

            Hold, Passenger, here’s shrouded in this Herse,
            Unparalell’d Pendrell, thro’ the Universe.
            Like when the Eastern Star From Heaven gave Light
            To three lost Kings; so he, in such dark Night,
            To Britain’s Monarch, toss’d by adverse War,
            On Earth appear’d, a Second Eastern Star,
            A Pope, a Stern, in her rebellious Main,
            A Film to her Royal Sovereign.
            Now to triumph in Heav’n’s eternal Sphere,
            He’s hence advanc’d, for his just Steerage here;
            Whilst Albion’s Chronicles, with matchless Fame,
            Embalm the Story of great Pendrell’s Name.”

This ridiculous epitaph belongs to the truly eulogistic group. It has
its counterpart on a tombstone in Fulham Churchyard, erected to the
memory of a lady, where the epitaph is “Silence is best,” or in the
following one from Lambeth:—

                        “Here lieth W. W.
              Who nevermore will trouble you, trouble you.”

Old Chelsea Church is noted for its monuments, many persons of
distinction having been buried there, and in the churchyard is a great
erection in memory of Sir Hans Sloane, but the ground is closed to the
public, and the tombstones are sadly neglected. From a dramatic point of
view the burial-ground attached to St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, is most
interesting, as it contains the graves of a large number of actors.

So many works have been written about monuments and epitaphs that it is
not my intention to refer to many, but some are interesting as giving a
peep into the life of those they commemorate. There are several in
London which describe the number of times the deceased person was
“tapped for dropsy.” A tombstone at Stepney is in memory of one
“Elizabeth Goodlad, who died in 1710, aged 99, and her twenty
daughters.” They must have been exemplary daughters not to have worn out
their mother sooner! The Rev. Matthew Mead was also buried here, a most
prolific writer of sermons and treatises on religion, including one with
this quaint title, “The almost Christian tried and cast.” Stepney
Churchyard is very old; it is highly probable that there was a church
there in Saxon times. The other churchyards in East London which can
boast of considerable antiquity are Bromley, Bow, Whitechapel, and
Hackney, although Sir Walter Besant, in his novel, “All Sorts and
Conditions of Men,” says that the churchyards in East London “are not
even ancient.” No doubt if he re-wrote that novel now he would alter
many of his remarks. It is hardly possible to think that the eastern
districts of London ever formed a “marvellous, unknown country,” or that
Rotherhithe needed any “discovery.”

By the close of the last century and at the beginning of this one, the
want of additional burial space was much felt in several parishes. Some
had “poor grounds,” and some, like St. James’s, Clerkenwell, had a
“middle ground,” this particular one being now the playground of the
Bowling Green Lane Board School, but the extra graveyards were all small
and all crowded. The parishes of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, St.
James’s, Piccadilly, St. Andrew’s, Holborn, St. James’s, Clerkenwell,
St. Marylebone, and St. Mary’s, Islington, secured additional
burial-grounds in which chapels of ease were erected. These are Christ
Church, Victoria Street, St. James’s, Hampstead Road, Holy Trinity,
Gray’s Inn Road, St. James’s, Pentonville Road, St. John’s Wood Chapel,
and the Chapel of Ease in Holloway Road, the ground surrounding which is
one of the best kept churchyard gardens in London. Many of the district
churches, built at the commencement of this century, also had graveyards
attached. In Bethnal Green, for instance, not only is there the
burial-ground of St. Matthew’s, which was consecrated in 1746, and has
vaults under the school as well as the church, but there are those of
St. Peter’s, St. Bartholomew’s, and St. James’ the Less, the two first
being laid out as gardens, and the last being a dreary, swampy waste,
containing about ten sad-looking tombstones and a colony of cocks and
hens.

It is impossible, in a chapter already too long, to touch upon all the
churchyards outside the City, but I must refer briefly to the four
principal parish churches which have disappeared. The present building
of St. Mary le Strand only dates from 1717; the original one stood in a
“fair cemetery,” much nearer the river, and was also called the Church
of the Innocents. This ground was enlarged in 1355 by a plot 70 feet by
30 feet in size, but the church and churchyard disappeared about 1564 to
make room for Somerset House. The church of St. John the Evangelist,
Tybourn, was removed in 1400 by Bishop Braybrooke, and the first church
of St. Marylebone was built to take its place. Provision was made for
the preservation of the churchyard, but it also disappeared before long.
It was near the site of the present Court House in Stratford Place,
under which, and the older one, bones were dug up in 1727 and 1822.

[Illustration: THE SITE OF ST. KATHARINE’S DOCKS.
(_From Rocque’s Plan, 1746._)]


[Illustration: ST. MATTHEW’S, BETHNAL GREEN, 1818.]

Tybourn Church was removed because it was in so lonely a situation, and
yet so near the main road from Oxford to London, that robbers and
thieves were always breaking into it to steal the bells, images,
ornaments, &c. The Church of St. Margaret, Southwark, stood in the
middle of the Borough High Street, with a much-used graveyard round it,
which was enlarged in 1537. But it was in so inconvenient a place, and
the ground was so much used for holding markets in, that it was removed
about 1600, and the parish amalgamated with St. Saviour’s. The old town
hall took the place of the church, and the Borough Market is still held
on or near the site of the churchyard. When St. Katharine’s Docks were
made, in 1827, St. Katharine’s Church, the ruins of the hospital (dating
from 1148), two churchyards of considerable size, and the whole
parish,—inns, streets, houses and all, were totally annihilated. The
church was a beautiful one; it has been described by Sir Walter Besant
and other chroniclers, and must have been amongst the finest specimens
of ecclesiastical architecture in London. The whole establishment was,
to a certain extent, rebuilt near Regent’s Park. It is said that a
quantity of the human remains from the churchyard were used to fill up
some old reservoirs, &c., in the neighbourhood; but, at any rate, it is
a fact that they were distributed amongst the East-end churchyards, and
several cartloads were taken to Bethnal Green and deposited in St.
Matthew’s ground, where the <DW72> up to the west door of the church is
composed of these bodies from St. Katharine’s. There were originally
steps leading to the entrance, but the steps are buried under this
artificial hill, the ground having been raised several inches.

What may be called the parish churchyards in London, outside the City,
number about seventy-two. Of these no less than forty are now being
maintained as public gardens, and this does not include the additional
parochial graveyards, nor those attached to district churches. A few,
such as Streatham and Hampstead, are generally open to the public, but
are not provided with seats, and one of the best kept is that of St.
Bartholomew’s, Sydenham, which, although not a public garden, is indeed
“a thing of beauty.” The old churchyard at Lee is also attractive, and
contains tombs and effigies belonging to many families of note,
including those of the Ropers, Boones, and Floodyers, and a monument to
the memory of Sir Fretful Plagiary, of whom, notwithstanding the
uncomfortable name with which he was endowed, his epitaph says, “He
science knew, knew manners, knew the age.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                               CHAPTER VI

                      PEST-FIELDS AND PLAGUE-PITS.

                  “From plague, pestilence, and famine,
                             Good Lord, deliver us.”


CONSIDERING that we have records of the visitation of London by direful
plagues and pestilences at frequent intervals during ten centuries, and
that these visitations always led to a mortality far in excess of the
ordinary one, it is not to be wondered at that from time to time special
burial-places had to be provided to meet the special need. In 664,
during the time of the Saxon Heptarchy, London was “ravaged by the
plague,” and from that date forward it returned again and again, causing
the kings, the courtiers and the richer citizens to be constantly
fleeing for safety into the country, until the final and awful calamity
of 1665. According to some authorities the plague has never re-appeared
since then, although according to others a few cases occurred annually
until the year 1679. But after that time, although there was a division
for “the Plague” in the annual Bills of Mortality, there were no entries
against it, and after 1703 we cease even to see the word recorded. In
early days the visitations were so ordinary that, when mentioned in the
histories of London, they are not taken much account of. Here is one
record: “The plague making its appearance in France in 1361, the king to
guard against the contagion spreading in London, ordered that all cattle
for the use of the city should be slaughtered either at Stratford on one
side the town, or at Knightsbridge on the other side, to keep the air
free from filthy and putrid smells. This regulation was certainly
wholesome; but the close dwellings of which the city then consisted,
were always fit receptacles for contagious disorders; the plague
accordingly came over, and in two days destroyed 1,200 persons.” If an
infectious disorder were to carry off 1,200 persons in two days in
London now, when the population is counted by millions instead of by
thousands, there would be a general panic, a special inquiry, and,
perhaps, a Royal Commission.

In 1349 two large tracts of land were set aside for the interment of
those who then died of the plague, and as their history is generally
well known, I will give Noorthouck’s somewhat concise account: “At
length it (a great pestilence) reached London, where the common
cemeteries were not capacious enough to receive the vast number of
bodies, so that several well-disposed persons were induced to purchase
ground to supply that defect. Amongst the rest, Ralph Stratford, Bishop
of London, bought a piece of ground, called No-Man’s-Land, which he
inclosed with a brick wall, and dedicated to the burial of the dead.
Adjoining to this was a place called Spittle Croft, the property of St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital, containing thirteen acres and a rod of ground,
which was purchased for the same use of burying the dead by Sir Walter
Manny, and was long remembered by an inscription fixed on a stone cross
upon the premises. On this burial-ground the Charterhouse now stands.
There was also another piece of ground purchased at the east end of the
City, just without the wall, by one John Corey, a clergyman, for the
same use; on which spot was afterwards, in this same reign, founded the
Abbey of St. Mary of Grace, for Cistercian monks; it is now covered by
the victualling-office and adjoining houses. It was asserted that not
one in ten escaped this calamity, and that not less than 100,000 persons
died in the whole.” The next sentence is characteristic of the way in
which, as I have already said, these visitations were treated.
“Notwithstanding this sad misfortune, the city soon recovered itself,
and advanced greatly in prosperity, as will appear by a charter it
obtained in the year 1354, granting the privilege of having gold or
silver maces carried before the chief magistrate.” The translation of
the Latin inscription on the stone cross on Sir Walter de Manny’s ground
is as follows:—

    “A great plague raging in the year of our Lord 1349, this
    burial-ground was consecrated, wherein, and within the bounds of the
    present monastery, were buried more than 50,000 bodies of the dead,
    beside many others thenceforward to the present time: whose souls
    the Lord have mercy upon. Amen.”

The space called No-Man’s-Land was three acres in extent and was
afterwards known as the Pardon Churchyard, being used for the interment
of executed people and suicides. It was in use long after the Cistercian
Monastery was built on the Spittle Croft. Wilderness Row, now merged
into Clerkenwell Road, marks its site, while the gardens and courts of
the Charterhouse, the Square, the site of a demolished burial-ground for
the pensioners (Sutton’s Ground), and the burial-ground which still
exists at the north end of the precincts, are all part of the Spittle
Croft and of the monastery burial-ground. There have already been
attempts to do away with the Charterhouse, to substitute streets and
houses for the old buildings, gardens, and courts, but happily it is not
so easy as it once was to tamper with land consecrated for burials, even
though that land may have been set aside 550 years ago. The
“Victualling-office,” which took the place of St. Mary’s Abbey, was
where the Royal Mint at present stands, and, if one may trust William
Newton’s plan, the abbey graveyard was where the entrance courtyard is
now.

The numbers who died in subsequent visitations must have helped not a
little to fill the parish churchyards, but it was not until the year of
the Great Plague that there seems to have been any very general
provision of extra ground, although the pest-house ground in the Irish
Field, “nye” Old Street, was consecrated in 1662, especially for the
parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate.

But the plague of 1665 taxed the resources, the patience, and the energy
of the Mayor, magistrates, and citizens of London in a manner that was
unprecedented. All through that fatal summer and autumn, and on into the
commencement of the following year, did it play havoc with the people.
In August and September it was at its height. The exact number of
persons who died could not be known, for thousands of deaths were never
recorded. Bodies were collected by the dead carts, which were filled and
emptied and filled again from sunset to dawn, and no account was kept of
the numbers thrown into the pits. At any rate, between August 6th and
October 10th, 49,605 deaths were registered in the Bills of Mortality as
from the Plague, and Defoe, whose “Journal of the Plague” gives every
detail that any one can wish for, considered that during the visitation
at least 100,000 must have perished, in addition to those who wandered
away with the disease upon them and died in the outlying districts. “The
number of those miserable objects was great. The country people would go
and dig a hole at a distance from them, and then, with long poles and
hooks at the end of them, drag the bodies into these pits, and then
throw the earth in from as far as they could cast it, to cover them.” It
is pretty certain that many unrecorded burials took place in the fields
of Stoke Newington.

London must have been a sad sight. All shows, pleasures and pastimes
were stopped; people crowded continually into the churches, where
dissenting ministers, notwithstanding the Act of Uniformity which was
then in force, occupied the pulpits of deceased or absent vicars, and
preached to the most attentive listeners; huge fires were always burning
in the streets; children were kept out of the churchyards; the city was
cleared of all “hogs, dogs, cats, tame pigeons and conies,” special
“dog-killers” being employed; and food and assistance was daily given to
the most needy; while those who could afford to do so fled into the
country, except a few devoted physicians, justices, and other helpers,
including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Earl of Craven, Monk
(afterwards Duke of Marlborough), and Gilbert Latey and George Whitehead
(Quakers).

The plague, introduced from Holland, first broke out in Long Acre, and
gradually spread all over London. When it became impossible to bury in
the ordinary way, huge pits were dug in the churchyards and bodies were
deposited in them without coffins. The chief plague-pit in Aldgate
Churchyard was about 40 ft. long, 15 or 16 ft. broad, and 20 ft. deep,
and between the 6th and the 20th of September, 1,114 bodies were thrown
into it. But it soon became necessary to make new burial-grounds and new
pits for the reception of the dead, as the “common graves of every
parish” became full.

[Illustration: THE PEST-HOUSES IN TOTHILL FIELDS.]

There were pest-houses in the ground to the north of Old Street and in
Tothill Fields, Westminster, to which infected persons were taken. They
corresponded to the isolation hospitals of to-day. But they could only
accommodate, at the most, 300 patients or so, and were wholly inadequate
to meet the need. The pest-houses in Old Street, or rather Bath Street,
were long ago destroyed; Pest-House Row and Russell Row used to mark
their sites. But a portion of the pest-field exists in the garden behind
the St. Luke’s Lunatic Asylum, which was used as a burial-ground for the
parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, until the formation, in 1732, of St.
Luke’s parish, when it became the St Luke’s “poor ground.” The
pest-houses in Tothill Fields were standing at the beginning of the
present century. They were known as the “five houses” or the “seven
chimneys,” and were erected in 1642. The Tothill Fields, no longer being
needed as a plague burial-ground, were subsequently built upon, but not
until they had been used for the burial of 1,200 Scotch military
prisoners with their wives. A considerable portion of the fields is,
however, still open, and is known as Vincent Square, the playground of
the Westminster School boys. Mackenzie Walcott, in his Memorials of
Westminster, states that Harding’s stoneyard in Earl Street is the site
of the principal plague-pit. This, I believe, is now the yard of Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office, Waste Paper Department.

Defoe gives a very careful description of some of the plague-pits and
burial-grounds which were made in his immediate neighbourhood. He
mentions—

1. “A piece of ground beyond Goswell Street, near Mount Mill, ... where
abundance were buried promiscuously from the Parishes of Aldersgate,
Clerkenwell, and even out of the city. This ground, as I take it, was
since made a Physick Garden, and after that has been built upon.” Mount
Mill was on the north side of Seward Street.

2. “A piece of ground just over the Black Ditch, as it was then called,
at the end of Holloway Lane, in Shoreditch Parish; it has been since
made a Yard for keeping Hogs, and for other ordinary Uses, but is quite
out of Use for a burying-ground.”

This Holywell Mount burial-ground has been “in use” again since Defoe’s
time, and was also used as a plague-pit before 1665. Originally the site
of a theatre dating from the time of Shakespeare, and named after the
neighbouring Holywell Convent in King John’s Court, it afterwards became
a burial-ground, famous as being used for the interment of a great many
actors. There is a small part of it left, but at the outside not more
than a quarter of an acre. It is behind the church of St. James’,
Curtain Road, and is approached by a passage from Holywell Row. A parish
room has been built on it, and what remains is used as a timber yard.
The piece between the parish room and the church is bare and untidy.

3. The third place mentioned by Defoe was at “the Upper end of Hand
Alley in Bishopsgate Street, which was then a green field, and was taken
in particularly for Bishopsgate Parish, tho’ many of the Carts out of
the City brought their dead thither also, particularly out of the Parish
of Allhallows on the Wall.”

He then goes on to describe how this place was very soon built upon,
though the bodies were, in many cases, still undecomposed, and he states
that the remains of 2,000 persons were put into a pit and railed round
in an adjoining passage. New Street, Bishopsgate Street, now occupies
the site of Hand Alley.

[Illustration: STEPNEY CHURCHYARD.]

4. “Besides this there was a piece of ground in Moorfields,” &c. Here he
refers to the Bethlem burial-ground, which was not made at that time,
but enlarged. Defoe finally mentions the extra grounds which had to be
supplied in Stepney, then a very largely extended parish. They included
a piece of ground adjoining the churchyard, which was afterwards added
to it; and in 1886, in laying out this churchyard as a public garden,
some human remains, without coffins, and very close to the surface, were
accidentally disturbed at the south-western side of the ground. Another
of the Stepney pest-grounds was in Spitalfields, “where since a chapel
or Tabernacle has been built for ease to this great parish.” I believe
it to be St. Mary, Spital Square. Another was in Petticoat Lane. “There
were no less than five other grounds made use of for the Parish of
Stepney at that time, one where now stands the Parish Church of St.
Paul’s, Shadwell, and the other where now stands the Parish Church of
St. John at Wapping.” The churchyards of these two churches, the former
of which is a public garden, and the latter of which is still closed,
are therefore survivals of pest-fields. But there are three other places
to account for which Defoe does not localise. One was possibly in
Gower’s Walk, Whitechapel, where human remains, without coffins, were
come upon recently in digging the foundation for Messrs. Kinloch’s new
buildings. The remains were moved in boxes to a railway arch in
Battersea in the winter of 1893-4. I saw this excavation myself, the
layer of black earth, intermingled with bones, being between two layers
of excellent gravel soil. One additional ground bought at the time of
the Plague was on the north side of Mile End Road. By about 1745 it was
used as a market-garden, and now the site is occupied by houses south of
the junction of Lisbon and Collingwood Streets, Cambridge Road. Besides
these it is certain that a large tract of land south of the London
Hospital was also used for interments, and the Brewer’s Garden and the
site of St. Philip’s Church were probably parts of this ground, which
was known as Stepney Mount. On the north side of Corporation Row,
Clerkenwell, in digging foundations for artisan’s dwellings, a number of
human remains were recently found. This site may have been a plague-pit,
or it may have been a burial-ground for an old Bridewell close by, or an
overflow from the graveyard in Bowling Green Lane.

The chief place of interment for those who died of the plague in
Southwark was the burial-ground in Deadman’s Place (now called Park
Street). Here vast numbers of bodies were buried. The graveyard was
afterwards attached to an Independent Chapel, and many eminent
Dissenters were buried there, for it soon became a sort of Bunhill
Fields For South London. Now the carts, the trucks, and the barrels in
Messrs. Barclay and Perkins’ Brewery roll on rails over the remains of
the victims of the plague and the Dissenting ministers with their
flocks.

[Illustration: THE SITE OF THE BREWER’S GARDEN ABOUT 1830.]


[Illustration: DISSENTERS’ BURIAL-GROUND IN DEADMAN’S PLACE.
(_From Rocque’s Plan, 1746._)]

But pest-fields were needed in the west of London, as well as in the
north, south, and east, and in addition to Tothill Fields there was a
large tract of land set aside near Poland Street, upon the site of which
the St. James’s Workhouse was subsequently built, a piece of the ground
surviving still in the workhouse garden. Carnaby Market and Marshall
Street were also built on the site about the year 1723, when three
acres, known as Upton Farm, were given in exchange in the fields of
Baynard’s Watering Place (Bayswater), upon which Craven Hill Gardens now
stands. There was a plague-pit near Golden Square, this district being
all a part of the pest-field at one time.

The orchard of Normand House, by Lillie Road, Fulham, is said, by Mrs.
S. C. Hall, to have been filled with bodies in the year of the Great
Plague. The site of this orchard has almost gone; Lintaine Grove, and
the houses on the north side of Lillie Road were built upon it. There is
still a piece vacant, and for sale, at the corner of Tilton Street,
about three-quarters of an acre in extent. Knightsbridge Green (opposite
Tattersalls) was also used for the victims of the Plague, and those who
died in the Lazar Hospital. Such are all the records of plague-pits and
pest-fields which I think sufficiently authentic to record.

There used to be an additional burial-ground for Aldgate parish in
Cartwright Street, E., consecrated in 1615. This, at the beginning of
the present century, was covered with small houses, and on a part of the
site the Weigh House School was built in 1846. The rookery was cleared
by the Metropolitan Board of Works nearly forty years later, when Darby
Street was made, and the vacant land was offered as a site for artisans’
dwellings. I brought the case to the notice of the Metropolitan Public
Gardens Association, and the Board was communicated with. At first it
was denied that any part of the site had been a burial-ground, but
excavations were made and human remains were found. Nor was this really
necessary, for the workmen who had pulled down the houses, and the
authorities at the school, were well aware of the fact, and knew of
actual tombstones being unearthed, upon which a date as late as 1806 had
been found. The Board of Works caused the plans for the surrounding new
buildings to be altered, and what is left of the site of the
burial-ground is now an asphalted playground adjoining the southern
block. A certain gentleman afterwards wrote and circulated a pamphlet,
in which he stated that the Metropolitan Board of Works had discovered
one of the “seites” set apart in Whitechapel for a pest-ground in 1349,
whereas the fact was that the Board had been driven, somewhat against
its will, to preserve as an open space the site of a consecrated
burial-ground belonging to the parish of St. Botolph, Aldgate. That it
may once have been a part of a pest-field is likely enough, for they
abounded in the district, but the age of the Aldgate ground was, I
consider, sufficient to account for the driest of the dry bones found
there.

Although the Plague has not re-appeared, there have been periods of
great mortality from other diseases. Special provisions for burial had
to be made at the time of the cholera visitations. In the outbreak of
1832, 196 bodies were interred in a plot of ground adjoining the
additional burial-ground for Whitechapel (now the playground of the
Davenant Schools). A large piece of ground by the churchyard of All
Saints, Poplar, on the north side of the Rectory, was also used for the
purpose, and the circumstance is recorded on the monument which stands
in the middle of it.

The fact that the bodies in the pest-fields and plague-pits were usually
buried without coffins, and were only wrapped in rugs, sheets, &C., has
accelerated their decay, and it can no longer be thought dangerous when
such pits are opened. Not that I wish in any way to defend the
disturbance of human remains, for I hold that no ground in which
interments have taken place should be used for any other purpose than
that of an open space, and, apart from the legal and sentimental aspects
of the question, human remains, in whatever state of decay they may be,
are not fit foundations for buildings, nor is it seemly or proper to
gather them up and burn them in a hole, or to cram them promiscuously
into chests or “black boxes,” to be padlocked and deposited in other
grounds or convenient vaults. But the old plague-pits, the very crowded
churchyards, and the private grounds where the soil was saturated with
quicklime, the coffins smashed at once, and decay in every way hurried,
are likely now to be less insalubrious than those grounds where lead and
oaken coffins—specially intended to last for generations—are still in
good preservation, and only occasionally give way and let out the
putrifactive emanations.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                              CHAPTER VII

                    THE DISSENTERS’ BURIAL-GROUNDS.

    “Methodism was only to be detected as you detect curious larvæ, by
    diligent search in dirty corners.”—GEORGE ELIOT.


FOREMOST amongst the burial-grounds devoted especially to Dissenters is
Bunhill Fields,—not the New Bunhill Fields in Newington, nor Little
Bunhill Fields in Islington, nor the City Bunhill Ground in Golden Lane,
not the Quakers’ ground in Bunhill Row—but the real, genuine, original
Bunhill Fields, City Road.

The land on the north side of the City and south of Old Street was
variously called the Moorfields, Finsbury Fields, the Artillery Ground,
Windmill Hill, and Bone-hill or Bon-hill. In the year 1549, when the
Charnel Chapel in St. Paul’s Churchyard was pulled down, “the bones of
the dead, couched up in a charnel under the chapel, were conveyed from
thence into Finsbury Field, by report of him who paid for the carriage,
amounting to more than one thousand cartloads, and there laid on a
moorish ground, which, in a short time after, being raised by the
soilage of the City, was able to bear three windmills.” The number of
windmills was, later on, increased to five, and they may be seen on many
old maps of London. Heretics used to be interred in Moorfields, and
bones from St. Matthew’s, Friday Street, were moved to Haggerston, in
fact several acres in this district were in use for the purpose of
burying in.

The land north of the Artillery Ground was known as Bonhill or Bunhill
Field, “part whereof, at present denominated Tindal’s, or the
Dissenters’ great Burial-ground, was, by the Mayor and Citizens of
London, in the year 1665, set apart and consecrated as a common
Cemetery, for the interment of such corps as could not have room in
their parochial burial-grounds in that dreadful year of pestilence.
However, it not being made use of on that occasion, the said Tindal took
a lease thereof, and converted it into a Burial-ground for the use of
Dissenters.” So wrote Maitland in 1756, but before that time a large
plot was added on the north, and eventually the whole cemetery measured
about five acres. There at least 100,000 persons found their last
resting-place, including vast numbers of Methodist, Baptist,
Presbyterian, and Independent ministers. In Walter Wilson’s History of
the Dissenting Meeting-houses, which might be more rightly called a
history of dissenting divines, the burial of the ministers in Bunhill
Fields is constantly mentioned, and the elaborate inscriptions from
their tombs are given. These have, however, become much defaced, and
numbers of them are now illegible. The ground belongs to the
Corporation; it is not laid out as a garden, but paths have been made
and seats placed in it, the gates being open during the day. The most
frequented paths lead to the tombstones of John Bunyan, on the south
side of the public thoroughfare in “Tyndal’s Ground,” and Daniel Defoe,
on the north side, both being at the eastern end of the cemetery.
Bunyan’s tomb was restored in 1862 by public subscription, a piece of
the original stone being now in the Congregational Church at Highgate.
The monument to Defoe was raised in 1870 by a subscription in the
_Christian World_. Amongst other celebrities buried here were Dr.
Williams, the founder of the Library in Red Cross Street (now in Gordon
Square), Susannah Wesley, mother of John and Charles, Isaac Watts, Sir
Thomas Hardy of Reform Bill fame, and several members of the Cromwell
family. The Corporation restored the tombstone of Henry Cromwell, which
was found seven feet below the surface.

On the south side of the Thames the largest and most important of the
Dissenters’ burial-grounds was that attached to the Independent Chapel
in Deadman’s Place (now called Park Street, Southwark), originally a
plague-ground, and very much used for the burial of the victims. Here
many more ministers were buried, whose names are household words
wherever Dissenters are gathered together. I cannot say what has become
of their tombstones, but the site of the ground is now only one of the
paved yards in Messrs. Barclay and Perkins’ Brewery.

If the mantle of Bunhill Fields has fallen anywhere, I suppose that
Abney Park Cemetery claims the distinction. It was first used in 1840,
and has always been the favourite cemetery of the Dissenters, there
being no separating line in it to mark off a consecrated portion. Its
formation is also associated with the memory of Dr. Watts, who lived for
some years, and who died, in the neighbourhood, at the house of his
friend Sir Thomas Abney. There is a monument to him in the cemetery,
although he was buried at Bunhill Fields, and there are many huge
monuments to other eminent dissenting divines of latter days. The
tombstones are crowded together as closely as it seems possible, and yet
they are being constantly added to, although the greater part of this
cemetery is already over-full.

[Illustration: UNION CHAPEL, WOOLWICH.]

The first dissenting meeting-houses were in the City and its immediate
neighbourhood. They were frequently but “upper rooms” in narrow courts,
and had no graveyards attached to them. But when the persecution of the
Dissenters, under the Act of Uniformity, was relaxed, meeting-houses and
chapels sprang up in every part of London, and these, in some cases, had
burial-grounds adjoining them. A few of the larger grounds, such as
Sheen’s, in Commercial Road, and the one in Globe Fields, were bought by
private individuals and carried on as private speculations entirely
apart from the Chapels. They are described in Chapter IX. But of the
genuine Dissenters’ graveyards _i.e._, the little grounds attached to
chapels and meeting-houses in London, there must have been at one time
or another about eighty—there may have been more. This number of course
represents but a very small portion of the meeting-houses themselves,
which were in existence at the beginning of this century. The following
remarks of the Rev. John Blackburn, one of the secretaries of the Union
of Congregational Ministers, show how the respectable Dissenters
repudiated the private burial-grounds: “I may with confidence disclaim
the imputation that the graveyards of Dissenters were primarily and
chiefly established with a view to emolument. Many graveyards that are
private property, purchased by undertakers for their own emolument, are
regarded as dissenting burial-grounds; and we are implicated in the
censures that are pronounced upon the unseemly and disgusting
transactions that have been detected in them.... By far the greatest
portion of the persons buried in these grounds are not Dissenters at
all.... The denomination to which I belong have about 120 chapels in and
around London, and I believe there is not more than a sixth part of them
that have graveyards attached.”

In the returns of the Metropolitan burial-grounds which were made fifty
or sixty years ago, those to whom the work was entrusted generally
expressed their inability to find out the correct number of the
Dissenters’ grounds, and Walker wrote, “I have not been able to procure
any satisfactory accounts of the numbers interred in burying-grounds
unconnected with the Established Church. By some parties information was
refused, by others the records of the place were stated to have been
lost or neglected, and in some cases the parties most interested in
suppressing, had alone the power to communicate.” When I first began,
twelve years ago, to make as complete a list as I could of the London
burial-grounds, I wrote to the secretaries at the centres of the chief
dissenting bodies, as I thought they might possess information about the
burial-grounds of their own chapels. From the Congregationalists I had
no reply; the Wesleyans kindly answered that they were endeavouring to
procure the information, but it never came; the Baptists wrote two or
three letters and took some trouble on my behalf, but they failed even
to find the number of their grounds. I had, therefore, to seek my
information in other ways.

The only body of Nonconformists that has kept a careful account of its
graveyards is the Society of Friends. They also treated their grounds
and the remains in them with greater respect (except in one notable case
to which I shall refer), and they kept them neat and clean, and do so
still. Walker recognised this fact as long ago as 1847. A statement
respecting their graveyards was made by representatives of the Society
to the committee which sat in 1843, showing that they still had
considerable room in these grounds, and that they were careful not to
allow less than 7 feet or 8 feet of earth above each coffin. The Friends
attend to all matters connected with their meeting-houses and
burial-grounds at their six weeks’ meeting, and each of these grounds
has been a Quakers’ graveyard from the beginning, not changing hands,
first belonging to one community and then another, as has been the case
with so many of the chapel graveyards. The members of the Society have
also exercised a most praiseworthy self-control by not wearing mourning,
by avoiding useless expense at funerals, and ostentatious tombstones,
memorials, or epitaphs. Until about fifty years ago no tombstones were
used at all, as at Long Lane, S.E.; then they used small flat ones, as
at Hammersmith and Peckham; and finally they adopted small upright ones,
all the same shape, about a quarter of the size of the ordinary
headstones in cemeteries. These may be seen at Ratcliff and Stoke
Newington, the graveyard at the latter place, which surrounds the Park
Street meeting-house, being still in use. I wish that every one who
intends to erect a tombstone—and this is a note for Jews as well as
Christians—would, before doing so, pay a visit to a Quakers’
burial-ground, and ponder on the matter there. An interesting article on
the Society of Friends has appeared in the _Times_ of January 8, 1896,
in which the following words are quoted, “The Quakers—the man and the
Society—must move or perish.” But I trust they may not move forward with
the times in adopting more elaborate burial customs.

Four of the Quakers’ graveyards have entirely disappeared. The
burial-ground for the Friends of Westminster was in Long Acre, by Castle
Street. It passed out of their hands in 1757, and was built upon. In
rebuilding houses on the same spot, about four years ago, many human
remains were disturbed. These were claimed by the Society, which was
allowed to collect them and bury them at Isleworth. There was a little
meeting-house with a burial-ground attached in Wapping Street, which
seems to have been used until about 1779, but was then demolished, the
worshippers moving to the meeting in Brook Street, Ratcliff. The other
two burial-grounds which the Friends have lost were in Worcester Street
and Ewer Street, Southwark. The latter, although it adjoined their Old
Park Meeting (which the King took as a guard house), may never have been
used by them. At any rate in 1839 it was in private hands, and
eventually disappeared under the railway. The former, which dated from
1666, was very full, so that in 1733 the surface was raised above the
original level. This was demolished when Southwark Street was made
(1860); and the London Bridge and Charing Cross Railway also runs over
its site. The Friends then moved the remains and a number of coffins to
their ground in Long Lane, Bermondsey.[4]

Footnote 4:

  A most interesting report upon this removal was made by the Surveyor
  to the six weeks’ meeting, in which are contained some excellent
  remarks upon the futility of burying in lead coffins, nine of these
  being found in the ground. The graveyard had been disused since 1799.

The Quakers of the Bull-and-Mouth and Peel Divisions used a large ground
near Bunhill Fields, between Checquer Alley and Coleman (now Roscoe)
Street. It was acquired in 1661, and many times added to, and was used
extensively by them at the time of the Great Plague, when they had their
own special dead-cart. George Fox’s body was carried here in 1690, an
orderly procession, numbering 4,000 persons, following to the grave. In
1840 a school was built in it, and the rest of the tale it grieves me to
tell. A part of the burial-ground exists now, not half an acre in area.
It is neatly laid out as a sort of private garden. Five thousand bodies
were dug up in the other part and buried, with carbolic acid, in a
corner of the existing piece, and the site from which they were removed
is now covered with a Board School, a coffee palace, houses, and shops,
including the Bunhill Fields Memorial Buildings, erected in 1881.[5]

Footnote 5:

  Although 12,000 Quakers were buried in the Coleman Street ground,
  including Edward Burrough and others who died as martyrs in Newgate
  Gaol, George Fox’s grave was the only one marked by a stone,—a small
  tablet on the wall, with the simple inscription, “G. F.” This
  attracted visits from country Friends in such numbers that a zealous
  member of the Society named Robert Howard “pronounced it ‘Nehushtan,’”
  and caused it to be destroyed.

The remainder of the Friends’ burial-grounds are intact. The one in
Baker’s Row, Whitechapel (acquired in 1687 and used by the Devonshire
House Division), is now a recreation ground; and the one in Long Lane,
Bermondsey, which was bought in 1697 for £120, has lately been laid out
for the use of the public. In addition to these there are, in London
itself, five little grounds adjoining meeting-houses in High Street,
Deptford, in Brook Street, Ratcliff, in High Street, Wandsworth (given
by Joan Stringer in 1697), by the Creek, Hammersmith, and in Hanover
Street, Peckham Rye. The Society acquired the Ratcliff ground in 1666 or
1667, the land being originally copyhold, but enfranchised in 1734 for
£21. All these grounds are neatly kept; the one in Peckham, which dates
from 1821, is beautiful, and illustrates what can be done with a disused
and closed graveyard, not even visible from the road, when it is treated
with proper care and respect. Many of the burial-grounds just outside
London have been sold with the meeting-houses.

There are not many Roman Catholic burial-grounds in London apart from
those attached to conventual establishments. St. Mary’s Church,
Moorfields, has a very small churchyard and had two additional grounds,
one in Bethnal Green which has disappeared, and one in Wades Place,
Poplar, now used as a school playground. This is the case also with a
Roman Catholic burial-ground in Duncan Terrace, Islington, which has
been asphalted for the use of the boys’ school, some tombstones and a
figure of the Virgin Mary being in an enclosure on the north side. There
is a very large ground dedicated to All Souls, by St. Mary’s Church,
Cadogan Terrace, Chelsea, and a small one by the church in Parker’s Row,
Dockhead, S.E., the garden here, which is now a recreation ground for
the schools or the sisters, having also been used for burials. There is
one in Woolwich, lately encroached upon through the enlargement of the
school, where three lonely-looking graves are in a railed-in enclosure
in the middle of a tar-paved yard; and there is also the ground behind
St. Thomas’s, Fulham, which is still in use.

[Illustration: FRIENDS’ BURIAL-GROUND IN WHITECHAPEL.]

But the burial-grounds adjoining Baptist, Wesleyan, Independent, and
other Chapels, what shall be said of them? They have suffered terribly
in the slaughter, and although many still exist, a very large number
have entirely disappeared. Only three are open as public gardens—the
Wesleyan ground in Cable Street, St. George’s in the East, which was
added to St. George’s churchyard garden in 1875; the ground behind the
Independent Chapel by St. Thomas’ Square, Hackney; and the burial-ground
adjoining Whitfield’s Tabernacle, Tottenham Court Road, the subject of
much litigation, which was opened in February, 1895, by the London
County Council. The original chapel on this site was founded by George
Whitefield in 1756, amongst his supporters being the Countess of
Huntingdon, David Garrick, and Benjamin Franklin. One other graveyard
was laid out as a garden, that adjoining Trinity Chapel, East India Dock
Road, but it is now closed, no one at present undertaking its
maintenance.

[Illustration: WHITFIELD’S TABERNACLE.]

For the rest of the grounds, not only Methodist but also
Congregationalist and above all Baptist, we must employ the “diligent
search in dirty corners,” but all the seeking in the world will not
restore those that are gone—sold and built upon. The fates of some of
them are recorded in Appendix B. The parishes south of the river seem to
have been great strongholds of dissent. Woolwich, Deptford, Walworth,
and Wandsworth are still full of chapels, many of which have
burial-grounds attached. North of the Thames perhaps Hackney is richest
in chapels and chapel graveyards, including the Unitarian in Chatham
Place. Whitechapel also had a great many. But in the Borough and other
parts of Southwark the little meeting-houses swarmed at one time, some
of which, with their little burial-grounds, still exist. A few of the
chapels now belong to the Salvation Army; one in York Street, Walworth,
has lately been acquired as the Robert Browning Hall, and its
burial-ground is to be a public garden; others in Peckham, Woolwich, and
Hammersmith have been converted into schools (the two last named being
board schools), their graveyards being the playgrounds; and many more
have fallen from their first estate.

It might be instructive to those who are not well acquainted with South
London to take a walk, in imagination, through Long Lane. It begins at
St. George the Martyr, Borough, of “Little Dorrit” fame, where the
churchyard is a public garden. Close by this, also on the north side of
the lane, there used to be a Baptist Chapel in Sheer’s Alley, with a
burial-ground. Wilmott’s Buildings occupy the site. Very little beyond
is Collier’s Rents. Here is a chapel which used to belong to the
Baptists, but is now in the hands of the Congregational Union. Its
dreary little graveyard is on the north side, behind a high wall. A
little further on, and opposite, is Southwark Chapel (Wesleyan), built
in 1808. It also has a graveyard, where the chief ornament is a hen-coop
amongst the tumbling tombstones. A short turning to the north, Nelson
Street, takes us to the disused burial-ground of Guy’s Hospital; and
before we come to the end of the lane there are three more grounds to be
seen, that belonging to the Society of Friends, already mentioned in
this Chapter, and one that adjoins it and is owned by the trustees of a
neighbouring Baptist Chapel, which is very small and has a minister’s
vault in the middle. This ground originally belonged to the Independents
of Beck Street, and its appellation when closed was the Neckinger Road
Chapel burial-ground. Lastly we come to St. Mary Magdalene’s, the parish
church of Bermondsey, with a charming churchyard garden which includes a
portion of the cemetery of Bermondsey Abbey. And yet Long Lane is only
about half a mile in length!

It is a little curious to notice that in the next parish, Rotherhithe,
there are no less than five churchyards, but not a single burial-ground
belonging to the Dissenters.

When visiting the burial-grounds for the London County Council, I was
much struck with three that seemed particularly neglected and untidy.
These were the Baptist ground in Mare Street, Hackney, which was being
used for the storage of old wood, furniture, and flower-pots; the ground
behind the pretentious Congregational Chapel on Stockwell Green, where
all kinds of dirty rubbish, paper, iron-building materials, the broken
top of a lamp-post, &c., were lying about amongst the sinking graves;
and a little ground in Church Street, Deptford, behind a chapel which
belongs to a General Baptist (Unitarian) connection, whose creed I do
not pretend to understand, but whose railings were so broken that a far
larger visitor than I could have followed me through the gaps to behold
broken tombstones, collections of unsavoury rubbish, and another
specimen of the worn-out top of a lamp-post. There were many other very
untidy grounds, such as those by the Wesleyan Chapel in Liverpool Road,
King’s Cross, and the Congregational Chapel in Esher Street, Lambeth;
but I think the three I have mentioned above would have been—in the
Spring of 1895, at any rate—awarded the first, second, and third prizes
in a competition for neglect; and in January, 1896, I find these grounds
are in much the same condition as they were then.

It is pleasant to turn to some of the chapel grounds which are well
kept. The one which adjoins the Congregational Church in High Street,
Deptford, is generally neat; so is the graveyard of the City Road
Chapel, at any rate at its western end, where John Wesley’s monument
stands; and the same may be said of the portions that are left of the
grounds adjoining Union Chapel, Streatham Hill, and the New West End
Baptist Chapel in King Street, Hammersmith.

[Illustration: WESLEY’S MONUMENT IN THE GRAVEYARD OF THE CITY ROAD
CHAPEL.]

There was a large burial-ground behind a chapel in Cannon Street Road,
E. The building passed into the hands of the Rector of St. George’s in
the East, but was afterwards pulled down, and one of Raine’s Foundation
Schools was subsequently erected on its site. The burial-ground, in
which many Lascars[6] were interred, is now in three parts. One is a
small playground for the school, the largest part is Messrs. Seaward
Brothers’ yard for their carts, and the third piece is a cooper’s yard
belonging to Messrs. Hasted and Sons. A similar kind of chapel in
Penrose Street, Walworth, known for a time as St. John’s Episcopal
Chapel, is now the studio of a scenic artist, while the large
burial-ground in the rear is the depôt of the Newington Vestry, and is
full of carts, manure, gravel, dust, stones, &c.

Footnote 6:

  These Lascars used to live in a court near by, and are said to have
  been locked in at night.

The East London Railway has swallowed up the graveyards by Rose Lane
Chapel, Stepney, and the Sabbatarian or Seventh Day Baptists’ Chapel in
Mill Yard, by Leman Street; the Medical School of Guy’s Hospital is on
the Mazepond Baptist Chapel-ground; the site of one which adjoined the
London Road Chapel, S.E., is now occupied by a tailor’s shop, the next
house being on the space where the chapel stood, and these two shops are
easily picked out in the row as they are higher and newer than their
neighbours on either side. A little Baptist graveyard in Dipping Alley,
Horselydown, which had a baptistery in it, disappeared very many years
ago; the site of the Baptist Chapel and burial-ground in Worship Street,
Shoreditch, forms a part of the yard used as the goods depôt of the
London and North Western Railway; a similar one in Broad Street,
Wapping, is now, I believe, a milkman’s yard, and was for many years
previously the parish stoneyard; while the very crowded ground which
used to be behind Buckingham Chapel, Palace Street, has a brewery on it.
There is a little graveyard in front of Maberley Chapel, Ball’s Pond
(now called Earlham Hall), but the three tombstones that are left in it
are not only put upon the north wall of the chapel, but have actually
been painted with the wall.

I have mentioned that a few of the chapels have been replaced by
schools, but I ought also to mention that the graveyards behind Abney
Chapel, Stoke Newington, N., Denmark Row Chapel, Coldharbour Lane, S.E.,
and the chapel in Hanbury Street, Mile End New Town, E., were only
closed for a very few years before school buildings were erected on
them. A small yard remains of the last named, but practically nothing is
left of the others. The site of the graveyard in the rear of the chapel
in Gloucester Street, Shoreditch, has, together with that of the chapel
itself, been merged into the premises of the Gaslight and Coke Company.

These are specimens of the uses to which the Dissenters’ grounds have
been put, and which we want to prevent in the future, for I hope that it
may not be long before many of those that have not been entirely lost
are “converted” into cheerful resting-places for the use of the living.

It is the question of their maintenance, when they are once laid out,
that has hitherto caused so much difficulty, and this not only with the
Dissenters’ grounds, but also with the churchyards. Where the Vestry or
District Board of Works will undertake to maintain a ground under the
Open Spaces Acts it is simple enough, and in many cases this has been
done most effectually. But some of these bodies will not accept the
responsibility. The Corporation keeps up St. Paul’s Churchyard and
Bunhill Fields, and the London County Council maintains Whitfield’s
Tabernacle ground and ten graveyards which were laid out by the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. It was with great difficulty
and after a hard fight that the Earl of Meath managed to induce the
Council to take over some of these grounds (and this only year by year),
together with several squares and playgrounds, the maintenance of which
was too heavy a burden upon the funds of a voluntary society. Of late
years the Association has not laid out any burial-ground until its
future maintenance is legally secured. A short time ago, soon after the
publication of the return prepared by me for the Council, the Parks and
Open Spaces Committee recommended that a conference should be held to
consider some general scheme for the treatment of the burial-grounds
which are still closed, their acquisition for the use of the public, and
their maintenance, it being felt somewhat unjust that while some of the
Metropolitan vestries and boards (such as St. Pancras and Hackney) were
annually expending considerable sums in the upkeep of graveyard gardens,
others (such as Rotherhithe and Limehouse) declined to do so. But the
recommendation, when it came before the general meeting of the Council,
was withdrawn for the time being, and the whole question remains in
_statu quo ante_.

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                              CHAPTER VIII

               THE BURIAL-PLACES OF FOREIGNERS IN LONDON.

              “The very names recorded here are strange,
                Of foreign accent, and of different climes;
              Alvares and Revira interchange
                With Abraham and Jacob of old times.”
                                         LONGFELLOW.


IT is only natural that in London, to which so many from other countries
have fled, and where so many foreigners have lived, worked, and died,
there should be evidences left of their places of interment. Solitary
cases of their burial among Englishmen are, of course, to be met with
everywhere, and there are many such in the London graveyards. In
Rotherhithe Churchyard is a well-known tombstone erected to the memory
of Prince Lee-boo of the Pelew Islands, who died in 1784; in St. Ann’s,
Soho, there is a tablet to that of Theodore, the last King of Corsica;
there is the grave of an Indian chief in the burial-ground of St.
John’s, Westminster, in Horseferry Road; and it is said that the first
person interred in a part of Bishopsgate Churchyard was a Frenchman
named Martin de la Tour, while this ground also used to contain a very
old altar tomb with a Persian inscription round it to the memory of Coya
Shawsware, a Persian merchant, who died in 1626. The edition of Stow’s
“Survey,” published in 1633, contains a picture of this monument and an
account of the funeral ceremonies which took place at the grave.
Maitland also refers to it, but gives a totally different first name to
the merchant. It is evident that for some time after his burial his son
and other friends used to gather at the grave twice a day for prayer and
funeral devotions, until driven away by the ridicule of the populace.

[Illustration: JEWISH CEMETERY, MILE END.]

But there have been in London many special burial-grounds belonging to
special groups of foreigners, and several of them remain. Foremost among
these are the Jewish cemeteries.

Until the year 1177, the time of Henry II., the Jews in England were
only allowed one burial-place. It was known as the Jews’ Garden and was
outside the wall of London by Cripplegate, several acres being devoted
to the purpose—a neighbourhood subsequently known by the name of
Leyrestowe. When other burial-places were permitted, this ground was
built upon, but the remembrance of it still lives in the name of one
street in the district, Jewin Street, reminding us of the time of the
bitter persecutions which the Jews suffered, and which are chronicled,
to our shame, in English history.

         “Pride and humiliation hand in hand
           Walked with them thro’ the world where’er they went;
         Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,
           And yet unshaken as the continent.”

In the first place it is to be noticed that the Jews, as a race, are
particularly pledged to preserve their burial-places. This is not a law
among them—so I have been told by the Chief Rabbi—but a binding
obligation handed down from the most ancient times, and any disturbance
of the burial-grounds which now exist is not permitted. No doubt it was
totally beyond their power to prevent the “Jews’ Garden” from being
covered with streets, its very size and position rendered it practically
impossible to preserve, and it was probably annihilated during one of
those periods when the Jews were expelled from England. Another
exception which proves the rule is at Oxford, where the Botanic Garden,
which dates from 1622, was made on the site of the Jewish burial-ground.

They also strictly observed the sanitary laws respecting burial laid
down for them, and their cemeteries have not been overcrowded. Burial is
only allowed at 6 feet from the surface of the ground, and only one body
is in each grave, one coffin not being placed above another; and this
rule has been carried out in the Jewish burial-grounds in London—again
with one exception.

In the very large, old graveyard in Brady Street, Bethnal Green
(formerly called North Street), there are walls running through it, and
the southern half is higher than the northern half, having quite a hilly
appearance. The following is the explanation. This half of the ground
was originally allotted to “strangers,” Jews who belonged to no special
congregation. About thirty years after it was full, a layer of earth, 4
feet in depth, was added to the ground, and it was used over again. As
the coffins were again placed 6 feet from the surface, there still
remained 4 feet of earth between them and the old ones beneath. As a
result of this curious and interesting arrangement, there may be seen,
in several cases, two gravestones standing up back to back, which
represent the two graves below them. Here lie buried, with other members
of the family, Nathan Mayer de Rothschild, the founder of the English
house of Rothschild, Asher and Benjamin Goldsmid, and many another Jew
famous on ’Change.

Within the Metropolitan area there are at present nine Jewish
graveyards; there are others more lately acquired, and all still in use,
at Willesden, West Ham, Edmonton, Plashet, and Golders Green, Hendon,
The disused grounds which belong to the United Synagogue are those in
Brady Street, Bethnal Green, E., Hoxton Street, N., Alderney Road, Mile
End, E., and Grove Street, Hackney, E., and I cannot, unfortunately,
call them well kept, but the neatest is the one in Alderney Road. In all
of them the tombstones are upright, rather above the average size, and
with inscriptions upon them which are almost invariably in Hebrew. The
one in Hoxton is very small. It was originally formed for the use of the
Hamborough Synagogue, Fenchurch Street, and was first used about the
year 1700. All these grounds are old, part of the one in Alderney Road
dates from about 1700, while the Brady Street Cemetery was formed in
1795. Many of the tombstones have at the top a representation of two
outstretched hands with the thumbs joining, the symbol of descendants of
Aaron, the High Priest. Others have a hand pouring water out of a
flagon, and they are over the graves of the Levites whose duty in the
synagogue is to pour water upon the hands of the Priests (the
above-mentioned descendants of Aaron), who are nearly all named Cohen.

[Illustration: JEWISH CEMETERY IN FULHAM ROAD.]

In Ball’s Pond, Islington, is the small cemetery of the West London
Congregation of British Jews, which is still in use. Here some very
large and extravagant tombstones may be seen, and the ground is very
neatly kept. In Fulham Road (Queen’s Elm) is a dreary little ground
belonging to the synagogue in St. Alban’s Place, S.W. I believe an
occasional interment takes place here in reserve plots, but the
congregation has provided itself with another cemetery at Edmonton. I am
indebted to the kindness of Mr. R. Proctor for the photograph of this
graveyard. Some few years back, before the Disused Burial-grounds Act
was in force, a row of shops was built on the west frontage of the
ground, the one body lying in that part being removed to another place.
No doubt the freehold worth of the land was considerable at that time,
and therefore the congregation disregarded their scruples concerning
this one deceased member. The graveyard can only be visited between
certain hours on Sundays, but the rest of the Jewish cemeteries have
resident caretakers. In Bancroft Road, Mile End, is another dreary
place, which, although in so crowded a district, is still in use. When
last I visited it I was told there was room for about four more graves!
It belongs to the Maiden Lane Synagogue. None of these grounds, except
that at Ball’s Pond, have proper paths in them; they have been entirely
filled with graves, between which a few narrow lines like sheep-tracks
wind about the grass.

[Illustration: JEWISH BURIAL-GROUND BEHIND THE BETH HOLIM HOSPITAL, MILE
END.]

Lastly, there are the cemeteries of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews—one,
closed for burials, behind the Beth Holim Hospital in Mile End Road, and
one, nearly five acres in extent and still in use, just beyond the
People’s Palace. These are neatly kept, the former, or at any rate a
part of it, being actually turned into a sort of garden for the patients
in the hospital, with trees in it, paths and seats. The latter is bare
of trees or shrubs, but is divided into plots, with paths between. In
both of them the tombstones, unlike those in the other Jewish grounds,
are flat, either slabs on the ground or low altar tombs; and in the
large ground there are many children’s graves, marked by much smaller
altar tombs dotted amongst the large ones, which are very unique and
interesting. The Hebrew inscription at the entrance tells us that this
is “The House of the Living,”—“Beth Hayim.” The cemetery was acquired in
1657, and contains the remains of the ancestors of Lord Beaconsfield,
the Eardley family, Sampson Gideon, the Samudas, D’Aguilars, Ricardos,
Lopes, and many others who trace their descent from Sephardi Jews.

Hitherto it has not been possible to secure any of the Jewish graveyards
as public gardens, the feeling of the community is against it, but the
day may yet come when the Council of the United Synagogue will allow the
experiment to be tried.

[Illustration: JEWISH CEMETERY, MILE END.]

The burial-ground of the Greeks in London is an enclosure in Norwood
Cemetery, where some elaborate monuments may be seen. The Mohammedans
can practise their rites at Woking.

There is no special place at the present time, I believe, where Danes
and Swedes are buried, but their churches, with surrounding graveyards,
were situated close together, in Wellclose and Prince’s Square, E. The
church in Prince’s Square is still the Swedish church of London
(Eleanora), and there is a notice at the corner of a turning on the
south side of Cable Street, St. George’s in the East,—“Till Svenska
Kyrkan.” Here, in a vault, are the remains of Emmanuel Swedenborg
himself, while the garden contains many tombstones, especially an inner
enclosure which was filled first. But the building now situated in
Wellclose Square is no longer the Danish or Mariner’s Church, the site
is occupied by schools and mission buildings in connection with St.
Paul’s, Dock Street, the present seaman’s church. Nor are there any
tombstones in the garden, although it is certain that many Danes and
many sailors were buried under the church, and in a surrounding
graveyard, which was probably an inner enclosure like that in Prince’s
Square. Mention of it is made by Northook in 1773, and by Malcolm in
1803; and there is a picture of the church in Maitland’s “History of
London.” The following account from the “Beauties of London and
Middlesex (1815)” is also of interest:—“At the extremity of this parish
is Wellclose Square, which has also borne the name of Marine Square,
from the number of sea officers who used to reside in it. It is a pretty
little neat square; but its principal ornament is the Danish church in
the centre, in the midst of its churchyard, planted with trees.... This
structure was erected in 1696, at the expense of Christian V., King of
Denmark, as appears by the inscription: ‘Templem Dano Norwegicum
intercessione et munificentia serenissimi Danorum Regis Christiani
Quinti erectum MDCXCVI.’ Gaius Gabriel Cibber was the architect, who
erected a monument within this church to the memory of his wife Jane,
daughter of William Colley, Esq., and mother of Colley Cibber, the
famous dramatist. The architect himself is also buried here.” The
Flemish burial-ground was in the district of St. Olave’s, Southwark. It
adjoined a chapel in Carter Lane, and before its demolition was used as
an additional graveyard by the parishes of St. Olave and St. John,
especially the former. When the railway to Greenwich was made this
ground disappeared, and part of its site forms the approach to London
Bridge Station.

[Illustration: A South View of QUEEN ELIZABETH’S FREE GRAMMAR SCHOOL
in Tooley Street in the Parish of St. Olave, Southwark,
_with a Plan of the adjacent Neighbourhood_

THE FLEMISH BURIAL-GROUND, CARTER LANE, ABOUT 1817.]

In Milman’s Row, Chelsea, there is a quaint and curious burial-ground
belonging to the Moravians. The adjoining buildings have passed out of
their hands, their present chapel being in Fetter Lane, E.C. In 1750
Count Zinzendorf purchased two acres of land (a part of the garden and
stables of Beaufort House) of Sir Hans Sloane, about one acre of which
was set aside for burials, and divided into four parts—the first for
male infants and single brothers, the second for female infants and
single sisters, the third for married brothers and widowers, and the
fourth for married sisters and widows. The stones are flat on the grass
and very small, not more than about 11 or 15 inches by 10 or 12 inches
in size, and the ground was closed for interments about the year 1888.

There is no purely Dutch place of interment in London now. Besides the
Dutch Church in Austin Friars (the survival of the priory of the
Augustine Friars), which has lost its churchyard, they used to have a
few chapels which seemed to change hands, sometimes belonging to Dutch
and at other times to German congregations. Such was Zoar chapel, in
Great Alie Street, Whitechapel, which is now a Baptist conventicle. It
had a fair-sized burial-ground behind it at the beginning of the
century, the site of which is covered by houses and a forge. One day
recently I knocked at the door of this chapel, hoping to be allowed to
look round it, in order to make sure that no part of the yard was left.
The woman who opened it, when I politely asked if I might go in, said
“No!” and slammed the door again at once. One meets with varied
receptions in different places, Two German churches, with graveyards
attached, were also in this neighbourhood—the Lutheran (St. George’s),
in Little Alie Street, and the Protestant Reformed Church, in Hooper
Square. The latter has entirely disappeared, the railway covering its
site. The former church still exists, with the little yard behind it,
separated by a wall from the adjoining schoolyard, but the entrance from
Little Alie Street has been bricked up.

The precinct of the Savoy had a distinctly foreign flavour about it, but
the Savoy Chapel itself is now the only remnant left of the large group
of buildings which were used at different times as palace, hospital,
barracks, and prison, and finally demolished in 1877. The churchyard is
probably even older than the church. It is now a neat little garden, in
the possession of Her Majesty the Queen, as Duchess of Lancaster, and
laid out, chiefly at her cost, for the use of the public. This is the
burial-ground described by Dickens, in _All the Year Round_, with some
of his tenderest touches, and of which he says: “I think that on summer
nights the dew falls here—the only dew that is shed in all London,
beyond the tears of the homeless.” But the Savoy used to contain one, if
not two, German chapels, besides a French Jesuit chapel and a
meeting-place for Persian worship. The German church (wrongly called
Dutch on Rocque’s plan) had a burial-ground on its west side, which is
marked on the ordnance maps, except the very latest, as it survived
until 1876, when the human remains were removed to a cemetery at Colney
Hatch. Now its site is covered by part of the new block of buildings
which include the Savoy Chambers and the Medical Examination Hall. The
Rev. W. Loftie’s book, “Memorials of the Savoy,” gives a full and
interesting history of the Precinct, and is, as is usual with his works,
compiled with care and truthfulness; but beyond simply mentioning the
existence of the German burial-ground he has nothing to tell of it. We
should have liked to know what the gravestones were like, and whether
any persons of distinction were interred there.

We now turn to the French in London, and these have to be divided into
the Roman Catholics and the Huguenots. No doubt Frenchmen and
Frenchwomen have been laid to rest in the burial-grounds attached to all
the Roman Catholic churches, and especially in All Souls Cemetery,
behind the chapel of St. Mary, in Cadogan Place, Chelsea, which chapel
was built by M. Voyaux de Franous, a French _Émigré_ clergyman, and
consecrated in 1811. Large numbers were also interred at St. Pancras,
the eastern end of the old churchyard receiving, in consequence, the
name of “Catholic Pancras.” But this is the part which has been so much
disturbed and appropriated by the Midland Railway Company, and what
remains of it is some dreary, dark slips under the railway arches, and
groups and hillocks of tombstones which were moved into the western part
of the ground, where, amongst other illustrious graves, are those of Dr.
Walker, of dictionary fame, Mary Woolstoncraft Godwin, and William
Woollett, the engraver.

[Illustration: EAST HILL BURIAL-GROUND, WANDSWORTH.]

About the year 1687 between thirteen and fourteen thousand French
Protestants, driven from home by the intolerance of Louis XIV., settled
in London, some in Spitalfields, others in the district of St. Giles’
and Seven Dials, in Stepney, and in Wandsworth. There was a French
church at Wandsworth, which subsequently fell into the hands of the
Wesleyans, and the Huguenots who settled in this locality were chiefly
engaged in trade as hatters. As a result of these settlements we find
their graves in Bethnal Green Churchyard and other places, but
especially in the East Hill burial-ground at Wandsworth, where many
French Protestants of note were interred, and where there are some fine
old headstones and altar tombs. It is a picturesque ground between the
two roads, but, with the exception of a pathway through it, it is not
open to the public.

Foreigners now have to be buried in the cemeteries, and many a strange
service or ceremony has been held at the graveside of those who belong
to other climes, especially, perhaps, in Kensal Green Cemetery, Norwood
Cemetery, and the others that are non-parochial. The Jews and the Greeks
are, I believe, the only communities of strangers who still keep up
separate burial-grounds of their own in London.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                               CHAPTER IX

              HOSPITAL, ALMSHOUSE, AND WORKHOUSE GROUNDS.

                    “Such ebb and flow must ever be,
                    Then wherefore should we mourn?”
                                          WORDSWORTH.


WHEN the Greyfriars, or Christ’s Hospital, was set aside for “poor
children,” and Bridewell for “the correction of vagabonds,” St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital in the City and St. Thomas’s in Southwark were
devoted to the care of the “wounded, maimed, sick, and diseased”; and in
these four benevolent institutions, which owe so much to the short-lived
but truly pious King Edward VI., there was provision made for the burial
of the dead. It must be remembered that the quadrangle of Christ’s
Hospital, which is still surrounded by cloisters, was the burial-ground
of the Greyfriars, but apart from this, for the boys of the school or
the officers or servants, there was a small plot of ground set apart as
a graveyard at the north-west corner of the block of buildings. This was
demolished when the great hall was built, in 1825, and if any of its
site remains it is only a limited piece of the courtyard on the north
side of the hall and the doctor’s garden. A few tombstones are preserved
in the passage leading to the doctor’s house. At this time was formed
the additional burial-ground for Christ Church at the western end of the
churchyard of St. Botolph, Aldersgate Street. But the churchyard
adjoining Christ Church, and even the cloisters themselves, were used
from time to time by the Hospital, and it was the custom in the last
century for a “blue” to be buried by torchlight. His schoolfellows
passed through the venerable courtyards and buildings in procession, two
by two, and sang a burial anthem from the 39th Psalm, which must have
been a most solemn and touching sight, and was “particularly adapted to
the monastic territory” of the Hospital. It will be a sad day when this
noble old school is torn from its rightful home in the City of London,
and when the boys receive a “modern” education in a trim, new building,
and wear the dull tweed suit and the school cap dragged on at the back
of their heads; and it is well to impress again and again upon the
Charity Commissioners and the Almoners of the Hospital that a very
considerable portion of the site will not be available for building
upon, as it will come under the provisions of the Disused Burial-grounds
Act. The same remark applies with even greater force to the neighbouring
hospital, the Charterhouse, where all the gardens and courtyards,
including the Square itself and the little burial-ground which is still
recognisable as such, have been used at one time or another for
interments. I have explained how this came about in a former chapter.

[Illustration: A CORNER OF CHRIST’S HOSPITAL, THE GREYFRIARS’
CLOISTERS.]

I think it probable that when St. Bartholomew’s Hospital was far smaller
than it is now, burials took place in the cloisters, or rather in the
large space in the middle of which the western wing was built. In a very
interesting old plan of the precincts, dated 1617, there is not only
shown the “Church-yarde for ye poore” in two pieces, about where the
west wing is now, but also a large ground which is named Christ Church
Churchyard, to the south of this, but north of the City wall. The
hospital later on used the Bethlem burial-ground, and the ground set
aside eventually as the hospital graveyard (for the interment of
unclaimed corpses), is in Seward Street, Goswell Road. This was first
used about 1740, and, after being closed for burials, it was let as a
carter’s yard and was full of sheds and vans. Through the kindness of
the Governors, it fell into the hands of the Metropolitan Public Gardens
Association, and it is now a children’s recreation ground maintained by
St. Luke’s Vestry. The burial-ground of St. Thomas’s Hospital is at the
corner of Mazepond; on part of it St. Olave’s Rectory and Messrs.
Bevington’s leather warehouse were built; the remainder is leased to
Guy’s Hospital, and contains the treasurer’s stables and an asphalted
tennis-court for the use of the students. Guy’s Hospital burial-ground
is in Snow’s Fields, Bermondsey, and is now a large builder’s yard, but
there is a reasonable hope of its being secured before long as a
recreation ground. The “unclaimed corpses” from the London Hospital
found their last resting-place very near home. In 1849 the whole of the
southern part of the enclosure, quite an acre and a half, was the
burial-ground, and here, although it was closed by order in Council in
1854, it appears that burials took place until about 1860, one of the
present porters remembering his father acting as gravedigger. The
medical school, the chaplain’s house, and the nurse’s home have all been
built upon it, and it is sincerely to be hoped that no further
encroachments will be permitted. The remaining part is the nurses’ and
students’ garden and tennis-court, where they are in the habit of
capering about in their short times off duty, and where it sometimes
happens that the grass gives way beneath them—an ordinary occurrence
when the subsoil is inhabited by coffins!

[Illustration: LONDON HOSPITAL BURIAL-GROUND.]

Bridewell also had its burial-ground, where the lazy and evil were
interred. It is at the corner of Dorset and Tudor Streets, near the
Thames Embankment, and is an untidy yard, boarded off from the street
with a high advertisement hoarding, and in the occupation of a builder.

The Bethlem burial-ground had a more interesting history. In 1569 Sir
Thomas Roe, or Rowe, Merchant Taylor and Mayor, gave about one acre of
land in the Moorfields “for Burial Ease to such parishes in London as
wanted convenient ground.” It was especially intended for the parish of
St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, and was probably used for the interment of
lunatics from the neighbouring asylum, besides being used by St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital. It was enclosed with a brick wall at the
persuasion of “the Lady his Wife,” and she was buried there; and it was
the custom upon Whit Sunday for the Lord Mayor and Aldermen to listen to
a sermon delivered in this “new churchyard, near Bethlem.” We read that
in 1584 “a very good Sermon was preached ... and, by Reason no Plays
were the Same Day (_i.e._, Whit Sunday, as there used to be), all the
City was quiet.” But the Churchyard and the Asylum have disappeared,
Liverpool Street Station having taken their place, and hundreds of the
Great Eastern Railway goods vans daily roll over the mouldering remains
of the departed citizens.

[Illustration: CHELSEA HOSPITAL GRAVEYARD.]

Very different to the fate of these hospital burial-grounds is that of
another one I will mention. Facing Queen’s Road, Chelsea, is the long,
narrow graveyard of the Chelsea Hospital. It is neatly kept, with good
grass and trees. Here many a venerable pensioner has been laid to rest,
and, although it can no longer be used for burials, it still serves to
remind the living of their brethren who have gone before them. There are
some fine monuments and epitaphs to very long-lived invalids, two aged
112, one 111, one 107, and so on, and it is one of those quiet and
quaint corners of London which form so marked a contrast to the noisy
streets close by. One pensioner, who died in 1732, named William Hiseman
and aged 112, was “a veteran, if ever soldier was.” It is recorded that
he took unto himself a wife when he was above 100 years old. There is
something very peaceful about these old men’s graves; the grain gathered
in by the “Reaper whose name is Death” was fully ripe:—

                  “It is not quiet, is not ease,
                   But something deeper far than these;
                   The separation that is here
                   Is of the grave; and of austere
                   Yet happy feelings of the dead.”

On the south side of the Thames there are some other burial-grounds
which should be mentioned here. Greenwich Hospital possesses no less
than three cemeteries. In 1707 Prince George of Denmark gave a plot of
ground for the purpose, measuring 660 by 132 feet. This is on the west
side of the Royal Naval School. It is enclosed and full of tombstones.
But in 1747 an extra two and a half acres, surrounding the old ground,
were appropriated for interments. This space is well kept, containing
some fine trees and only a few monuments. The gate from the school
playground is generally open. Then there is the Hospital Cemetery in
West Combe, nearly six acres in size, and first used in 1857. The
burial-ground of God’s Gift College (Dulwich) is at the corner of Court
Lane. It dates from about 1700, and is a picturesque, well-kept little
ground, with several handsome altar tombs in it. The cemetery of Morden
College, Blackheath (founded for decayed merchants about 1695) also
exists. It is about a quarter of an acre in size, with about eighty
tombstones, but the graves have been levelled, and the ground, though
still walled round, forms part of the College gardens.

[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE ALMSHOUSES, WHITE HORSE STREET, STEPNEY.]

There were several almshouse graveyards in London, including the
“College yard” for St. Saviour’s Almshouses, Southwark, which is now a
builder’s store-yard in Park Street, and over which the London,
Brighton, and South Coast Railway passes on arches, and one behind the
Goldsmith’s Almshouses, now covered by the artisans’ dwellings on the
west side of Goldsmith Row, Shoreditch. The frightfully crowded
“almshouse ground” in Clement’s Lane formed part of the site of the new
Law Courts; while one in Crown Street, Soho, adjoining St. Martin’s
Almshouses, disappeared when the French Chapel was built, and has now
been lost in Charing Cross Road. In order to enter the almshouses in
White Horse Street, Stepney, it is necessary to pass through a
graveyard, and it cannot be a lively outlook for the pensioners, who
have gravestones just under their windows. It was connected with the
Independent Chapel, and first used in 1781.

Perhaps the most interesting of these burial-grounds is one which
belonged to the Bancroft Almshouses in Mile End Road. The fate of the
asylum itself is well known; it has been replaced by the People’s
Palace, and the improvement from an antiquarian or architectural point
of view is nil. The recent interest taken in the proposed destruction of
the Trinity Hospital in Mile End Road points to the fact that the
pendulum of public opinion is now swinging towards the preservation of
historical buildings. The graveyard of Bancroft’s Almshouses was a long
strip on the eastern side. Part of it has been merged into the roadway.
St. Benet’s Church (consecrated in 1872), Hall, and Vicarage were built
upon it, and the bones of the pensioners are under the Vicarage garden.
The northernmost point of the graveyard is enclosed and rooted over, and
forms a little yard where flag-staffs, &c., are stored. But between this
and the wall of the Vicarage there is a piece open to the road, with
some heaps of stones in it and rubbish. There are, at any rate, four
gravestones left, against the wall, and there may be others behind the
stones; but I daresay it is only a very small proportion of those who
pass in and out of the Palace who have ever noticed this relic of the
Bancroft Almshouses.

In a large number of the London parishes it was necessary to have “poor
grounds,” _i.e._, graveyards where bodies could be interred at a
trifling cost or entirely at the cost of the parish; for,
notwithstanding the great dislike of the poor to “a pauper’s funeral,”
and the efforts they will make to avoid it, there always have been cases
in which no other sort of funeral can be arranged. Some of the “poor
grounds” were attached to the workhouses, others were merely a part of
the parish churchyards, while others again were older additional
burial-grounds secured by the parishes before the days of workhouses.

The workhouse of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, was in Shoe Lane, and in the
adjoining graveyard the unfortunate young genius, Chatterton, was
buried. This ground gave way to the Farringdon Market, which, in its
turn, has been supplanted by a new street called Farringdon Avenue. The
workhouse ground of St. Sepulchre’s, Holborn, together with another
additional graveyard belonging to the parish, was in Durham Yard, and
the sites of both of them have disappeared in the goods depôt of the
Great Northern Railway. The burial-grounds by the workhouses of
Shoreditch, St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, and St. Giles (in Short’s
Gardens) have also disappeared; so also has the one allotted to the use
of St. James’ Workhouse in Poland Street, which was a part of the old
pest-field, although a remnant of the pest-field exists still as the
workhouse garden. The original Whitechapel Workhouse was built in 1768
on a burial-ground, and then a plot of land immediately to the north was
set aside for a poor ground, and consecrated in 1796. This in turn
became the playground of the Davenant Schools, one of which (facing St.
Mary’s Street) was built in it. A recent addition to the other school
has also encroached on the burial-ground. In 1832 196 cholera cases were
interred in an adjoining piece of ground, which was probably what is now
used as a stoneyard, and is full of carts. The workhouse graveyard,
belonging to St. Clement Danes, was in Portugal Street. The workhouse
itself was re-adapted and re-opened as King’s College Hospital, but the
burial-ground was used until its condition was so loathsome, and the
burning of coffins and mutilation of bodies was of such every-day
occurrence, that it must have been one of the very worst of such places
in London. It is now the garden or courtyard and approach, between the
hospital and Portugal Street. The burial-ground attached to the
Workhouse of St. Saviour’s, Southwark (which may have been the old
Baptist burial-ground in Bandy Leg Walk which existed in 1729) has a
curious history. The workhouse was supplanted by Winchester House, the
palace of the bishops when South London was in their diocese, the old
Winchester House, nearer the river, having been destroyed. This in time
became a hat manufactory, the burial-ground remaining as a garden
situated between the building and Southwark Bridge Road. Finally, the
site was secured by the Metropolitan Board of Works for the Central Fire
Brigade Station, and what is now left of the burial-ground is the garden
or courtyard between the new buildings which face the road and the old
house behind them. If the paupers and the bishops and the factory hands
did not succeed in frightening away the ghosts of the departed, they
must have a sorry time of it now when the call-bells from all parts of
London bring out the engines and the men who fight the flames.

Of the parochial “poor grounds” not adjoining workhouses a few are worth
noticing. St. Saviour’s, Southwark, in addition to the workhouse ground,
the College or Almshouse ground, and the churchyard itself, which was
from time to time added to, curtailed and used for markets, possessed
still another graveyard, the famous Cross Bones ground in Union Street,
referred to by Stow as having been made “far from the Parish Church,”
for the interment of the low women who frequented the neighbourhood. It
subsequently became the parish poor ground, and after having been in
use, and very much overcrowded, for upwards of 200 years, it was closed
by order in Council dated October 24, 1853. In a report upon the state
of this ground the previous year, it is stated that “it is crowded with
dead, and many fragments of undecayed bones, some even entire, are mixed
up with the earth of the mounds over the graves,” and it “can be
considered only as a convenient place for getting rid of the dead, but
it bears no marks of ever having been set apart as a place of Christian
sepulture.” The Cross Bones ground passed out of the hands of the rector
several years ago and was sold as a building site, but building
operations were opposed and stopped. Schools were erected in it before
it was closed for burials. It has been the subject of much litigation,
and it now stands vacant, waiting for some one to purchase it as a
playground, and used in the meantime as the site for fairs,
merry-go-rounds, and cheap shows.

The “poor ground” for the parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark, is
a square plot of land, now a little public garden, in Tabard Street. It
was originally the burial-ground of the adjoining Lock Hospital before
that building was removed in 1809 to Knightsbridge, whence, later on, it
was again removed to Harrow Road. It is said by some that the little
cemetery was even older than the hospital, and may have been used for
interments during no less than eight centuries. The Cripplegate “Poor
ground,” or the “upper churchyard of St. Giles,” was in Bear and Ragged
Staff Yard (afterwards called Warwick Place) out of Whitecross Street,
and was first used in 1636. It was very much overcrowded, so much so
that it was more than once shut up for a few years as full, but always
re-opened again. A part of the site is now occupied by the northern half
of the church of St. Mary, Charterhouse, and by its mission-house, there
being only a tar-paved pathway round these buildings to represent the
rest of the ground. The church was built in 1864. There are human
remains within six inches of the surface of the ground, several having
been dug up and put in a vault which is under the mission-house, and the
entrance to which is closed with a very large flat stone, bearing the
date of 1865. The mission-house is giving way already, and it has large
cracks in it, for a vault of this kind is not a good foundation.

The parish of St. James’, Clerkenwell, had a very small “poor ground,”
in Ray Street, which was bought in 1755 for £340, and was consecrated
eight years later. It was 800 square yards in area, and was approached
through a private house occupied by a butcher, “who had his
slaughter-house and stable at the back, and immediately adjoining the
burial-ground.” In about the year 1824 it was found that several bodies
had been exhumed and placed in the stable; this caused a scandal in the
neighbourhood, and the man and his business were ruined. When Farringdon
Street and the Metropolitan Railway were made, the site of the ground in
Ray Street, together with Ray Street itself, entirely disappeared; and
the “sleepers of the railway are laid over the sleepers in death.” The
burial-ground had already been done away with, the Clerkenwell
Commissioners, according to Pinks, having taken it for public
improvements, when they collected the remains into one spot and erected
a plain mausoleum over them.

In early days it seems to have been the custom for patients entering the
large hospitals to pay a sum of money down for possible funeral
expenses, except in cases of sudden accident. Later on a security given
by a householder was considered sufficient, but now no such arrangement
is needed. The sum demanded at St. Bartholomew’s was 17s. 6d., and at
Guy’s £1 was paid. At Westminster Hospital and at the Lock (Hyde Park
Corner), from which some patients may have been buried in what is now
called Knightsbridge Green, no security was asked; but at the Bethlem
Hospital an entrance sum of £100 had to be paid for board, funeral
expenses, &c. In case of death at a London hospital at the present time,
the friends or relations of the deceased are expected to remove and bury
the body, and this has often led to a good deal of difficulty, one body
being claimed by various people, because the person who buries it can
often secure the insurance money. Bodies which are now unclaimed (and at
St. Bartholomew’s there are about eight in a year) are buried in a
cemetery at the cost of the hospital.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                               CHAPTER X

                  PRIVATE AND PROMISCUOUS CEMETERIES.

      “Praises on tombs are trifles vainly spent,
       A man’s good name is his best monument.”
    _Epitaph on Pindar’s monument in St. Botolph’s, Aldersgate Street._


THERE are two chief senses in which the word “private” may be taken. It
denotes what belongs to a particular person, family, or institution
apart from the general public—thus we say a “private chapel,” a “private
drive,” and so on. It also means that which has been set into being by a
private individual, and which is, therefore, a private speculation. Into
these two classes I can divide the graveyards which are to be dealt with
in this chapter.

The Romans preserved the right of erecting tombs in their country
residences. Their very stringent laws prevented them from burying the
dead inside the cities (except certain classes of privileged persons),
but as long as the interment took place outside the walls, it seems, at
one time, to have mattered little where a tomb was set up. This practice
was put a stop to in the time of Duillius, and sepulchres were no longer
allowed in fields and private grounds, as it was found that the custom
was tending to diminish the area of land available for cultivation.

I think that such a practice was never general in London or the
surrounding district, but there are a few cases in which something of
the sort took place. In Wood’s “Ecclesiastical Antiquities” it is stated
that there was a cemetery at Somerset House, Strand, for the Catholic
members of Queen Henrietta Maria’s household (1626). It is certain that
the vaults under the palace chapel were used, as they were closed for
interments in 1777 (fourteen burials having taken place in fifty-seven
years), and if there was also a cemetery, the use of which was in this
way restricted, it may fairly be called private. It is possible however
that this may have been a part of the original churchyard of St. Mary le
Strand. The site has now disappeared, the present building of Somerset
House being far more extended than was the old one.

Another curious private ground, also used by Romanists, was the garden
of Hundsdon House, the French Embassy, in Blackfriars. In 1623 the floor
of a neighbouring Jesuit chapel gave way, and about 95 persons were
killed. Stow says that 20 bodies (of the poorer people) were buried on
the spot. Malcolm states that 44 were buried in the courtyard before the
Ambassador’s house, and 15 in his garden. Brayley’s version is that some
were buried in a burying-place “within the Spanish Ambassador’s house in
Holborn,” and that two great pits were dug, one in the forecourt of the
French Ambassador’s house, 18 feet by 12 feet, where 44 were interred,
the other in the garden behind, 12 feet by 8 feet. Wood gives the number
of those buried in these pits as 47. It was, at any rate, a curious and
summary way of disposing of the bodies of those who had so suddenly lost
their lives.

I only know of one burial-ground in London which is so strictly private
as to have only one grave in it. In Retreat Place, Hackney, a quiet
corner near the Unitarian Church, there is a row of twelve almshouses,
founded by Samuel Robinson in 1812, “for the widows of Dissenting
ministers professing Calvinistic doctrines.” In front of this
establishment is a neatly-kept grass plot, and in the centre of it is a
large altar tomb—not erected for the use of the ministers’ widows, but
containing the mortal remains of Samuel Robinson, who died in 1833, and
of his own widow who survived him three years. For my own part I should
prefer the enclosure without the grave, but perhaps the widows like to
be daily reminded of their benefactor.

[Illustration: BURIAL-GROUND IN NEWGATE GAOL.]

There are, no doubt, many private gardens and yards in London in which
burials have taken place, surreptitiously if not openly. Only recently
an undertaker was remanded for having been in the habit of temporarily
depositing the bodies of stillborn infants in his own back premises
until such time as there should be enough to make it worth while for him
to give them a decent burial. But, numerous as these instances may be,
it is difficult to get any record of them.

Convent burial-grounds are very private, but of these I have already
spoken in Chapter II. In Millbank Penitentiary a space, 432 square yards
in extent, was set aside as a graveyard, in which there was ordinarily
rather over one burial per month. There is a picture of it in Griffith’s
“Memorials of Millbank,” but no description. This particular plot of
ground is to be preserved as an open space when the new buildings are
erected on the site of the prison; it will probably belong to the London
School Board. Newgate burial-ground is still in use. It is a passage in
the prison, 10 feet wide and 85 feet long, in which are interred, with a
plentiful supply of quicklime, the bodies of those who are executed
within the walls. This reminds me of the gallows which stood for so many
years at the Tyburn turnpike, the site of which is still marked by a
stone in the Bayswater Road, a few yards west of the Marble Arch. Those
who were executed here (there were 24 in 1729) were buried on the spot,
and this extraordinary burial-ground was situated at the point now
occupied by the house at the corner of Edgware Road and Upper Bryanston
Street.[7] Mr. W. J. Loftie entirely discredits this story, and says
that one jawbone is all that was ever found to represent human remains
on this site. On their way to the gallows the poor criminals received a
present of a large bowl of ale, called St. Giles’ bowl, from the lazar
hospital of St. Giles, which was situated close to where the church now
stands. And thus they were refreshed on their last sad journey.

Footnote 7:

  Smith’s “St. Marylebone.”

By the close of the last century the London churchyards, and the
additional burial-grounds provided by the parishes, were becoming so
overcrowded, that it occurred to some adventurers to start cemeteries as
private speculations; and it was greatly owing to their existence and to
their abuse that the agitation arose which finally led to the passing of
the “Act to amend the Laws concerning the Burial of the Dead in the
Metropolis,” under which the metropolitan burial-grounds were closed.
The speculation was found to be a successful one, and was imitated in
different parts of London, until by the year 1835 there must have been
at least fourteen burial-grounds in London carried on by private
persons, besides some additional chapels with vaults under them
conducted in the same way. A few of these grounds originated in
connection with neighbouring places of worship, but were subsequently
bought by private persons. In Central London there were (1) Spa Fields,
Clerkenwell; (2) Thomas’ burial-ground, Golden Lane; (3) the New City
Bunhill Fields, or the City of London burial-ground, Golden Lane. In
North London there was (4) the New or Little Bunhill Fields, Church
Street, Islington. In East London there were (5) Sheen’s burial-ground,
Whitechapel; (6) Victoria Park Cemetery, Bethnal Green; (7) the East
London Cemetery or Beaumont’s ground, Mile End; (8) Globe Fields
burial-ground, Mile End Old Town; (9) the North-east London Cemetery, or
Cambridge Heath burial-ground, or Peel Grove burial-ground, or Keldy’s
Ground, Bethnal Green; (10) Gibraltar Walk burial-ground, Bethnal Green;
(11) Ebenezer Chapel ground, Ratcliff Highway. And in South London (12)
Butler’s burial-ground, Horselydown, or St. John’s; (13) the New Bunhill
Fields, or Hoole and Martin’s ground, Deverell Street, New Kent Road;
and (14) a ground in Ewer Street, Southwark.

The charges made for interments in these places were generally slightly
lower than in the churchyards, in order to attract customers, and those
who officiated at the funerals were, in many cases, not ministers of
religion at all. In Butler’s burial-ground, for instance, the person who
read the burial service (of the Church of England) wore a surplice, but
he was merely an employé of the undertaker, who also acted as porter. In
Hoole and Martin’s ground a Mr. Thomas Jenner was employed to officiate
at funerals for £20 a year. He also read the burial service of the
Church of England, but he was by trade a shoemaker, or a patten-maker,
whose shop was close by. The owners of these private grounds were
naturally tempted to crowd them to excess, and it is impossible to think
of what took place in some of them without shuddering. No doubt
practices as vile, as unwholesome, and as irreverent were carried on in
many of the churchyards; but the over-crowding of the private grounds is
so associated with the idea of private gloating over private gains that
it is more repulsive.

One of the most notoriously offensive spots in London was Enon Chapel,
Clement’s Lane. The chapel was built, and the vaults under it were made,
as a speculation by a dissenting minister named Howse. The burial-fees
were small, and the place was resorted to by the poor, as many as nine
or ten burials often taking place on a Sunday afternoon. The space
available for coffins was, at the highest computation, 59 feet by 29
feet, with a depth of 6 feet, and no less than 20,000 coffins were
deposited there. In order to accomplish this herculean task it was the
common practice to burn the older coffins in the minister’s house, under
his copper and in his fireplaces. Between the coffins and the floor of
the chapel there was nothing but the boards. In time the effluvium in
the chapel became intolerable, and no one attended the services, but the
vaults were still used for interments, so that “more money was made from
the dead than from the living”—a state of affairs which existed in many
of the private burial-places of the metropolis. As I shall have to refer
again to the condition of these grounds in speaking of the closing of
graveyards in London, I will not enlarge upon it any further here,
except to quote from the evidence brought before the Select Committee
which sat in 1842 to consider the question of Interment in Towns,
respecting the Globe Fields burial-ground in Mile End, which is merely
one example out of sixty-five examinations.

William Miller, called in and examined.

“1615. CHAIRMAN. What is your occupation?—A jobbing, labouring man, when
I can get anything to do.”

“1616. Have you been a gravedigger in Globe Fields. Mile End?—Yes.”

“1617. Is that a private burying-ground?—Yes.”

“1618. To whom does it belong?—Mr. Thomas Tagg.”

“1620. Have many pits been dug in it for the depositing of bodies
previously interred?—Yes.”

“1621. Where did they come from?—Out of the coffins which were emptied
for others to go into the graves.”

“1623. Were the coffins chucked in with them?—No; they were broken up
and burnt.”

“1624. Were they bones, or bodies, that were interred?—Yes; the bones
and bodies as well.”

“1625. Were they entire, or in a state of decomposition?—Some were dry
bones, and some were perfect.”

“1627. What did you do with them?—Chucked them into the pit.”

“1628. What sort of pit?—A deep, square pit, about four feet wide and
seven or eight feet deep.”

“1629. How many bodies did you chuck in?—I cannot say, they were so
numerous; each pit would hold about a dozen.”

“1630. How many of these pits did you dig?—I suppose I dug a matter of
20 myself.”

“1632. How near to the surface of the earth did these dead bodies or
bones come?—Within about two feet.”

“1638. What is the size of this ground?—It is rather better than half an
acre.”

“1639. How many bodies are buried in that ground within a year?—I cannot
say; I suppose there are 14,000 have been buried in that ground.”

“1640. How long has it been open?—Since the year 1820.”

“1641. Do you recollect any circumstance which occurred there about the
month of October, 1839?—Yes.”

“1642. Will you state it to the Committee?—Some boys were at work there;
a policeman on the railroad happened to see them in the act of taking
some bones out of baskets, and got a policeman in the police force of
the metropolis, and sent him in and seized the boys with a bag of nails
and plates of the coffins, going away to sell them, and going to sell
the bones.”

“1643. To what purpose are the bones applied?—I do not know.”

“1644. What is done with the wood of the coffins?—Burnt for their own
private use.”

“1645. By whom?—By the sexton.”

“1648. MR. COWPER. Is it burnt in the sexton’s house?—Yes.”

“1649. SIR WILLIAM CLAY. What was done with the iron or metal handles of
the coffins?—They were burnt on the coffins when I was there, and were
thrown out among the ashes about the ground anywhere.”

“1653. MR. AINSWORTH. Who performs the burial service over the dead?—A
gentleman of the name of Cauch.”

“1654. Does he reside there?—No, he resides opposite.”

“1655. What is he?—I do not know that he is anything; he has formerly
been a shoemaker.”

“1656. Does he put on a gown when he buries the dead?—Yes, a surplice.”

“1657. What service does he read?—The regular Church service.”

“1665. CHAIRMAN. Were you in the habit of performing this grave-digging
without the use of spirits?—No; we were obliged to be half groggy to do
it, and we cheered one another and sung to one another.”

“1666. You found the work so disgusting you were obliged to be half
drunk?—Yes.”

And so on. Many of the revelations made to this committee are so
revolting that they are best forgotten. It is, perhaps, only fair to say
that this particular man’s evidence was contradicted by Mr. Thomas Tagg,
the owner of the ground, but it was subsequently corroborated by other
and disinterested witnesses.

[Illustration: PEEL GROVE BURIAL-GROUND, BETHNAL GREEN.]


[Illustration: VICTORIA PARK CEMETERY BEFORE BEING LAID OUT.]

The fate of these fourteen grounds has been a varied one. Thomas’s has
gone, and its site is occupied by a large building, chiefly a shoe
factory, on the north side of Playhouse Yard, and immediately to the
west of the church known as St. Mary’s Charterhouse. Sheen’s is now the
yard of Messrs. Fairclough, carters, off Commercial Road, and there are
some stables and sheds in it. It was, some few years back, a cooperage.
Peel Grove burial-ground is smaller than it was, and what is left is a
builder’s yard about an acre in extent, the remainder of the space
having been built upon. The very small ground by Ebenezer Chapel, near
St. George’s in the East, is also a timber-yard, the chapel itself
having long since fallen into disuse. Over half of the Globe Fields
ground the Great Eastern Railway runs; the remainder is a bare yard,
with several miserable tombstones in it and quantities of rubbish. It is
fast closed behind an iron gate of colossal proportions, and it daily
becomes more neglected and untidy. Little Bunhill Fields in Islington is
divided into several parts; one division belongs to the General Post
Office, and contains parcels-carts, &c., other pieces are let or sold as
builders’ yards or are lying vacant. New Bunhill Fields, near New Kent
Road, has been through many vicissitudes. It was very much overcrowded
with bodies, and in the vault under the chapel burials used to take
place “on lease,” _i.e._ £1 would be paid for a coffin to be deposited
for six months, after which time no inquiries were to be made. As soon
as the ground was closed for burials it became a timber-yard, and the
chapel in it was used as a saw-mill. Now the sawing goes on in an
adjoining shed, and the chapel belongs to the Salvation Army, the
graveyard being still covered with high stacks of timber. The City of
London ground, in Golden Lane, which was only used for about twenty
years, is divided. The part situated in the parish of St. Luke’s belongs
to Messrs. Sutton & Co., carriers, and is full of carts, the greater
part of it being roofed in. The part situated within the city boundary
forms the site of the City Mortuary and Coroner’s Court, with a
neatly-kept yard between the two buildings. Gibraltar Walk
burial-ground, Bethnal Green Road, has only had small slices cut off it
and doled out as yards, &c., for the surrounding houses. The main
portion is a neglected jungle, forming a sort of private garden to the
big house which opens on to it, and in which the owner of the ground
lives. In order to see Butler’s burial-ground it is necessary to go down
Coxon’s Place, Horselydown, where two yards will be found. One is a
small builder’s yard, with “Beware of the Dog” on the gate. Once I
doubted the existence of the dog, and pushed open this gate, but he was
there in full vigour, and I speedily fled. The adjoining yard, which is
much larger, is Messrs. Zurhoost’s cooperage, and is full of barrels.
There were vaults used for burials under three or four of the houses.
They can still be seen, and are now, apparently, dwelling-places for the
living. The graveyard in Ewer Street has disappeared under the London
Bridge and Charing Cross Railway.

The East London Cemetery, in Shandy Street, Mile End, is a recreation
ground chiefly for children. So is Spa Fields, Clerkenwell, which was
one of the most crowded burial-grounds in London, after having been a
fashionable tea-garden, and before being used as a volunteer
drill-ground. Both these grounds were secured and laid out by the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, and are maintained by the
London County Council. Such is also the history of Victoria Park
Cemetery, a space of 11½ acres, and by far the largest of the private
venture burial-grounds. In this ground it was stated that, on every
Sunday in the year 1856, 130 bodies were interred. After years of
negotiation and much difficulty, the Metropolitan Public Gardens
Association secured it, and converted it from a dreary waste of
crumbling tombstones and sinking graves into a most charming little park
for the people of Bethnal Green. It was opened by H.R.H. the Duke of
York in July, 1894, and the County Council maintains it, having
re-christened it Meath Gardens.

[Illustration: VICTORIA PARK CEMETERY WHEN FIRST LAID OUT.]

It need hardly be pointed out that in very few of the spaces I have just
described are any tombstones to be found. To a casual observer they are
utterly unrecognisable as burial-grounds, and it is many years since
such relics can have existed in them. When, for instance, a
burial-ground becomes a builder’s yard, tombstones are very much in the
way, and they are soon converted into paving-stones, Some years ago a
few inscriptions were still legible on the stones which paved the
passage to Spa Fields from Exmouth Street, but by this time even these
must be worn away. But if it is denied by the owners of these yards that
they are burial-grounds there is one method of proving it which soon
dispels all doubt, and that is by digging down into the soil. It will
not be necessary to make any deep excavation before the spade turns up
some earth mixed with human remains, which, once seen, are always
recognisable.

Archbishop Herring adopted this plan, as he was anxious to know if any
burials had taken place in what was always known as the “burying-ground”
of Lambeth Palace, on the north side of the chapel, by the site of the
smaller cloisters. In fact he had the whole space dug over, but without
success, for no signs of human remains were found; and it is probable
that the interments which took place within the palace were all under
the chapel.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                               CHAPTER XI

             THE CLOSING OF THE BURIAL-GROUNDS AND VAULTS.

           “These laugh at Jeat, and Marble put for signs,
           To sever the good fellowship of dust,
           And spoil the meeting. What shall point out them,
           When they shall bow, and kneel, and fall down flat
           To kiss those heaps which now they have in trust?”
                                      GEORGE HERBERT.


BY the commencement of the present century the minds of thoughtful men
on the Continent, in America, and in England, began to be exercised
about the overcrowded state of the graveyards in the towns, and their
very unwholesome effect upon those who lived near them.

We owe the agitation which finally led to the closing of the London
graveyards mainly to the untiring zeal of a surgeon of Drury Lane,
George Alfred Walker. His work lay amongst the poor of that district,
and he was led to believe that the frequent occurrence of what he called
typhus fever, and similar maladies, was due in great measure to the
large number of overcrowded burial-grounds which existed in the
neighbourhood. He made a very careful study of the subject, he gathered
information from France, Germany, and other countries, he visited a
large number of the worst graveyards in London, and made searching
inquiries respecting them. Having become familiar with the practices
that were carried on in these places, he brought out a book dealing with
the whole question in the year 1839, the title-page of which fully
explains its purpose. It is as follows:—


                      “GATHERINGS FROM GRAVEYARDS,

                     PARTICULARLY THOSE OF LONDON.

         With a concise History of the modes of Interment among
              different Nations from the earliest periods,
                       and a detail of dangerous
                           and fatal results
              produced by the unwise and revolting custom
            of inhuming the dead in the midst of the living.

                       By G. A. WALKER, Surgeon.”

The question was taken up from purely philanthropic motives. Walker was
not connected with, or interested in, any particular Cemetery, but he
was “fully convinced of the necessity for _legislative interference_ to
destroy the present dangerous system.”

He had precedents to go upon, for as early as the year 1765 a decree was
made by the Parliament of Paris, closing all cemeteries and churchyards
within the city, and providing for the formation of eight cemeteries in
the suburbs; and in 1774 a further decree was made prohibiting the
re-opening of vaults, similar action being subsequently taken in other
French towns. Nor was France alone to be admired. Precautions of the
same kind were adopted from time to time in Rome and other cities of
Italy, in Denmark, in New York, and even in Dublin; but the London
burial-grounds still continued to be in constant use.

Walker collected details of many cases of death and illness directly
attributable to contact with human remains in a state of putrefaction.
It was certain that gravediggers held their lives in their hands. The
more experienced of them, when they “bored” or “tapped” coffins,
immediately fled to a distance, and remained away until they considered
that the harmful exhalations would have been sufficiently distributed
into the air for them to continue their unpleasant work in comparative
safety. Another custom was to burn papers, &c., in graves and vaults,
while some men were in the habit of holding rue and garlic in their
mouths. But they generally suffered from bad health, were frequently
seriously ill, and sometimes died from the direct effects of the poison
they had inhaled. They were also much addicted to drink, and very many
were accustomed to say that they could not do their work without the
help of spirits.

After making the following general statement, Walker carefully described
between forty and fifty of the most crowded of the metropolitan
burial-places, and especially those in his own district: “Although
willing to admit that the neighbourhood of slaughter-houses—the
decomposition of vegetable substances—the narrowness of the streets, and
the filth and poverty of some of the inhabitants, greatly contributed to
the furtherance of the mischief (typhus fever), I felt convinced that
the grand cause of all the evil was the immediate proximity of the
burial-places, public as well as private.” It is quite unnecessary to
repeat the descriptions, they are much alike; I will only give one as a
specimen, which is free from obnoxious details.

“_St. Ann’s, Soho._—There is only one burying-ground belonging to this
parish; it is walled in on the side next to Prince’s Street; close to
this wall is the bone house; rotten coffin wood and fragments of bones
are scattered about. Some graves are only partly filled up, and left in
that state, intended, probably, for paupers. The ground is very full,
and is considerably raised above its original level; it is overlooked by
houses thickly inhabited. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood have
frequently complained of the past and present condition of this place.
The numbers of dead here are immense.”

Some of his descriptions were thought at the time to be exaggerated, but
they were fully corroborated in the evidence given before the
Parliamentary Committee which sat in 1842.

Such a note as the following is instructive: “Ground in immediate
proximity to this place” (Bermondsey Churchyard) “is advertised to be
let on lease for building purposes.” And yet some of the very
burial-grounds themselves have since become the sites for streets and
houses!

It would not be fair to give the reader the impression that Walker was
the first to speak of the unwholesome condition of the London
graveyards. Here is a quotation from a sermon preached by Bishop Latimer
in 1552: “The citizens of Naim had their burying-places without the
city, which, no doubt, is a laudable thing; and I do marvel that London,
being so great a city, hath not a burial-place without: for no doubt it
is an unwholesome thing to bury within the city, especially at such a
time, when there be great sicknesses, and many die together. I think
verily that many a man taketh his death in St. Paul’s Churchyard, and
this I speak of experience; for I myself, when I have been there on some
mornings to hear the sermons, have felt such an ill-savoured,
unwholesome savour, that I was the worse for it a great while after; and
I think no less—but it is the occasion of great sickness and disease.”
And from his time onwards allusions were made, in sermons and
discourses, by ministers and physicians, to the dangers of contact with
decaying animal substances.

[Illustration: CHURCHYARD OF ST. ANN, SOHO, IN 1810.]

To turn from London for a moment. It is stated in Roger’s “Social Life
in Scotland” that when Queen Mary visited Dundee in 1594 she found that
“the deid of the Naill burgh is buryit in the midst thereof, quhairin
the common traffic of merchandise is usit, and that throw occasion of
the said burial, pest, and other contagious sickness is engenderit.” The
evil was remedied by granting to the burgh as a place of sepulchre the
site of the Greyfriars Monastery.

Sir Christopher Wren, when considering the question of the rebuilding of
London after the Great Fire, made some very wise remarks upon the
question of intramural interments. He wished to see suburban cemeteries
established, and burials in churches and churchyards discontinued,
partly because he considered the constant raising of the level of a
churchyard rendered the church damp and more liable to premature decay.
But Wren’s plans for rebuilding the city were not carried out; they were
approved by the King and Parliament, but disapproved by the Corporation;
and this scheme of his respecting the practice of burial fell through
with the rest. The churches were rebuilt on the old sites, the
churchyards were again used, and the sites of several of those churches
which were not rebuilt became additional burial-grounds for the
parishes. And yet, in the return published in 1833, it is curious to
find that only one place is described as being “very full of bodies,”
the churchyard of St. John’s, Clerkenwell. There was no great desire on
the part of those connected with the parishes to increase their burial
accommodation.

Walker stuck to his ground manfully. He gathered round him a few of the
leading men of the day, who formed themselves into a Society for the
Abolition of Burials in Towns, and he delivered a series of able
lectures upon the subject and continued to make inquiries and to expose
practices carried on in various grounds. Spa Fields, for instance, was
taken as a specimen, and a pamphlet was issued showing how it was the
custom to burn bodies behind a brick enclosure, and how the gravestones
were moved about to give an appearance of emptiness in certain parts of
the ground. It was computed that, by burning coffins, mutilating
remains, and using vast quantities of quicklime, at least 80,000 corpses
had been put in a space fitted to hold 1,000.

In 1842 and 1843 a Royal Commission was sitting upon the question of the
Health of Towns and the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Classes, and
a Select Committee was appointed “to consider the expediency of framing
some Legislative Enactments (due respect being paid to the rights of the
Clergy), to remedy the evils arising from the Interment of Bodies within
the Precincts of large Towns, or of Places densely populated.” The
following were the members of the Committee: Mr. Mackinnon (Chairman),
Lord Ashley, Colonel Fox, Mr. Thomas Duncombe, Mr. Evelyn Denison, Sir
William Clay, Sir Robert Harry Inglis, Mr. Ainsworth, Mr. Beckett, Lord
Mahon, Mr. Cowper, Colonel Acton, Mr. Kemble, Mr. Vernon, and Mr.
Redhead Yorke; and they sat from 17th of March till 5th of May, 1842,
and conducted sixty-five examinations. Amongst the witnesses who gave
evidence were clergymen, dissenting ministers, medical men, including
Sir Benjamin Brodie and Mr. Walker, sextons, gravediggers, residents in
the neighbourhood of burial-grounds and others, with the Bishop of
London (C. J. Blomfield). I have already quoted from these evidences in
the previous chapter, and they do not vary very much. I will only
therefore give a few extracts from the Report of the Committee:—“After
long and patient investigation, Your Committee cannot arrive at any
other conclusion than that the nuisance of Interments in large Towns,
and the injury arising to the Health of the Community from the practice,
are fully proved.... No time ought to be lost by the Legislature in
applying a remedy.... The Evidence has also exhibited the singular
instance of the most wealthy, moral, and civilised community in the
world tolerating a practice and an abuse which has been corrected for
years by nearly all other civilised nations in every part of the globe.”
Then follow resolutions respecting the provision by parishes, either
single or amalgamated, of cemeteries; the fees which it would be
desirable to charge; the due consideration to be shown to those who
desired burial in unconsecrated ground; the exceptions to be made in the
cases of some family vaults, of the Cathedral and the Abbey, and of
certain cemeteries which had recently been formed, &c., with the final
remark: “That the duty of framing and introducing a Bill on the
principles set forth in the foregoing Resolutions, would be most
efficiently discharged by Her Majesty’s Government, and that it is
earnestly recommended to them by the Committee.” And yet it was not
until 1852 that Mr. Mackinnon’s Bill was introduced and the Act of
Parliament was passed, entitled an Act to Amend the Laws concerning the
Burial of the Dead in the Metropolis, commonly known as the Burials Act,
15 and 16 Victoria.

Then the Home Secretary was besieged with memorials and letters from
those who resided in various parts of London, praying for the Act to be
put in force in the burial-grounds in their own neighbourhoods, besides
applications for permission to open cemeteries on the outskirts of the
town. The same dreary and miserable stories of the overcrowding of
graveyards and the indecent practices carried on in them were again
brought to light, and it must not be supposed that the grounds in the
west of London were any better than those in the centre, the east, or
the south. The description given by the memorialists (five medical men)
of the burial-ground belonging to St. George’s, Hanover Square, which is
situated on the north side of Bayswater Road, together with the letters
written about it, could hardly be exceeded. And yet this ground was, or
rather is, in a fashionable neighbourhood, close to the Marble Arch, and
surrounded by houses let at very high rentals. It is certain that it was
a common custom to move freshly-buried bodies from the more expensive
part of the ground to the cheaper part, used for paupers and others,
thus making room for more graves for which the higher fees were paid.
Lawrence Sterne, who wrote “The Sentimental Journey,” was buried here. I
hope his remains did not have an unsentimental one.

From west, east, north, and south the same lament was heard, and the
same petition came from other cities and towns in England. It was a
common topic for the newspapers and journals, and it is hardly possible
to look through any of them, published between 1850 and 1855, without
finding references to the graveyards, or notices of their being closed
by order in Council. An anonymous poem called “City Graves,” appeared in
_Household Words_ on December 14, 1850. It has seven verses, of which I
will give three:—

                “Within those walls, the peace of death—
                   Without, life’s ceaseless din;
                 The toiler, at his work, can see
                   The tombs of his mouldering kin;
                 And the living without grow, day by day,
                   More like the dead within.

                  *       *       *       *       *

                “I saw from out the earth peep forth
                   The white and glistening bones,
                 With jagged ends of coffin planks,
                   That e’en the worm disowns;
                 And once a smooth round skull rolled on,
                   Like a football, on the stones.

                  *       *       *       *       *

                “Too late the wished-for boon has come,
                   Too late wiped out the stain,—
                 No Schedule shall restore to health,
                   No Act give life again
                 To the thousands whom, in bygone years,
                   Our City Graves have slain!”

On the 13th of January, 1853, Islington Churchyard was closed for
burials, and from that time forward the notices were issued for the
cessation of interments in vaults and graveyards all over London; and
the list which was printed of all the burial-grounds in London still
open for interments on January 1, 1855 (and in many of these only the
existing vaults were to be used), was quite a short one. By that date
eight of the large cemeteries had been opened and were in use.

When once closed for burials the question naturally arose as to what was
to be done with the grounds. The following clause was inserted into one
of the Burial Acts (18 and 19 Vict.):—

“18. In every case in which any order in Council has been or shall
hereafter be issued for the discontinuance of burials in any churchyard
or burial-ground, the Burial Board or Churchwardens, as the case may be,
shall maintain such churchyard or burial-ground of any parish in decent
order, and also do the necessary repair of the walls and other fences
thereof, and the costs and expenses shall be repaid by the Overseers,
upon the certificate of the Burial Board or Churchwardens, as the case
may be, out of the rate made for the relief of the Poor of the parish or
place in which such churchyard or burial-ground is situate, unless there
shall be some other fund legally chargeable with such costs and
expenses.”

Here at once comes in the difficulty of ownership or guardianship, and
it is not always understood by the rector or vicar of a church that he,
during his incumbency, has the sole right of using any grounds enclosed
within the churchyard fence or wall, and that these grounds are not, as
is frequently supposed, under the joint control of the incumbent and
churchwardens. This is clearly set forth in the following quotations
from the book of Church Law, 4th edition, page 322:—

“By his induction into the real and corporeal possession of his benefice
in general, a Rector or Vicar becomes invested, in particular, with
freehold rights in all the land and buildings which are enclosed within
the churchyard fence or wall.”

“The rights thus acquired carry with them the exclusive right of access
to the Church, and also (saving any established right of way) to the
Churchyard, so that no one can lawfully exclude him from them, nor enter
them of their own right, but only by his permission, so long as
Incumbent.”

Yet it is the Burial Board or the churchwardens who are to see that a
burial-ground or a churchyard is kept “in decent order,” and to repair
the walls and fences; and if a churchyard is not kept in such order, or
is used as a storing yard or for any other unsuitable purposes, both the
incumbent and the churchwardens are evidently in fault. But although
there have been some cases of gross neglect the London churchyards have,
on the whole, been kept fairly well as far as the walls or fences and
the tombstones are concerned. A few have certainly degenerated into
little less than rubbish heaps, but others have been maintained with
great care. The Burial Boards have been conscientious in this respect
pretty generally over London, but there are not very many disused
burial-grounds under the control of the Burial Boards. A few
churchyards, chiefly in the City, have been curtailed for the widening
of roads, or altogether sacrificed for railways or new streets; a few
additional parochial burial-grounds have also disappeared, and a few,
but very few, have been misappropriated and let or sold as builders’
yards, &c. The case was, however, far different, where an unconsecrated
burial-ground was in private hands or belonged to three or four chapel
trustees, for then the temptation to raise money on it was very great.
Nearly all the private grounds and a large number of the Dissenters’
grounds were turned to account, as I have already shown in Chapters VII.
and X.

[Illustration: BATTERSEA CHURCHYARD ABOUT 1830.]

So the churchyards remained, useless, closed and dreary, no one went
into them, the children gazed through the palings and their parents
deposited wastepaper, dead cats, rotten food, old clothes, &c., in them,
and it was twenty years after they had been shut up before any of the
disused graveyards were converted into public gardens. It must, of
course, be borne in mind that, when first closed, these grounds were
very unwholesome, but twenty years did, at any rate, a good deal towards
ameliorating their condition, and now that another twenty years have
passed we may safely say that no evil effects can accrue from letting
people walk about in them, people, that is, who already live with these
grounds in their midst. And there is no more sure way of hastening their
improvement than by importing fresh soil and planting trees, shrubs and
flowers.

[Illustration: ST. JAMES’S, PENTONVILLE, IN JANUARY, 1896.]

The closing of the burial-grounds included the closing of the vaults.
There is hardly a church in London, and but few chapels, with a
graveyard attached, which had not also vaults used for interments under
the building, and there are many churches and chapels which had vaults
but not graveyards.

The earliest burials took place in the churchyards, the south side being
always the favourite. It seems originally to have been customary to bury
only stillborn infants, felons and suicides on the north side of the
building. It became a fashion of later times to bury in or under the
church, and the first place used was the porch. But when once the custom
was established the inside of the church became the privileged place,
and the most honoured dead were laid nearest the altar. The ancient
crypts, such as those at St. Bartholomew’s and Clerkenwell, were not, I
imagine, originally intended for burying in, although coffins were put
in them later on. But the vaults, such as those under the City churches
and the parish churches outside the City, were expressly made for the
purpose, a few having been used for beer or wine instead of bodies.

Many vaults were private, such as “Lady Jersey’s Vault” and “Holden’s
Vault,” both in St. Bride’s, Fleet Street, and in this same church there
is a “Doctor’s vault.” St. Clement Danes and other churches have a
“Rector’s vault,” and St. Saviour’s, Southwark, can boast of a “Bishop’s
vault.” The bodies from under some of the City churches which have been
pulled down were moved to others; the coffins from St. Michael, Crooked
Lane, were divided between St. Edmund King and Martyr and St. Mary
Woolnoth, and those that went to the latter place have had a second
removal, the vaults having to be cleared out a few years ago. In many
places there were vaults under the vestries, the adjoining schools,
almshouses, the sextons’ houses, &c., and at Lambeth, among the places
of interment closed by order in Council, was a “vault under the
station-house.” A list of the London churches and chapels which were
provided with burial-vaults, but not with graveyards, will be found in
Appendix C. It is not unlikely that many of these will have, in time, to
be cleared out. In some cases the coffins or remains have already been
collected and reinterred in cemeteries, the one at Woking having been
especially favoured. They are very liable to become a nuisance, and are
far more dangerous to the living than the human remains under the plots
of ground open to the air.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                              CHAPTER XII

                     GRAVEYARDS AS PUBLIC GARDENS.

    “Some young children sported among the tombs, and hid from each
    other, with laughing faces. They had an infant with them, and had
    laid it down asleep upon a child’s grave, in a little bed of
    leaves.... Nell drew near and asked them whose grave it was. The
    child answered that that was not its name; it was a garden—his
    brother’s. It was greener, he said, than all the other gardens, and
    the birds loved it better because he had been used to feed
    them.”—_From the “Old Curiosity Shop_,” DICKENS.


THE late Sir Edwin Chadwick, in the Report which he drew up in 1843 (ten
years before the burial-grounds were closed), wrote the following
significant words:—“The only observation I at present submit upon the
space of ground now occupied (as burial-grounds) is that it would serve
hereafter advantageously to be kept open as public ground.” Happily he
lived long enough to see some of these very graveyards upon which he had
reported converted into open gardens. Their conversion and their
preservation have gone hand in hand. Partly to facilitate their being
acquired as open spaces an Act was framed, by the passing of which it
became illegal to build on any ground that had been set aside for
interments. And there could be no better way of securing the
preservation of a burial-ground from encroachment or misuse, than by
laying it out and handing it over to a public body to be maintained for
the benefit of the public under the Open Spaces Act. Once given to the
people, the people are not likely to give up an inch of it again without
a struggle.

By the year 1877 seven disused burial-grounds in London had been
converted into public gardens; those of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, St.
George’s in the East, and the Wesleyan graveyard adjoining (forming one
ground), the additional ground for St. Martin’s in the Fields in Drury
Lane, St. John’s, Waterloo Bridge Road, and St. Pancras’ old churchyard,
with the adjoining graveyard belonging to St. Giles’ in the Fields
(forming one ground). These may be called the five pioneer gardens. But
St. Botolph’s was closed again for several years, and St. Martin’s for a
short time, and St. Pancras’ and St. Giles’ had to have much more done
to them before they became attractive open spaces, so that the one which
really stands out as the recreation ground that has had the longest
existence is St. George’s, for this has been in constant use for twenty
years. The Rev. Harry Jones, in his books, “East and West London,” and
“Fifty Years,” describes the difficulties he went through to get the
vestry to agree to the scheme, and to secure a faculty for laying out
the ground. He and his co-workers were in the Consistory Court for two
days, but they succeeded in the end, the wall between the churchyard and
the Nonconformist burial-ground was done away with, and a most valuable
new thoroughfare was opened out from Cable Street to St. George’s Street
(Ratcliff Highway). Thus a precedent was created, and the way was made
easier for others, including the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, to lay
out their churchyards. Since that time, 1875, the part adjoining the
church has also been opened, the whole ground being about three acres in
area, and it is always bright and neat and full of people enjoying the
seats, the grass, the flowers, and the air.

[Illustration: CHURCHYARD OF ST. GEORGE’S IN THE EAST.]

Mr. Loftie has written: “Of St. George’s in the East there is not much
to be said.” He refers to the church, but even this, one of Hawksmoor’s
chief works, is rather too lightly disposed of. Of the parish there is
indeed much to tell. No other church in London can boast of
nineteenth-century riots continued Sunday after Sunday for eighteen
months, necessitating the presence of police in the sacred building. No
other parish ever contained a Danish and a Swedish church, with the
bones of Emmanuel Swedenborg. St. George’s is in touch with all corners
of the globe, for the London Docks contain countless stores of treasures
from the east and the west, the north and the south. Here several of the
chief of those commonly known as the “broad churchmen” of the day have
served as curates; and here the famous life of Father Lowder was lived
for twenty-four years, while the famous church of St. Peter’s, London
Docks, arose in the southern part of the parish,—Father Lowder, of whom
the Rev. Harry Jones, in a memorial sermon, has said: “He was simply
fearless.... He ever meant what he said, and said what he meant.... The
mention of him meets the most sacred moods of the soul.” And the pioneer
garden is still unique in being an amalgamation of a churchyard and a
dissenting burial-ground. How different it is from what it was once like
may be gathered from the following description in _Household Words_ of
November 16, 1850: “The graveyard was dank and clayey, and air blew
coldly through the masts and rigging of the shipping moored in the
Thames and the Docks.” The curate comes to the parish, the curate who
eventually built Christ Church, Watney Street, dispirited and
discouraged. He had fancied it was to St. George’s, Hanover Square, he
was going! And “the occasional funeral duty of the country was changed
for the constant day by day, week by week, repetitions of a gorged
London graveyard,” to which “the close courts and poverty-stricken
streets of his parish sent every year many hundred tenants.” Then the
churchyard, like all the others in London, was closed, and became the
usual useless cat-walk, with high walls around, and blackening
tombstones, until the day when those negotiations began which resulted
in the present charming garden. And this is a story which has now been
repeated in every division of London.

In the year 1882 the Earl of Meath (then Lord Brabazon) started the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. It began on this wise. The
Kyrle Society and the National Health Society had each an Open Spaces
sub-committee, Miss Octavia Hill, of the Kyrle Society, having always
been a prominent supporter of the movement for promoting open spaces,
“outdoor sitting-rooms” she called them, in poor districts. But the
funds of these committees were very small, and the work they could
accomplish, except in the matter of influencing public opinion, very
limited. They made grants of seats to a few churchyards which were being
laid out, and joined in deputations to public bodies respecting open
spaces, &c. Lord and Lady Brabazon had laid out the churchyards of St.
John, Hoxton, and St. Mary, Haggerston, and had taken much interest in
the formation of other grounds, such as the Brewers’ Garden at Stepney,
which mainly owed its existence to the Rev. Sydney Vatcher, present
vicar of St. Philip’s; and Lord Brabazon felt that there was room and
need for a separate association for preserving, acquiring, and laying
out open spaces, and for promoting similar objects. He therefore invited
representatives of the Kyrle and National Health Societies, and others
interested in the matter, to meet him and to discuss the advisability of
sinking their own committees in a new and separate body, or rather of
amalgamating their efforts in the same direction. The National Health
Society only too gladly acquiesced, and from that time forward passed on
all work connected with open spaces to the new body, Mr. Ernest Hart,
Chairman of their Council, becoming the first vice-chairman of the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. There are now eighteen. But
Miss Octavia Hill held back. And this is the reason why there is still
an Open Spaces branch of the Kyrle Society, and why on the title-page of
the annual reports of the Gardens Association the words “In connection
with the National Health Society,” are always inserted. The following
graveyards have been laid out as gardens by the Kyrle Society in
London—St. Peter’s, Bethnal Green, E., St. George’s, Bloomsbury, W. C.
(the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association giving £100 towards the
laying out of each of these), St. George the Martyr, Bloomsbury, W.C.,
and the burial-ground of St. Nicholas’, Deptford, in Wellington Street,
S.E.—four very useful grounds.

[Illustration: CHURCHYARD OF ST. BOTOLPH, ALDGATE.]

The new association was formed in November, 1882, and soon flourished
amazingly. By the end of 1895 it had carried through upwards of 320
successful undertakings, had 60 other works on hand, and had made offers
and attempts, without success, respecting about 200 schemes. But the
indirect work of the Association has also been most valuable; the tone
of public opinion on the subject of open spaces has entirely changed
during the past twelve years, and this is due, in great measure, to the
untiring exertions of the Earl of Meath and his co-workers. New Acts of
Parliament, including the Disused Burial-grounds Act, have been passed,
useful clauses have been inserted in the Open Spaces Acts, and several
Bills threatening open spaces have been opposed and extinguished. The
Association has worked with the Commons Preservation and Kyrle Societies
to forward many most important schemes; it has secured, after much
labour, the opening on Saturdays of upwards of 200 Board School
playgrounds, and its influence upon the work of the public bodies has
been wonderful. It is, for instance, scarcely too much to say that a
week seldom goes by without some communication passing between the
Association and the London County Council.

But my subject is graveyards only, and the following is a list of those
that have been laid out as recreation grounds and opened by the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association since the Spring of 1885:—

          1. St. Bartholomew’s Churchyard, Bethnal Green, E.
          2. The East London Cemetery, E.
          3. Holy Trinity Churchyard, Rotherhithe, S.E.
          4. St. Paul’s Churchyard, Shadwell, E.
          5. Spa Fields, Clerkenwell, E.C.
          6. St. John at Hackney Churchyard, E. (a part).
          7. St. Mary le Strand Ground in Russell Court, W.C.
          8. St. James’s Churchyard, Bermondsey, S.E.
          9. Holy Trinity Churchyard, Mile End, E.
         10. St. Martin’s in the Fields Churchyard, W.C.
         11. St. George’s Churchyard, Camberwell, S.E.
         12. St. Dunstan’s Churchyard, Stepney, E.
         13. St. Anne’s Churchyard, Limehouse, E.
         14. Trinity Chapel-ground, Poplar, E.
         15. St. Alphege Churchyard, Greenwich, S.E.
         16. Seward Street Burial-ground, E.C.
         17. St. James’s Churchyard, Ratcliff, E.
         18. St. Botolph’s Churchyard, Aldgate, E.
         19. St. Ann’s Churchyard, Soho, W.
         20. Shoreditch Old Ground, Hackney Road, E.
         21. Christ Church Churchyard, Spitalfields, E.
         22. All Saints’ Churchyard, Poplar, E. (a part).
         23. St. Botolph’s Churchyard, Bishopsgate, E.C.
         24. St. Katharine Coleman Churchyard, E.C.
         25. St. Olave’s Churchyard, Silver Street, E.C.
         26. Victoria Park Cemetery, or Meath Gardens, E.
         27. Allhallows’ Churchyard, London Wall, E.C.
         28. St. Mary’s Churchyard, Bow, E. (a part).
         29. St. Peter’s Churchyard, Walworth, S.E.
         30. St. Mary’s Churchyard, Woolwich, S.E.[8]

Footnote 8:

  The laying out of four more churchyards is in hand.

The other grounds laid out by the Association have been squares, vacant
sites, and churchyards not used for interments. In addition to these,
grants have been given, amounting to many hundred pounds, towards the
laying out of some fourteen graveyards, and seats, &c., for another
twenty-eight, besides which the Association has secured the opening of
many more and has saved others from being built upon.

One year the income of the Association amounted to over £11,000. This
was due to a shower of wealth from the Mansion House Fund for the
Employment of the Unemployed. The Earl of Meath, at the Mansion House
Committee, boldly promised, with a smiling face and a sinking heart,
that if a grant were made to it the Association would find labour at
once and use up the money in wages. I remember being sent for to
Lancaster Gate in this emergency. It was no easy matter then and there
to provide the work, and the money could not be spent on materials. But
within a few weeks hundreds of men were employed, and their food
arranged for into the bargain. This process was repeated the following
winter (1887-8), but since then the Mansion House Funds have been
smaller and their distribution far more careful, while the Association
has had to depend for its income upon the subscriptions and donations of
its members and friends.

There are now within the metropolitan area ninety burial-grounds
actually dedicated to the public as recreation grounds, and being
maintained as such under the Open Spaces Act of 1881, or by trustees, or
under agreement with the vicar, &c., including four that are Board
School playgrounds. To those who remember these places before they were
converted the transformation is wonderful. One Sunday in the year 1878,
the Rev. H. R. Haweis told his congregation at St. James’s, Westmoreland
Street, that in a hasty walk through their own parish burial-ground in
Paddington Street, Marylebone, he had met “orange-peel, rotten eggs,
cast-off hair-plaits, oyster-shells, crockery, newspapers with bread and
meat, dead cats and five live ones,” and that on the grave of one
Elizabeth Smith, “in the very centre of the churchyard,” he found
“twelve old kettles, two coal-scuttles, three old hats, and an
umbrella.” Some of the congregation doubted it, but they went to look,
and found it true. This particular ground was laid out as a garden by
the St. Marylebone Vestry in 1886, the Association providing £200 and
the wages of the labourers. I remember, in a paper I wrote some ten
years ago, describing a similar ground (and there were, and still are,
many such in London)—I think it was St. James’s, Clerkenwell. This is
also now a neat garden, towards the laying out of which, in 1890, the
Association gave £50 and several seats.

[Illustration: A CORNER OF ST. JOHN’S GARDEN, BENJAMIN STREET.]

I have already referred, in previous chapters, to some of the more
interesting of the graveyards which have been laid out as open spaces.
There is a very charming little garden in Benjamin Street, near
Farringdon Road, which belongs to the parish of St. John’s, Clerkenwell.
It was consecrated in 1755 by the Bishop of Lincoln, acting for the
Bishop of London, having been conveyed to trustees as an extra parochial
burial-ground, the site being a gift to the parish by the will of Simon
Michell, who died in 1750. After being closed for burials it fell into
the hands of a member of the Clerkenwell Vestry, and was covered with
workshops and rubbish until the then Rector, the Rev. W. Dawson,
instituted proceedings against him, secured the land, laid it out by
public subscription (in 1881), and maintained it at his private expense.
It is now in the hands of trustees, and the Holborn District Board of
Works and the Clerkenwell Vestry contribute towards its upkeep. Several
other gardens in London have had a somewhat similarly checkered history.
The burial-ground in Hackney Road belonging to Shoreditch has a quaint
old building in it, once the parish watch-house, and used as a temporary
hospital at the time of the cholera visitation. A new-gateway has lately
been made at St. James’s, Ratcliff, leading into the churchyard garden,
erected as a memorial to the late vicar, the Rev. R. K. Arbuthnot, who
spent very many years in the parish and died in harness. A special
service was held on November 30, 1895, when the choir walked in
procession through the grounds, the ceremony ending by the singing of
the Rev. H. R. Haweis’s hymn, “The Homeland.” The gate was dedicated by
the Rural Dean, Prebendary Turner, present Rector of St. George’s in the
East, and opened by Sir Walter Besant. Greenwich and Woolwich
Churchyards, which were laid out by the Association, the cost of the
latter being borne by Mr. Passmore Edwards, are both fine gardens,
Woolwich is especially attractive, as it stands high above the river,
with an extensive view. H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge opened Greenwich
Churchyard, and H.R.H. the Duchess of Fife opened that of Woolwich. St.
James’s Churchyard, Bermondsey, was extensively used for airing clothes
before the Association laid it out.

In this matter of the conversion of churchyards into public gardens
there has, indeed, been a wonderful change in public opinion. It used to
be necessary to visit the clergy and to ask them to allow the grounds to
be laid out, with the result, usually, that the request or offer was
declined. But a new race of clergy seems to be springing up, and such
men as the present Rectors of Woolwich, Walworth, and Bethnal Green no
sooner came into possession of their livings than they wrote to the
Association, begging that their churchyards might be taken in hand. The
new Rector of Bethnal Green, already well known as the “head” of Oxford
House, not only asked the Association to lay out his churchyard but also
made a Christmas present of it to the Vestry, and ere long it will be a
most useful open space. And this has happened in very many places, most
of the parish churchyards being new public gardens, except Camberwell,
Rotherhithe, Battersea, Clapham, Wandsworth, Kensington, Wapping,
Homerton, and a few others; but there are still several district
churchyards which it would be very advantageous to lay out.

To return to some of the quainter spots. In the burial-ground of St.
George the Martyr, Bloomsbury, there stands a private gentleman’s
dissecting-room. Hackney Churchyard includes the ground surrounding the
tower of the older church (St. Augustine’s), while Bermondsey Churchyard
includes the cemetery of the Abbey. The little playground in Russell
Court, Drury Lane, which was a graveyard attached to the parish of St.
Mary le Strand, is immortalised as “Tom all alones” in Dickens’ “Bleak
House.” This was “that there berryin’ ground,” where, said poor Jo,
“‘they laid him as was werry good to me’”—the place “with houses looking
on on every side, save where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives
access to the iron gate....

“‘He was put there,’ says Jo, holding to the bar and looking in.

“‘Where? Oh, what a scene of horror!’

“‘There,’ says Jo, pointing, ‘over yinder—among them piles of bones, and
close to that there kitchen winder! ... Look at the rat! Hi! Look! There
he goes! Ho! into the ground.’”

When the Association got hold of it, it was little else than a heap of
decaying rubbish thrown from the surrounding houses, and the carcases of
eighteen cats were removed at once. It is now an asphalted recreation
ground, and is often crowded with children using the swings and the
seats. But it has lately lost its characteristic appearance, the
surrounding houses have been pulled down, and it is at present “opened
out.” The “kitchen winder” no longer leads into a kitchen, though the
iron gate is still in its original state, with the worn step upon which
Lady Deadlock’s life was brought to a close.

It must not be supposed that there has been no opposition to the
conversion of graveyards into public gardens. Many owners have refused
to allow it, and from time to time (though the times are now getting
very few and far between) letters have been written to the newspapers
pointing out the danger of admitting the public into them. But the
burial-grounds are there—in the midst of crowded streets—whether we like
them or no, and they become far more wholesome when fresh soil is
imported, good gravel paths made, and the ground drained, and when
grass, flowers, trees, and shrubs take the place of the rotting rubbish.
A certain gentleman, somewhat well known, wrote on several occasions to
the _Times_, arguing against the laying out of churchyards, and saying
that a “blue haze” hung about a square in New York which once was a
burial-ground. But no blue haze hangs about our gardens in London,
children are born and bred by the hundred in those very kitchens whose
“winders” look upon them, and they are of the utmost value as open
spaces in all parts of the town.

[Illustration: THE CHURCHYARD OF ALLHALLOWS, LONDON WALL.]

On the other hand, every consideration should be shown for those whose
objections to the transformation have been on sentimental grounds. In
Appendix D will be seen the steps to be taken for laying out and
throwing open to the public a disused churchyard or burial-ground, and
from this those who are not already aware of it may notice two
points—first, that any person interested in any particular tombstone has
the right and the power to prevent such tombstone from being moved;
second, that the inscriptions on the stones, and their exact positions
in a ground to be laid out, are preserved in perpetuity in the office of
the Registrar of the Diocese; whereas the actual inscriptions themselves
on the tombstones, whether a ground is closed, or open, are daily
becoming more defaced, and when it is closed there is no such record of
them and no guarantee that they may not be broken, shifted, or stolen.
Nor must it be imagined that the tombstones in all graveyard gardens
have necessarily to be moved. It is only where they are standing so
thickly that the ground cannot be laid out otherwise. In some places,
such as Spa Fields, not a single gravestone existed when it came into
the hands of the Association; in others, such as St. Mary le Strand,
there were only a few and these already on the walls; while in others,
again, such as Holy Trinity, Rotherhithe, there were so few that it was
not necessary to get a faculty to remove them, but they were left _in
situ_. There is rather an amusing tombstone at All Saints’, Poplar. It
stands tall and solitary in the middle of a path, which could not be
diverted because of other stones; and when the path was made this
particular monument was left in the very centre. I think the best way of
disposing of tombstones is by putting them against the walls, even if it
necessitates two or three rows. They are very dismal standing in groups,
as at St. James’s, Hampstead Road, and the wall of headstones at St.
Luke’s, Chelsea, is by no means attractive. Nor are the “dome” and
“trophy” at St. Pancras, to which I have already referred. In St. John’s
Garden, Horseferry Road, they are cemented into an even row against the
wall, and look as if they would last for ever.

I would not say that a converted graveyard is a better garden than a
converted square, but yet there is something more interesting about
it—it is so very human; and where there are monuments to notable persons
(which naturally are undisturbed) they form something with an historical
flavour about it which is attractive to look at. At Paddington
Churchyard, for instance, there is the grave of Mrs. Siddons, in front
of which it is said that Miss Mary Anderson, during her first tour in
England, was often seen to stand.

“Isn’t it foine!” said a ragged little urchin to me on the day when that
particular ground was thrown open to the public. He was simply bursting
with delight at having a garden to go into. I answered that I thought it
was. This reminds me of another little denizen of the slums, at
Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He was inside—I had just left the ground after the
opening ceremony. He peeped through the railings, overflowing with
smiles; “You can come _in_, Miss,” he said. I was not a Miss, but I
thanked him for the information.

[Illustration: IN THE GRAVEYARD OF ST. JOHN’S IN HORSEFERRY ROAD.]

Apart from the question of the moving of tombstones, there are many
people who think it irreverent for a ground once used for burial ever to
be used for recreation; they do not like the idea of people walking
about over the graves. This feeling is worthy of all respect. It is
found largely developed among the Jews, and has prevented them,
hitherto, from allowing any of their graveyards to be laid out as public
gardens. There are other people—and I am thankful that I do not come
across them—who would like our churches turned into theatres and our
churchyards into “Tivolis.” They do far more harm to the cause of open
spaces than do those who are slow to adapt themselves to modern ideas.
But as far as my experience goes, I have found that the people who
chiefly object to the conversion of burial-grounds into gardens are
those who stay at home. They have in their mind’s eye a picture of a
well-kept cemetery, where burials take place every day, or of a sweet
village churchyard, where the grass is soft and green and the graves are
peaceful and undisturbed. One of the last things that I should ever wish
to see is a village churchyard turned into the village recreation
ground; and it was sad to find as I did a short time ago, that a certain
rural churchyard in West Middlesex was being used as a drying-ground for
clean clothes. But the London disused graveyards are _so_ different,
that I believe it is only necessary to take these objectors (though they
will never come) into a neglected ground, to point out to them the
sinking graves, to help them to pick their way so that they may avoid
the dirty rubbish lying about, and the pitfalls into which they may
stumble, in order to convince them that the ground, if turned into a
public garden, would be treated with more reverence and in a more seemly
manner. Then show them a graveyard garden; let them sit there for a bit
to watch the people who come in and out, the men who have a brief rest
in the middle of the day, the women who can snatch a few moments from
their crowded and noisy homes, the big children with the “prams,” and
the little children they have in charge—and the change in the minds of
the objectors will be complete.

The laying out of the churchyards is being carried out in many large
towns besides London, though the initiative came from the metropolis.
Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Glasgow, and other places are adopting the
plan, and in Norwich there is a young and flourishing Open Space Society
which has already done much in this direction. As the City of Norwich
contains about fifty churches, nearly all of which have churchyards, the
Society has its work cut out for it, in this one way alone, for a good
many years.

My impression is that amongst the London burial-grounds which are still
closed and useless, there are fewer very untidy ones than there used to
be. The agitation that has led to the laying out of 80 or 90 as public
recreation grounds has also had a beneficial effect upon those which are
not yet laid out. If this is the case it is very satisfactory, and it is
an indirect result of the labours of the members of the Metropolitan
Public Gardens Association, and of others who have interested themselves
in the matter, which should be a cause for thankfulness and
encouragement.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                              CHAPTER XIII

                      THE CEMETERIES STILL IN USE.

           “With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
             And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
           This is the field and acre of our God,
             This is the place where human harvests grow.”
                                          LONGFELLOW.


BESIDES the churchyards of Tooting, Plumstead, Lee, and Eltham, that are
still available for interments, and some others, such as Charlton and
Fulham, where burials in existing graves or vaults are sanctioned on
application to the Home Secretary, ten burial-grounds, which can hardly
be called cemeteries, are still being used in London. These are the
South Street or Garratt’s Lane ground at Wandsworth, consecrated in
1808, where widows, widowers, and parents of deceased persons already
interred there can be buried, and the Holly Lane ground in Hampstead,
which was consecrated in 1812, and is occasionally used; the graveyard
by the Friends’ Meeting-House in Stoke Newington, those in the convents
in King Street, Hammersmith, and Portobello Road, and one in Newgate
Gaol (to all of which I have referred); and a burial-ground crowded with
tombstones behind St. Thomas’ Roman Catholic Church in Fulham, where new
graves are still dug, although there appears to be no room for more
monuments, and although densely-populated streets are on every side. The
other three are Jewish grounds, one in Ball’s Pond, N., and two in Mile
End, E., and they are described in Chapter VIII.

It will be noticed that when the Act was passed, under which the
metropolitan burial-grounds were to be closed, seven of the new
cemeteries were already in use, and while the burial-grounds were being
closed, other cemeteries were being started.

The Act for the formation of Kensal Green Cemetery was passed in 1832,
after unremitting efforts on the part of Mr. G. F. Carden. It is
situated by the Harrow Road, not far short of Willesden Junction, and
when first made was practically in the country. Now it is in the midst
of large colonies of small houses. It has, as is usual, a consecrated
and an unconsecrated portion, with a chapel in each. Its establishment
led the way to the formation of other cemeteries, but most of the later
ones were acquired by the parishes, not started by companies.

Several of the large cemeteries which have thus sprung into existence
are just outside the metropolitan area, but the following are within the
boundary of the County of London, and are tabulated in the order in
which they were established:—

   ─────────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────┬────────
                                                    │       │DATE OF
                     NAME OF CEMETERY.              │  SIZE │ FIRST
                                                    │  IN   │ INTER-
                                                    │ACRES. │ MENT.
   ─────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────┼────────
    1. All Souls’ Cemetery, Kensal Green, W.        │  69¼  │  1833
    2. The South Metropolitan Cemetery, Norwood,    │  40   │  1838
       S.E.                                         │       │
    3. St. James’ Cemetery, Highgate, N.W.          │  38   │  1839
    4. Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, N.     │  32   │  1840
    5. Brompton Cemetery, or the West London, or    │  38   │  1840
       London and Westminster Cemetery, W.          │       │
    6. All Saints’ Cemetery, Nunhead, S.E.          │  50   │  1840
    7. City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery,   │  33   │  1841
       South Grove, Mile End, E.                    │       │
    8. Lambeth Cemetery, Tooting Graveney,  S.W.    │  41   │  1854
    9. Charlton Cemetery, S.E.                      │   8   │  1855
   10. St. Mary’s Cemetery, Putney, Putney Lower    │   3   │  1855
       Common, S.W.                                 │       │
   11. Woolwich Cemetery, Wickham Lane, S.E.        │  32   │  1856
   12. Camberwell Cemetery, Peckham Rye.  S.E.      │  29½  │  1856
   13. Greenwich Hospital Cemetery, Westcombe, S.E. │   6   │  1857
   14. Deptford Cemetery (St. Paul’s), Lewisham,    │  17   │  1858
       S.E.                                         │       │
   15. St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Cemetery, Kensal   │  30   │  1858
       Green, W.                                    │       │
   16. Lewisham Cemetery,  S.E.                     │  15½  │  1858
   17. St. Mary’s Cemetery, Battersea, S.W.         │  8½   │  1860
   18. Fulham Cemetery, S.W,                        │  12½  │  1865
   19. Hammersmith Cemetery, Fulham, S.W.           │  16½  │  1869
   20. Lee Cemetery, Hither Green, S.E.             │  10   │  1873
   21. Hampstead Cemetery, Fortune Green, N.W.      │  19¼  │  1876
   22. Wandsworth Cemetery, Magdalen Road, S.W.     │  12   │  1878
   23. Plumstead Cemetery, S.E.                     │  32¼  │  1890
   24. Greenwich Cemetery                           │  15   │
       Total                                        │ 608¼  │
   ─────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────┴────────


Some of these cemeteries have been added to since they were first
formed, and, considering the rate at which they are being used, they
will all need to be enlarged in a very few years—that is if the present
mode of interment continues to be the ordinary one.

[Illustration: SITE OF THE GROUND at WORMWOOD SCRUBS, in the Parish of
Hammersmith]

It must not be imagined that land was secured for these cemeteries
without difficulty. The inhabitants of the districts in which it was
proposed to place them naturally petitioned against their formation. A
huge scheme for securing ninety-two acres (the Roundwood Farm Estate),
between Willesden and Harlesden, for the Great Extramural Cemetery
Association, was opposed by the Middlesex magistrates and others, and
was not sanctioned by the Secretary of State. Part of this site is now a
public park. The parish of Kensington applied for permission to form a
cemetery of thirty acres at Wormwood SCRUBS, but had eventually to go as
far out of London as Hanwell in order to secure a suitable plot.
Unfortunately some public land was allotted. I believe that Norwood
Cemetery was formerly a part of Norwood Common, and Putney and Barnes
Cemeteries (the latter being just outside the boundary of London) are on
Putney and Barnes Commons. The cemetery at Tooting was once meadow-land
known as Baggery Mead, and for most of the others farm land and fields
were taken. Happily it would now be very difficult to acquire a piece of
common or lammas land for any such purpose, as we know far better than
we did how to preserve our greatest treasures. How disastrous it would
be if, when our village churchyards could no longer be used, the village
greens were turned into burial-grounds!

[Illustration: NORWOOD CEMETERY ABOUT 1851.]

The accompanying picture of Norwood Cemetery was published in 1851, and
shows a single row of tombstones by the paths. Now there is row upon row
behind these, the place seems to be entirely filled, and “yet there is
room.” These grounds are all much alike, but Norwood is peculiar in
containing a small parochial burial-ground belonging to St. Mary at
Hill, in the City (the church of the Church Army), and another belonging
to the Greeks. Most dwellers in London are acquainted with one or other
of the cemeteries, some people finding pleasure in walking about in
them, and sitting on the seats provided for visitors among the tombs;
and they are, on the whole, well looked after and neatly kept. It is
rather to be regretted that the custom of putting quaint and interesting
epitaphs on the stones is so entirely a thing of the past; the
monotonous texts do not take their place at all.

There is a special interest attached to Kensal Green Cemetery from its
having been the first, but I think it is also the worst. Mr. Loftie
describes it as “the bleakest, dampest, most melancholy of all the
burial-grounds of London.” I doubt if it is the dampest, though the soil
is a heavy clay, for I think that the Tower Hamlets Cemetery is probably
far damper. Nor is Kensal Green so overcrowded or untidy as the Tower
Hamlets, where gravestones are tumbling and lying about, apparently
unclaimed and uncared for, amongst dead shrubs and rank grass; it has
also not quite so large a proportion of “common graves” (for eight
bodies or so), as there are in some of the other grounds, and the number
of burials per acre has not been quite so enormous as, for instance, at
Tooting, Brompton, or Abney Park. The last-named ground, when it had
only been opened fifteen years, was described in an official report as
being “a mass of corruption underneath,” the soil being a “damp, blue
clay.” But Kensal Green Cemetery is truly awful, with its catacombs, its
huge mausoleums, family vaults, statues, broken pillars, weeping images,
and oceans of tombstones, good, bad, and indifferent. I think the
indifferent are to be preferred, the bad should not be anywhere, and the
good are utterly out of place. It is also the largest in the metropolis,
and as the Roman Catholic ground joins it there are in this spot, or
there very soon will be, ninety-nine acres of dead bodies.

[Illustration: THE TOMB OF PRINCESS SOPHIA.]

There are many sad sights in London, but to me there are few so sad as
one of these huge graveyards. Not that the idea of the numbers of dead
beneath the soil produces any thoughts of melancholy, but I feel
inclined to exclaim with the disciples, “To what purpose is this waste?”
Can there be any more profitless mode of throwing away money than by
erecting costly tombstones? They are of no use to the departed, and they
are grievous burdens laid on the shoulders of succeeding generations.
The only people who profit by them are a few marble and granite
merchants, and a few monumental masons—and they might be better
employed. The whole funeral system is an extravagant imposition, and has
been for years. It may be said that the heavy trappings, the plumes, the
scarves, &c., are going out of fashion; and this is true, but other
things are taking their place. I saw the other day a neat little copy of
the Burial Service, bound in black leather, with a cross outside. On the
fly leaf was printed the name of the person to be buried, with the date
of death, place of interment, &c. This book was given by the undertaker
to each of those who attended the funeral, and as the ceremony was
conducted by a Nonconformist minister, who arranged it in accordance
with his own individual predilection, the little book was useless! I
merely mention this as a specimen of the way in which the expenses of a
modern funeral may be mounted up. The rich lavish their money on costly,
almost indestructible coffins, which it would be far better to do
without altogether, and on masses of flowers that die unseen, while the
poor go into debt to buy mourning, which they often pawn before a month
is over; and many a widow and family, who have a hard struggle to
provide daily food, deny themselves the necessities of life, and sow the
seeds of disease and want, in order to set up a tombstone or monument on
a grave. And who sees it? A few people may occasionally go to Kensal
Green to look at the tomb of Princess Sophia, the family mausoleum of
the Duke of Cambridge, or the monuments erected to the Duke of Sussex,
Thackeray, Mulready, Tom Hood, George Cruikshank (whose body has been
removed to St. Paul’s Cathedral), Leigh Hunt, John Leech, Hugh
Littlejohn, or Sydney Smith; but they are utterly spoilt by their
surroundings. It is hardly possible to appreciate such memorials when
they are closely hedged in by others in all descriptions of stone, of
all shapes and sizes, and in all styles of architecture. And it is
appalling to think of the amount of money that has been spent on these
massive monuments. How many a church or chapel might have been built in
a growing district; how many a beautiful old church now falling to decay
might have been restored[9]; how many missionaries might have been sent
to foreign lands; how many hospital beds might have been endowed; how
many struggling families, or sick members of the same, might have been
given a holiday in the country or by the sea; how many open spaces might
have been secured and laid out for the people; how many drinking
fountains might have been erected; how many grants might have been made
to voluntary schools or secular institutions for benefiting mankind; and
how many objects of real beauty and antiquarian interest might have been
preserved! It is impossible to give an answer to these questions—perhaps
one would be sadder still if one could.

Footnote 9:

  Four English Cathedrals are at the present time in urgent need of
  funds for restoration.

The Jews think a great deal of their tombstones, and erect very large
ones. When one is “set up” they have a special ceremony, which they
advertise beforehand, and the friends and relations gather at the grave.
I have already referred to the very different custom of the Society of
Friends—the Quakers—and I trust that they may long preserve the
simplicity of their burial practices, for “it consorts not with our
principles,” said W. Beck and T. F. Ball, in their history of the London
Friends’ Meetings (1869), “unduly to exalt the honoured dead; their
names we canonise not, and o’er their graves we raise no costly
monument.” It has been the dying wish of very many of our best men that
their bodies might be laid to rest in quietness, and without undue
expense or show. Unfortunately their wishes have not always been carried
out. Sir John Morden, who founded Morden College or Almshouses for
decayed Merchants, in Blackheath, left directions in his will that he
should be interred in the chapel of the college “without any pomp or
singing boys, but decently.” I do not think the singing boys would have
hurt him, but his wish to dispense with “pomp” was most praiseworthy.
His funeral _was_ made the occasion of a considerable ceremony, but, as
it took place at 9 o’clock in the evening, perhaps it was unaccompanied
by such an institution as a champagne lunch. His name and his fame have
survived by reason of the noble work he did, There is a deep lesson in
Sir Christopher Wren’s epitaph in St. Paul’s Cathedral:—

                  “Si momentum requiris circumspice.”

Longfellow sang the same strain in his well-known verses:—

                “Alike are life and death
                   When life in death survives,
                 And the interrupted breath
                   Inspires a thousand lives.

                 Were a star quenched on high,
                   For ages would its light,
                 Still travelling downward from the sky,
                   Shine on our mortal sight.

                 So when a good man dies,
                   For years beyond our ken,
                 The light he leaves behind him lies
                   Upon the paths of men.”

And it is reiterated still more beautifully in the touching conversation
between the schoolmaster and Little Nell in Dickens’ “Old Curiosity
Shop,” towards the close of the fifty-fourth chapter.

[Illustration: IN KENSAL GREEN CEMETERY.]

I cannot conclude this division of my subject without an earnest appeal
to those who are contemplating erecting a tombstone to the memory of a
beloved relation or friend, to consider beforehand which is the wisest
way of commemorating the departed,—whether the simplest memorial is not
after all the best, “for sublimity always is simple,” whether it may not
be better still to have none at all in a cemetery already overcrowded
with monuments, and whether it is well to add indefinitely to the
forests of practically imperishable gravestones which are gradually
surrounding London and our other large towns.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                              CHAPTER XIV

                       A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE.

                    “Now our sands are almost run:
                     More or little, and then dumb.”
                                  SHAKESPEARE.


I ACKNOWLEDGE a hesitation in writing this chapter, because there are
many people who feel very strongly upon the subject of the disposal of
the dead, and whose feelings I wish in no way to appear to treat with
anything but the greatest consideration.

The custom of burying the body has been in practice in England ever
since Christianity was established here, and so completely did burial
take the place of burning that the latter expedient has never been
formally forbidden, or, until 1884, even referred to, in English law. It
is well that this fact should be clearly understood, viz., that it is
not illegal to dispose of a dead body by other means than by burial in
earth (unless it should be proved a public nuisance at common law), nor
has it been illegal in England in the past, but it has merely not been
the custom, “inhumation” having been systematically practised for a
thousand years.

It is natural that many beautiful thoughts should have been expressed by
our greatest writers in connection with the burial of the dead; it has
been a theme upon which poets have loved to dwell. The mourners, the
lych-gate, the weather-worn stones, the solemn stillness, the
yew-tree—they all furnish subjects for reflection and for verse.
Tennyson refers in terms of tenderest meaning to the yew-tree in the
churchyard in his “In Memoriam,” and even Tom Hood puts aside his joking
mood when he thinks of it—

                “How wide the yew-tree spreads its gloom,
                 And o’er the dead lets fall its dew,
                 As if in tears it wept for them,
                 The many human families
                 That sleep around its stem!”

I confess I love these associations dearly, and it would be hard indeed
to give them up. But will they ever cling around our cemeteries? I think
not.

On the other hand, many very curious notions have arisen in connection
with this subject—notions as groundless as they are quaint. I will
mention three only, which are illustrated by the two following epitaphs,
the first of which is from St. Olave’s, Jewry, and the second from
Bermondsey, as quoted by Maitland:—

        1. “Under this Tomb, the sacred Ashes hold,
          The drossie Part of more celestiall Gold;
          The Body of a Man, a Man of Men,
          Whose worth to write at large, would loose my Pen.
          Then do thy worst, Death, glut thyself with Dust,
          The precious Soul is mounted to the Just.
          Yet, Reader, when thou read’st, both read and weep,
          That Men so good, so grave, so wise, do sleep.”

        2. “Where once the famous _Elton_ did entrust
          The Preservation of his sacred Dust,
          Lyes pious _Whitaker_, both justly twined,
          Both dead one Grave, both living had one Mind;
          And by their dissolution have supply’d
          The hungry Grave, and Fame and Heaven beside.
          This stone protect their Bones, while Fame enrolls
          Their deathless Name, and Heaven embrace their Souls.”

In the first we are told to weep because so good a man has gone, from
the second we are led to believe that the gravestone protects the body
of the departed, and both contain the idea that the grave or earth is
anxious to receive the mortal remains, and is more comfortable for
having done so. First there is the question of the weeping. It is very
usual, on gravestones and monuments, to find the order given to the
reader to “drop a tear.” And yet how impossible it is to carry it out.
Imagine dropping a tear all along a line of graves of people of whom one
has never heard, and who died 250 years ago! But happily there are quite
as many injunctions to the contrary, and we are as often told not to
weep:—

          “Weep not for me, friends, though death us do sever,
           I’m going to do nothing for ever and ever.”

This epitaph to a poor overworked woman is, perhaps, flippant. Here is a
more serious one, which was in the church of St. Martin Outwich:—

           “Reader, thou may’st forbear to put thine Eyes
            To charge For Tears, to mourn these Obsequies:
            Such charitable Drops would best be given
            To those who late, or never, come to Heaven.
            But here you would, by weeping on this Dust,
            Allay his Happiness with thy Mistrust;
            Whose pious closing of his youthful Years
            Deserves thy Imitation, not thy Tears.”
                           (_In memory of John Wight_, 1633.)

Secondly there is the question of the protecting gravestone. This is
also not uncommonly met with. The poet Gray’s well-known “Elegy in a
Country Churchyard” contains the following verse:—

          “Yet e’en these bones from insult to protect
             Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
           With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
             Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.”

But there could be few notions more false. Gravestones have often enough
been “moved about to give more appearance of room,” and oftener still
cleared away altogether, while the bodies beneath have been cast out
almost as soon as they were buried; and unfortunately there are many
country churchyards now which are terribly overcrowded. A short time
after the death of Lawrence Sterne his admirers collected money to put a
monument on his grave in St. George’s burial-ground, Bayswater Road. It
was erected in what was supposed to be about the right position—no one
could point to the exact spot where the body lay.

Thirdly we have the idea of the hungering grave, which is carried to a
ridiculous point in this passage from “The Wonderful Yeare 1603, wherein
is shewed the picture of London lying sicke of the Plague.”—“Let us look
forth, and try what consolation rises with the sun. Not any, not any;
for, before the jewel of the morning be fully set in silver, hundred
hungry graves stand gaping; and every one of them (as at a breakfast)
hath swallowed downe ten or eleven lifeless carcases. Before dinner, in
the same gulfe, are twice so many more devoured. And, before the Sun
takes his rest, those numbers are doubled.”

[Illustration: SHEEP IN THE SAVOY CHURCHYARD ABOUT 1825.]

Now the grave is not hungry, and the earth does not want dead bodies; it
is better without them. Yet, strangely enough, there is a certain
benefit to be derived from a moderate supply, and the most advanced
cremationists advocate the use of the few remaining ashes as manure for
some kinds of farm lands. Sir Henry Thompson, a cremationist worthy of
every honour, has referred to the great increase there would be in the
fish supply if burial at sea were generally practised, a plan approved
of by some _anti_-cremationists. We have seen that churchyard water has
been drunk for generations, and very bad it is. Churchyard poultry and
churchyard mutton are also common enough, many a poor parson being glad
to earn a few pounds in the year by allowing sheep to graze among the
graves. This is all very well in some country places, but it used to be
practised in London, and sheep have been actually killed by swallowing
with the grass the poisonous products of the overfilled ground. In the
Charterhouse graveyard there are some magnificent wall fruit trees, such
as are seldom seen in crowded towns; one of the Stepney pest-fields
became a market-garden; while breweries and burial-grounds seem to be
closely associated with each other.

But the question of paramount importance is how to stop the increase of
cemeteries. Are we ever to allow England to be divided like a
chess-board into towns and burial-places? What we have to consider is
how to dispose of the dead without taking so much valuable space from
the living. In the metropolitan area alone we have almost filled (and in
some places overfilled) twenty-four new cemeteries within sixty years,
with an area of above six hundred acres; and this is as nothing compared
with the huge extent of land used for interments just outside the limits
of the metropolis. If the cemeteries are not to extend indefinitely they
must in time be built upon, or they must be used for burial over and
over again, or the ground must revert to its original state as
agricultural land, or we must turn our parks and commons into
cemeteries, and let our cemeteries be our only recreation grounds—which
Heaven forbid!

I fail to understand how any serious-minded person can harbour the idea
that burning the body can be any stumbling-block in the way of its
resurrection, for the body returns “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust
to dust,” whether the process takes fifty years or fifty minutes. But
many people have a horror of the notion—they know it is sanitary, but
they think it irreverent. There are other alternatives, worthy of
careful consideration. Some have advocated burial at sea; others, and
among them Sir Seymour Haden, have pressed forward the advantages of
using perishable coffins, wicker baskets, and the like—a suggestion as
excellent as it is economical, for the sooner the earth and the body
meet the better it is. Perhaps, in this scientific generation, some one
may invent a totally new method of disposing of the dead, which will
commend itself both to those who advocate cremation and to those who
dislike it. He would indeed be a public benefactor, deserving of the
Faraday medal. But that cremation is on the increase cannot be denied.
Even Kensal Green Cemetery has now a “Columbarium,” which is an elegant
name for pigeon-holes for cinerary urns, built in 1892, with forty-two
little cupboards. Since the decision of Mr. Justice Stephen in the case
of Dr. William Price, in February, 1884, it has been recognised as legal
in England, and the crematoriums at Woking and elsewhere have been
frequently used. But if the practice is to become at all general it must
be advocated by a different set of people. It has, to a certain extent,
happened hitherto that those who have been cremated have been more or
less associated (I hope I may not be misunderstood here) with the
advanced school—those that consider themselves “enlightened,” Radicals,
or Socialists, or persons of little or no professed religious views.
This was not the case with the promoters of cremation, but it has been
so with some of their disciples, or at any rate many anti-cremationists
think so. The Rev. H. R. Haweis is excellent in his way—I speak of him
with the greatest respect—but I venture to think that cremation will not
be taken up very largely until a few such men as the Archbishop of York,
the Chief Rabbi, the Rev. Prebendary Webb Peploe, and Father Staunton
pronounce in its favour. Then it would soon be necessary to have a
crematorium in every cemetery.

[Illustration: THE COLUMBARIUM AT KENSAL GREEN.]

It is morbid and useless to make previous preparation for death, except
by life insurance, a proper will, and other business-like arrangements
for the benefit of survivors. It is foolish to erect, as many have done,
a tomb during lifetime (like the Miller’s tomb on Highdown Hill,
Sussex), to keep a coffin under the bed, or to have a picture of a
skeleton always on the wall. Such eccentric practices as that of the
gentleman who died in a house by Hyde Park, and, at his wish, had his
body kept in a coffin under a glass case on the roof of the house, are
not to be admired. We can never forget that our life here will have its
ending, our friends, companions, and neighbours are constantly leaving
us, our daily paper has its daily obituary column, and surely no
artificial method is needed to remind us of this fact. Cowper has said:

                  “Like crowded forest-trees we stand,
                     And some are marked to fall;
                   The axe will smite at God’s command,
                     And soon shall smite us all.”

The utmost we need do, if we do not want our bodies to rest in the
cemeteries, is to tell our friends that we wish them cremated, or buried
in perishable coffins, or quietly laid in some far-off, rural spot. All
else we may leave—it is in higher hands than ours; and already the
Church on earth, imperfect, faulty, and divided though she be, has

                       “mystic, sweet communion
                     With those whose rest is won.”

A few words in closing about the future of the disused burial-grounds in
London. I think they are tolerably safe now. I have attempted to show
how many there still are, closed and idle, or being used for a totally
wrong purpose, between Hampstead and Plumstead, Hammersmith and Bow; but
they are surely, if but slowly, being reclaimed and changed, one by one,
into places of rest and recreation for the living. The public mind has
so far awaked to the necessity of securing all the breathing-spaces
which may be had, that the smallest corner of land in which interments
can have been said to have taken place now forms a subject of litigation
if attempts are made to build upon it. Preservation is the first step
upon the ladder, acquisition the next, while conversion crowns them all.

I can foresee no better fate for the disused graveyards than that they
should become gardens or playgrounds. The churchyards must be gardens,
as green and bright and neat as they can be made, for the older people;
and the unconsecrated grounds, detached from places of worship, will
serve as playgrounds, many of them having to be reclaimed from their
present use as builders’ yards, cooperages, &c. Spa Fields, Clerkenwell,
a burial-ground to the history of which I have already referred, is a
typical London playground, in the very centre of the town, although
surrounded by courts and streets with such rural names as Rosoman
Street, Wood Street, Pear-tree Court and Vineyard Walk—grim reminders of
what the district was like a hundred years or more ago. Exmouth Street,
behind which this open space is situated, is worth a visit. I was there
recently, one Monday afternoon. Trucks and stalls with wares of all
kinds lined the narrow road, and there seemed scarcely a square yard
without a person on it. One woman was selling old garments, of which she
had only about six, and these were spread out on the road itself—in the
mud. A little farther on I noticed a stall, where two women were making
purchases of “freshly-boiled horse-flesh at 2d. a lb.” This was not cut
up as for cat’s meat, but was in large, dark brown, shapeless-looking
joints. In the middle of the street is the Church of the Holy Redeemer,
a huge structure in imitation of an Italian church. It stands on the
site of the Spa Fields Chapel, an old round building, removed a few
years ago, belonging to the Lady Huntingdon Connexion, which had a stone
obelisk in front of it to the memory of Lady Huntingdon, who lived in a
neighbouring house. Behind the church is the open space, which is nearly
two acres in extent. Originally taken for a tea-garden the speculation
failed, and the ground was used as a burial-ground, slightly lower fees
being charged than in the neighbouring churchyards. After being grossly
overcrowded it was closed for interments in 1853. For several years the
space has been used as a drill-ground by the 3rd Middlesex Artillery and
the 39th Middlesex Rifles; and in 1885 the Metropolitan Public Gardens
Association entered into negotiations with the owner, the Marquis of
Northampton, and he generously handed it over at a nominal rental for
the purposes of a children’s playground, and subsequently added to it
half an acre of adjoining land. The association drained it and carted a
large amount of soil and gravel into it, and put up some gymnastic
apparatus in the additional piece, which was not a part of the
burial-ground. The entrance is from Vineyard Walk, Farringdon Road. When
I last visited the playground, although it was a chilly afternoon, a
great many children were enjoying themselves, and some women were
swinging their little ones. But after or between school-hours is the
proper time to see it. Then it is crowded, and every swing, rope, pole,
bar, ladder, and skipping-rope is in use, and children are running about
all over the open part of the ground.

[Illustration: SPA FIELDS PLAYGROUND.]

It is a strange-looking place. On the north-west side is the unfinished
apse of the Church of the Holy Redeemer, and on the south side is the
parish mortuary, the presence of which does not seem to have any
sobering effect upon the children. I watched four boys on the giant’s
stride, and when they had vacated it a little girl of about eight years,
who had been sitting on a seat with a baby on her lap, and was knitting
a long strip with odd bits of  wools, beckoned to another
sad-looking little girl sitting on my seat, and off they went to take
the boys’ places. The baby was deposited on yet another seat, and it
wept copiously. But the children did not heed its cries; they had a
silent and vigorous turn at the giant’s stride, each holding on to two
ropes. They neither spoke nor smiled, and, when they had finished, the
one returned to her baby and her knitting and the other clambered on to
the back of the long-suffering and well-worn vaulting-horse. They are
very strong, some of these poor children, and it is wonderful what they
can do. The shabbiest often seem the most active. I noticed one little
lad, whose clothes were literally dropping to pieces—shoes, stockings,
knickerbockers, and blouse all in tatters—and he twisted himself about
on the handle swings, putting his toes through the handles, and
performing all sorts of gyrations which many a well-fed boy, clad in the
best of flannels, would have given his all to be able to accomplish.

A playground such as Spa Fields is about as different from an ordinary
village green, where country boys and girls romp and shout, as two
things with the same purpose can well be. For the soft, green grass, you
have gritty gravel; for the cackling geese who waddle into the pond, you
have a few stray cats walking on the walls; for the picturesque cottages
overgrown with roses and honeysuckle, you have the backs of little
houses, monotonous in structure, in colour, and in dirt; and instead of
resting “underneath the shadow vast of patriarchal tree,” you must be
content with a wooden bench close to the wall, bearing on its back the
name of the association which laid out the ground. But it is only
necessary to have once seen the joy with which the children of our
crowded cities hail the formation of such a playground, and the use to
which they put it, to be convinced that the trouble of acquiring it, or
the cost of laying it out, is amply repaid. They are so crowded at home,
so crowded at school, so crowded in the roads, that it seems hard to
lose one opportunity of securing a piece of ground, however small, where
they can be free to stretch their arms, their legs, and their lungs,
away from the dangers and the sad sights of the streets, under the
charge of a kindly caretaker,

                    “And where beadles and policemen
                     Never frighten them away.”

And can the dead beneath the soil object to the little feet above them?
I am sure they cannot. Even Gray, in describing Stoke Pogis Churchyard,
which is surrounded by meadows, rejoiced to see the “little footsteps
lightly print the ground.” Such a space as Spa Fields may never have
been consecrated for the use of the dead, but perchance the omission is
in part redeemed by its dedication to the living.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                              APPENDIX A.


BURIAL-GROUNDS WITHIN THE METROPOLITAN AREA, WHICH STILL EXIST, WHOLLY
    OR IN PART. ABRIDGED FROM THE RETURN PREPARED FOR THE LONDON COUNTY
    COUNCIL IN THE SPRING OF 1895, AND CORRECTED UP TO DATE.


                               HAMPSTEAD.

1. _St. John’s Churchyard._—1½ acres in extent. It is full of
tombstones, but very neatly kept, and although not handed over to any
public authority, nor provided with seats, the gates are usually open.

2. _Burial-ground in Holly Lane._—1¼ acres. This is still used for
interments, and new graves are occasionally dug here. It was consecrated
in 1812. It is tidily kept, and the gates are open whenever the gardener
is on the ground.

3. _Hampstead Cemetery._—19½ acres. First used in 1876. Open daily. It
is well kept, except the part nearest to Fortune Green.

4. _The Tumulus, Parliament Hill Fields._—Excavated in 1894 by the
London County Council, and said to be an ancient British burial-place of
the early bronze period. Railed round for its protection.

N.B.—There are tumuli in Greenwich Park, and evidences of Roman
cemeteries and other ancient burial-places in several parts of London.


                            ST. MARYLEBONE.

5. _St. Marylebone Episcopal Chapel-ground_, High Street.—⅓ acre

This chapel was the parish church until 1816. The churchyard is full of
tombstones, closed and fairly neat.

6. _St. Marylebone Burial-ground_, Paddington Street, north side.—¾
acre. A mortuary was built in it a few years ago. The ground was
consecrated in 1772. It is closed to the public, but neatly kept and
used as a garden for the inmates of the adjoining workhouse.

7. _St. Marylebone_ (also called _St. George’s_) _Burial-ground_,
Paddington Street, south side.—2¼ acres. Consecrated in 1733, and very
much used. Since 1886 it has been maintained as a public garden by the
vestry, and is well kept.

8. _St. John’s Wood Chapel-ground._—An additional burial-ground for the
parish of Marylebone. 6 acres. The tombstones have not been moved, but
the Marylebone Vestry maintains the ground as a public garden. It has a
few seats in it, and is neatly kept.


                              PADDINGTON.

9. _St. Mary’s Churchyard._—1 acre. The tombstones have not been moved,
but the ground has been neatly laid out, and is kept open by the vestry.

10. _The Old Burial-ground_, Paddington.—3 acres. This adjoins St.
Mary’s Churchyard, and was laid out and opened as a public garden by the
vestry in 1885. It contains the site of an older church, dedicated to
St. James.


                              KENSINGTON.

11. _St. Mary Abbots Churchyard._—About 1¼ acres. The graveyard is
smaller than it was 20 years ago because the present church is far
larger than the original one, and recently a long porch or cloister has
been added. It is neatly laid out but closed to the public.

12. _Holy Trinity Churchyard_, Brompton.—3½ acres. There are public
thoroughfares through this ground, but they are railed off, and the
churchyard is closed and has a neglected appearance.

13. _Brompton Cemetery_, also called West London Cemetery and London and
Westminster Cemetery.—38 acres. First used in 1840. By 1889 upwards of
155,000 bodies had been interred there. It is crowded with tombstones,
and is in the midst of a thickly populated district.

14. _All Souls Cemetery_, Kensal Green, partly in Hammersmith.—69 acres.
Open daily and neatly kept. This cemetery has been in use since 1833,
and it is crowded with tombstones and contains catacombs and numerous
vaults and mausoleums.

15. _Burial-ground of the Franciscan Convent of St. Elizabeth_,
Portobello Road.—This is a triangular grass plot, not above ¼ acre in
size, in the garden behind the convent. It is surrounded by trees and
neatly kept. It was sanctioned by the Home Secretary in 1862, and is
only used for the interment of nuns, of whom five have been buried here,
the first in 1870 and the last in 1893.


                              HAMMERSMITH.

16. _St. Paul’s Churchyard._—1 acre. This is smaller than it used to be,
the present church being larger than the old one, and a piece of the
ground having been taken in 1884 to widen the road. It is neatly laid
out and often open, but not a public recreation ground. It was
consecrated in 1631, and frequently enlarged.

17. _St. Peter’s Churchyard_, Black Lion Lane.—1,800 square yards.
Closed and untidy.

18. _New West End Baptist Chapel-ground_, King Street.—¼ acre. This is
north and south of the chapel, the northern part having been encroached
upon. Closed and neatly kept.

19. _Wesleyan Chapel Burial-ground_, Waterloo Street.—The chapel has
been supplanted by a Board School, and the playground is the site of the
burial-ground. It is tar-paved, has a few trees in it, and is about 500
square yards in size.

20. _Friends Burial-ground_, near the Creek.—300 square yards. This is
on the north side of the Friends meeting-house, and is closed, but very
neat. There are a few flat tombstones, and burials took place until
about 1865.

21. _St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Cemetery_, Kensal Green.—30 acres. The
first interment was in 1858, and it is now crowded with vaults,
tombstones, &c. It is open daily and neatly kept.

22. _The Cemetery of the Benedictine Nunnery_, Fulham Palace Road.—This
is a small burial-ground in the garden. According to a report from the
Home Office it is about 14 by 12 yards in extent. It was in use before
1829, but was closed for interment some years ago.

23. _The Cemetery of the Convent_ (_Nazareth Home_), in Hammersmith
Road.—This is at the extreme end of the garden, under the wall of Great
Church Lane. It is not more than 12 yards by 9 yards, and is used for
the interment of the sisters, burials only taking place at considerable
intervals. This ground has been in use for upwards of 40 years.


                                FULHAM.

24. _All Saints’ Churchyard._—Two acres or more. This is kept open
during the summer months, and has seats in it, but the gravestones have
not been moved, nor has the ground been handed over to any public
authority for maintenance. It is neatly kept. No new graves are dug in
it, but where the rights can be proved certain old vaults are still
occasionally used.

25. _St. Mary’s Churchyard_, Hammersmith Road.—Size ½ acre. This ground
is closed, but fairly tidy. Several of the tombstones have been moved.

26. _St. John’s Churchyard_, Walham Green.—½ acre. There are only a few
tombstones on the north side of the church and none on the south side,
and the ground is closed and appears neglected.

27. _St. Thomas’s Roman Catholic Churchyard_, Fulham.—2,600 square
yards. This ground was closed by order in Council in 1857, but only
partially, for new graves are still dug in it, in the midst of a
densely-populated district of new streets. The gate is usually open.

28. _Lillie Road pest-field_ (the orchard of Normand House).—The site of
this orchard, then 4 acres in extent, was used extensively for burials
at the time of the Great Plague. Lintaine Grove now occupies part of it,
and a row of houses in Lillie Road. Only about ¾ acre is still unbuilt
upon, at the corner of Tilton Street, and this is offered for sale.

29. _Fulham Cemetery._—12½ acres. First used in 1865. Open daily.

30. _Hammersmith Cemetery_, in Fulham Fields.—16½ acres. First used in
1869. Open daily.


                                CHELSEA.

31. _St. Luke’s Churchyard_ (the old church on the Embankment).—¼ acre.
This ground is closed and neglected.

32. _St. Luke’s Churchyard_ (the new church in Robert Street).—2¼ acres.
This ground was consecrated in 1812, and contains vaults and catacombs.
It was laid out as a public garden and is maintained by the Chelsea
Vestry.

33. _Old Burial-ground_, King’s Road.—¾ acre. Given to the parish of
Chelsea by Sir Hans Sloane, consecrated in 1736, and enlarged in 1790. A
mortuary has been built in it. It is laid out as a garden for the use of
the inmates of the adjoining workhouse. Fragments of an old chapel and
graveyard have been found here.

34. _Chelsea Hospital Graveyard_, Queen’s Road.—1⅓ acres. This ground
was used for the interment of the pensioners. It is closed, but neatly
kept.

35. _All Souls Roman Catholic Burial-ground_, Cadogan Terrace.—1½ acres.
The adjoining chapel (St. Mary’s) was consecrated in 1811. The ground is
closed and full of tombstones.

36. _Moravian Burial-ground_, Milman’s Row.—The part actually used for
interments is fenced in and closed. It is neatly kept, the tombstones
being very small flat ones. It belongs to the Congregation of the
Moravian Church in Fetter Lane, E.C., and was closed by order in Council
about 8 years ago.

37. _Jewish Burial-ground_, Fulham Road.—½ acre. It belongs to the
Western Synagogue, St. Alban’s Place, S.W., and was first used in 1813.
It is closed to the public except between 11 and 4 on Sundays.


                     ST. GEORGE’S, HANOVER SQUARE.

38. _St. George’s Burial-ground_, Mount Street.—1¼ acres. Laid out as a
public garden, and beautifully kept by the vestry. The ground dates from
about 1730, but there are very few tombstones.

39. _St. George’s Burial-Ground_, Bayswater Road.—Laid out by the
vestry, the gravestones having been placed round the walls. The
approaches to this ground are its chief drawback, and it is not visible
from any public road. One entrance is through the chapel facing Hyde
Park, and the other is in a mews. It is about 5 acres in extent.


                WESTMINSTER (ST. MARGARET AND ST. JOHN).

40. _The Churchyard of Westminster Abbey._—What remains of the extensive
burial-ground which once occupied this site is the piece of land on the
north side of the Abbey, and the cloisters. (See _St. Margaret’s_.)

41. _St. Margaret’s Churchyard._—This was laid out as a public garden,
and forms one ground with the Abbey churchyard. It is well kept up by
the burial board of the parish. The size of the churchyard, with the
ground used for interments which belongs to the Abbey, is about 2¼
acres.

42. _Christ Church Churchyard_, Victoria Street (also called St.
Margaret’s burying-ground).—This church was a chapel of ease to St.
Margaret’s. The adjoining graveyard has had a vicarage built in it. What
remains is 7,000 square yards in size, closed, with flat tombstones and
grass.

43. _St. John the Evangelist Churchyard_, Smith Square.—This churchyard
used to extend, at the beginning of the century, for some distance on
the south side of the church, but was thrown into the road. Now all that
remains is a very small bare enclosure, not ¼ acre in size, railed in
round the church.

44. _Additional ground for St. John’s Parish_, Horseferry Road.—Walled
in in 1627, and very much used, especially for the burial of soldiers.
It is 1½ acres in size, and has been laid out as public garden. It is
neatly kept by the vestry, and much frequented.

45. _Vincent Square._—8 acres. This is what remains of the Tothill
Fields pest-field. It is the playground of Westminster School, and some
buildings have been erected in it. A stone-paved yard in Earl Street is
said to be the site of the plague-pits.

46. _Millbank Penitentiary Burial-ground._—432 square yards in size. In
1830-33 there were an average of 14 interments per annum, but at times
it was more used. The site of this graveyard will be preserved when the
space which used to be occupied by the prison is built upon.

47. _Knightsbridge Green._—Victims of the plague from the leper hospital
and elsewhere were buried here. A grassy, closed triangle opposite
Tattersalls.


                      ST. MARTIN’S IN THE FIELDS.

48. _St. Martin’s Churchyard._—⅓ acre. This is stone-paved, has trees
and seats in it supplied by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association,
and is maintained by the vestry.

49. _Additional ground in Drury Lane._—Less than ¼ acre. Laid out as a
public garden, and now maintained by the vestry. It is well kept, and
contains some gymnastic apparatus for the use of the children. Also
called the Tavistock burial-ground.


                       ST. JAMES’S, WESTMINSTER.

50. _St. James’s Churchyard_, Piccadilly.—½ acre. This is a dreary
ground, and might be made very attractive. The part where most burials
took place is considerably raised above the rest. The yard on the north
side of the church is entirely paved with stones, amongst which are many
tombstones. In the upper part tombstones form the walks, the walls, &c.
One gate is often unlatched.

51. _St. James’s Workhouse Ground_, Poland Street.—The workhouse was
built upon a “common cemetery” where, at the time of the plague, many
thousands of bodies were interred. A small part of it was kept as the
workhouse burial-ground, but this has now disappeared, and all that is
left of the original ground used for interments is the garden or
courtyard of the workhouse. It is a pleasant recreation ground for the
inmates, and is well supplied with seats, being about ¼ acre in extent.


                              THE STRAND.

52. _St. Mary le Strand Churchyard._—At the west end of the church,
about 200 square yards in size, closed and not well kept.

53. _Additional ground, Russell Court, Catherine Street._—430 square
yards. It is probable that few grounds in London were more overcrowded
with bodies than this one, which was entirely surrounded by the backs of
small houses. When closed in 1853 it was in a very disgusting and
unwholesome condition, and it continued to be most wretched until the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association asphalted it in 1886. It is
maintained as a children’s playground by the London County Council. This
is the scene of “Tom all alone’s” in “Bleak House.” There are 6
gravestones against the wall.

54. _St. Clement Danes Churchyard._—This is now ¼ acre in extent, having
been curtailed when the Strand was altered. It is closed.

55. _Additional ground, Portugal Street._—This was called the
“Green-ground,” and was crowded with bodies. A corner of King’s College
Hospital was built upon the ground. The remaining piece is nearly ½ acre
in size, between the hospital and Portugal Street. It is now the
entrance drive and a grass plot. It is neatly kept, with some trees and
seats in it, and is used solely by the hospital.

56. _St. Paul’s Churchyard_, Covent Garden.—¾ acre. Given by the Earl of
Bedford in 1631. It is closed and very neat, the tombstones forming a
flat paved yard round the church, while the rest of the ground is
turfed.

57. _St. Ann’s Churchyard_, Soho.—½ acre. It is estimated that in this
small ground and the vaults under the church 110,240 bodies were
interred during 160 years. It was laid out by the Metropolitan Public
Gardens Association in 1892, and is maintained as a recreation ground in
very good order by the Strand District Board of Works.

58. _The Churchyard of the Chapel Royal_ (_St. Mary’s_), Savoy.—¼ acre.
This ground was much used for the internment of soldiers. It belongs to
Her Majesty the Queen, as Duchess of Lancaster, and was laid out as a
public garden at the cost of the Queen, the Earl of Meath, and others.
It is well maintained by the parish.


                        ST. GILES IN THE FIELDS.

59. _St. Giles’ Churchyard._—Nearly an acre. This ground being
originally consecrated by a Roman Catholic, was much used by the poor
Irish. It was enlarged in 1628, and at various subsequent dates, and was
very much overcrowded, and it occupies the site of an ancient graveyard
attached to a leper hospital. It has been laid out as a public garden,
and is maintained by the St. Giles’ District Board of Works. The
brightest part of the ground is north of the church, and this is only
opened at the discretion of the caretaker.


                                HOLBORN.

60. _Additional ground for St. John’s, Clerkenwell_, in Benjamin
Street.—This land, which is nearly ¼ acre in extent, was consecrated in
1775. It was laid out as a public garden ten years ago, and is
maintained by trustees with help from the Holborn District Board of
Works and the Clerkenwell Vestry. Very well kept.

61. _Charterhouse Square._—This garden is a part of the site of a
burial-ground dating back to 1349, when Sir Walter de Manny purchased
from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital 13 acres of land, known as the Spittle
Croft, for the burial of those who died in the plague of that time. In
20 years 50,000 bodies were interred there. In 1371 the Carthusian
Monastery was built upon it. This Pardon Churchyard was a space of three
acres acquired a year earlier, to which the plague-ground was added.
This Pardon Churchyard survived longer, being used for suicides and
executed people. Charterhouse Square is 1¼ acres.

62. _The old Charterhouse Graveyard._—In 1828 to 1830, when the present
Pensioners’ Court and other buildings were erected, part of this ground
was built upon; but part exists in the courtyard on each side of the
Pensioners’ Courts, being about ⅓ acre in extent. All the open land has
been used at one time or another for burials.

63. _The new Charterhouse Burial-ground._—When the above ground was done
away with, a smaller piece to the north was set aside for the interment
of the pensioners. This remains still, and is very neatly kept. There
are a few gravestones on the wall and splendid fruit trees. It is about
¼ acre in extent.


                              CLERKENWELL.

64. _St. James’s Churchyard._—¾ acre. This ground was purchased in 1673,
enlarged in 1677, and is now laid out as a public garden and maintained
by the vestry.

65. _Additional ground, Bowling Green Lane_ (called St. James’s middle
ground).—This was leased by the parish, with the adjoining “Cherry Tree”
public-house, in 1775 for 99 years. It is ¼ acre in size, situated at
the corner of Rosoman Street and Bowling Green Lane. The London School
Board secured it when the lease ran out, and it is now the playground of
the Bowling Green Lane School.

66. _The Burial-ground of St. James’s_, Pentonville Road.––This was
formed as an additional ground for the parish of St. James, Clerkenwell.
It is nearly an acre in extent, full of tombstones and very untidy, but
the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association has undertaken to convert it
into a public garden.

67. _St. John’s Churchyard._—What exists of this is between the church
and St. John Street, a narrow strip, about 320 square yards in extent,
closed and paved with tiles and tombstones. Its laying out by the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association is in hand.

68. _Spa Fields Burial-ground_, Exmouth Street.—Originally a tea-garden,
afterwards a burial-ground, managed by a private individual. It is the
property of the Marquis of Northampton, is about 1¾ acres in extent, and
in the evenings is occasionally used as a volunteer drill-ground. In
1885 the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association laid it out as a
playground, and the London County Council maintains it.


                              ST. PANCRAS.

69. _St. Pancras Burial-ground_, Pancras Road.

70. _St. Giles in The Fields Burial-ground_, Pancras Road.—These two
grounds now form one garden, about 6 acres in extent, maintained with
much care for the use of the public by St. Pancras Vestry. St. Giles’
ground dates from 1803, but the other is much older. In 1889 part of St.
Pancras ground was acquired under a special Act by the Midland Railway
Company. This part was, in 1791, assigned to the French _Émigrés_, and
many celebrated Frenchmen and Roman Catholics were buried there. Part of
it has not actually been built upon, as the railway goes over it on
arches. There are many high stacks of tombstones in the garden, and a
“trophy” and a “dome” of headstones, numbering 496, which were taken
from the part acquired by the railway.

71. _St. Martin’s in the Fields Burial-ground_ in Pratt Street.—1¾
acres. This was consecrated in 1805. It is now a well-kept public garden
under the control of the St. Pancras Vestry. A part appears to have been
appropriated as a private garden for the almshouses and as a site for a
chapel and other buildings.

72. _St. James’s Burial-ground_, Hampstead Road.—This belongs to the
parish of St. James, Piccadilly. It was laid out as a public garden in
1887, and is maintained by the St. Pancras Vestry, a large slice at the
east end having been taken off for public improvements. The remaining
portion measures about 3 acres.

73. _St. Andrew’s Burial-ground_, Gray’s Inn Road.—1¼ acres. This ground
belongs to the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, adjoins the church of Holy
Trinity, and is maintained as a public garden by the St. Pancras Vestry.
It is well kept, except a railed-off piece south of the church, which is
a sort of lumber-room.

74. _The Burial-ground of St. George’s_, Bloomsbury.

75. _The Burial-ground of St. George the Martyr_, Bloomsbury.—These are
out of Wakefield Street, Gray’s Inn Road, and together form one public
garden maintained by the St. Pancras Vestry, and very well kept. A part
of the latter, which was consecrated in 1714, is still closed. Each
ground is 1¼ acres in extent. There are vaults under the church in Hart
Street.

76. _Whitfield’s Tabernacle Burial-ground_, Tottenham Court
Road.—Somewhat less than ½ acre. The London County Council opened it as
a public garden in February, 1895. It is said that in 97 years upwards
of 30,000 bodies were interred in this ground.

77. _Wesleyan Chapel-ground_, Liverpool Street, King’s Cross.—An untidy
little closed yard at the west end of the chapel containing two
tombstones and much rubbish, and measuring about 225 square yards.

78. _St. James’s Cemetery_, Highgate.—38 acres. First used in 1839. In
50 years 76,000 interments had taken place. It is in two portions and
situated on a steep <DW72>. Open daily.


                               ISLINGTON.

79. _St. Mary’s Churchyard._—1⅓ acres. This ground was enlarged in 1793,
and was laid out as a public garden in 1885. It is maintained by the
vicar and churchwardens.

80. _Additional ground round the Chapel of Ease in Holloway Road._—4
acres. This is also laid out as a public garden, and is beautifully kept
by the Islington Vestry.

81. _Burial-ground of St. John’s Roman Catholic Church_, Duncan Row.—½
acre. A strip at the northern end of this ground is railed off with some
tombstones in it, the remainder being tar-paved and used as a playground
for the boys’ Roman Catholic school.

82. _Islington Chapel-ground_, Church Street (also called Little Bunhill
Fields).—The original chapel was built in 1788, and had a small
graveyard. In 1817 the Rev. Evan Jones bought the garden of 5, Church
Row, and added it to this graveyard, the whole ground being nearly 1
acre in extent. It is now in several divisions, part is a yard belonging
to the General Post Office, and the other parts are let and sold as
builders’ yards, or are vacant.

83. _Maberley Chapel-ground_, Ball’s Pond Road.—Now called Earlham Hall.
The ground is about 270 square yards, between the chapel and the road.
It is closed and bare.

84. _Jewish Burial-ground_, Ball’s Pond.—1¼ acres. This belongs to the
West London Synagogue, is very neatly kept, and is still in use. It is
full of very large tombstones.


                              ST. LUKE’S.

85. _St. Luke’s Churchyard_, Old Street.—In two parts. Size of the whole
ground, nearly 1¾ acres. The piece round the church is closed, and full
of large altar tombs, ivy being planted most profusely. There is a great
deal of rubbish in it. The part on the north side was laid out as a
public garden in 1878, and is maintained by the vestry.

86. _The Poor ground_, Bath Street.—¼ acre. This was originally larger
than it is now. It was consecrated in 1662 for the parish of St. Giles,
Cripplegate, and called the pest-house ground. After 1732, when St.
Luke’s parish was formed, it was used by that parish. Now it is neatly
laid out and used as a recreation ground by the patients of the St.
Luke’s Asylum. It is ¼ acre in extent.

87. _Wesleyan Chapel-ground_, City Road.—½ acre. The part in front of
the chapel is neatly kept, but the part behind is closed and not so
tidy. Wesley himself was buried in a vault here.

88. _Bunhill Fields._—5 or 6 acres. This was originally two grounds, the
southern part having been intended for burials in the Great Plague, but
not being used was let by the Corporation to a Mr. John Tyndall, who
carried it on as a private cemetery. Subsequently the northern part was
added, and the whole ground extensively used for the interment of
Dissenters. The Corporation maintain it as a public garden, but the
tombstones have not been moved, and only the gates at the eastern end
are generally open.

89. _The Friends Burial-ground_, Bunhill Row.—Acquired in 1661, many
times added to, and chiefly used by the Friends of the Peel and
Bull-and-Mouth divisions. In 1840 a school was built in it. The existing
portion is about ½ acre in size, and is neatly kept as a private garden;
but the remainder was used as the site for a Board School, a coffee
palace, houses and shops, including the Bunhill Fields Memorial
Buildings, erected in 1881.

90. _St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Ground_, Seward Street.—⅓ acre. This was
used for the interment of the unclaimed bodies. After being closed it
was let as a carter’s yard until it was laid out as a public playground
by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association in 1891. It is maintained
by St. Luke’s Vestry.

91. _Cripplegate Poor ground_, Whitecross Street.—It was called the
“upper churchyard” of St. Giles, and was first used in 1636. It was very
much overcrowded, the fees being low. A part of the site is occupied by
the church and mission-house of St. Mary, Charterhouse, erected in 1864,
and only a very small courtyard now exists between these buildings, with
a large vault.

92. _The City Bunhill (or Golden Lane) Burial-ground._—¼ acres. This was
the site of a brewery, and set aside for burials in 1833. About
one-third of it is in the City. It is now divided. One part is in the
occupation of Messrs. Sutton and Co., carriers, and is full of sheds and
carts, the greater part being roofed in, and the southern part has the
City mortuary and coroner’s court on it. What is unbuilt upon is a neat,
private yard between these two buildings. It was closed for burials in
1853.


                              SHOREDITCH.

93. _St. Leonard’s Churchyard._—1½ acres. Maintained as a public garden
by the Shoreditch Vestry. It is, I believe, partly in Bethnal Green.

94. _Old Burial-ground_, Hackney Road.—½ acre. This has an ancient
watch-house in it, which was subsequently used as a cholera hospital. In
1892 the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association laid it out as a public
playground, and it is maintained by the Burial Board.

95. _Holywell Mount Burial-ground._—Behind St. James’s Church, Curtain
Road, which occupies the site of a theatre of Shakespeare’s time. The
ground is very old, and was much used at the time of plagues, and many
actors are buried there. There is only about ⅓ acre left, the greater
part having been used as the site for a parish room, and this is a
timber-yard approached from Holywell Row.

96. _St. Mary’s Churchyard_, Haggerston.—1⅓ acre. This is maintained by
the Shoreditch Burial Board as a public garden, open during the summer.
It was laid out by the Earl and Countess of Meath in 1882.

97. _St. John’s Churchyard_, Hoxton.—1¼ acres. Also maintained by the
Shoreditch Burial Board, and laid out by the Earl and Countess of Meath.

98. _Jewish Burial-ground_, Hoxton Street.—¼ acre. This belongs to the
United Synagogue, and was used from 1700 till 1795. There is no grass,
but many tombstones, and some one is sent four times a year to clear
away the weeds, &c. It is not a tidy ground.


                                HACKNEY.

99. _St. John at Hackney Churchyard._—6 acres. This includes an older
ground, attached to the original church of St. Augustine, of which the
tower still remains. Part of the churchyard is laid out as a public
garden, and is neatly kept by the Hackney District Board of Works, but
the newer part to the south of the church is still full of tombstones
and rather untidy grass. The newest part of all, “the poor ground,”
which is at the extreme southern end, is laid out for the use of
children.

100. _West Hackney Churchyard_, Stoke Newington Road.—Nearly 1½ acres.
This was consecrated in 1824, and laid out as a public garden in 1885.
It is maintained by the Hackney District Board of Works.

101. _St. Barnabas’s Churchyard_, Homerton.—¾ acre. This ground is not
open, but a good deal of care is shown in its management. In 1884 the
Easter offerings were devoted to its improvement, and many tombstones
were then laid flat.

102. _St. John of Jerusalem Churchyard_, South Hackney.—About ¾ acre.
This was consecrated in 1831. It is full of tombstones, and the grass is
not well kept, but it is usually open for people to pass through. It was
closed for burials in 1868.

103. _Wells Street Burial-ground._—This contains the site of the
original South Hackney Church. It was laid out as a public garden in
1885, and is very neatly kept by the Hackney District Board of Works.
Nearly ¾ acre.

104. _Independent Chapel-ground_, Mare Street (also called St. Thomas’
Square Burial-ground).—⅔ acre. Laid out in 1888, and maintained by the
Hackney District Board of Works, who paid, £100 for a passage to join
this ground with No. 103, one caretaker managing both of them. It is
very bright and neat. The ornamental shelter occupies the site of a
previous building.

105. _Baptist Chapel-ground_, Mare Street.—About 500 square yards at the
back of the chapel. There are several tombstones tumbling about, and the
ground is very untidy.

106. _New Gravel Pit Chapel-ground_, Chatham Place, attached to the
Unitarian Church.—¾ acre. This is full of tombstones and fairly tidy.
The gate is usually open, the chapel-keeper living behind the chapel,
and having a green-house and fowl-house, &c., in the ground.

107. _Retreat Place._—A garden in front of 12 almshouses, founded in
1812 “for the widows of Dissenting ministers professing Calvinistic
doctrines.” Samuel Robinson, the founder, and his wife, are buried in
the middle of the garden.

108. _Jewish Burial-ground_, Grove-street.—2¼ acres. This belongs to the
United Synagogue, and was purchased in 1788. It is closed and full of
erect tombstones, and has some trees and flower-beds near the entrance.


                            STOKE NEWINGTON.

109. _St. Mary’s Churchyard_, Stoke Newington.—¾ acre. A very pretty
ground round the old church, but not laid out or opened.

110. _Friend’s Burial-ground_, Park Street, Stoke Newington, adjoining
the meeting-house.—¾ acre. This was bought in 1827, and enlarged in
1849. It is still in use and neatly kept, but not open to the public.

111. _Abney Park Cemetery._—32 acres. First used in 1840. Neatly kept
and open daily, being chiefly used by Dissenters. It is crowded with
tombstones.


                             BETHNAL GREEN.

112. _St. Matthew’s Churchyard._—About 2 acres. This was consecrated in
1746, and was much overcrowded. A mortuary was built in it some years
ago. There are vaults under the schools as well as the church. It is
closed, but negotiations are on foot respecting its conversion into a
garden.

113. _St. Peter’s Churchyard_, Hackney Road.—¼ acre. This churchyard is
maintained as a public garden by the vicar, who opens it during the
summer months. There are not many tombstones.

114. _St. Bartholomew’s Churchyard_, near Cambridge Road.—Nearly an
acre. This was laid out by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association
in 1885, and is maintained by the London County Council. It is immensely
appreciated.

115. _St. James the Less Churchyard_, Old Ford Road.—Over an acre.
Closed and considerably below the church. It contains about 10
tombstones, and several cocks and hens live in it. It is bare and damp.

116. _Providence Chapel Burial-ground_, Shoreditch Tabernacle, Hackney
Road, was built on the site of the chapel. Part of the graveyard exists
as a tar-paved yard or passage by the Tabernacle, with 4 tombstones
against the walls.

117. _Victoria Park Cemetery._—11 acres. This is maintained as a public
garden by the London County Council, having been laid out in 1894 by the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. It was formed in 1845, and used
for 40 years. Before being laid out it was a most dreary,
neglected-looking place; the soil is a heavy clay, and there used to be
large wet lumps lying about all over the ground. At a burial in 1884 the
clerk brought a handful of earth out of his pocket to throw upon the
coffin. Now it is a bright, useful, little park, and is called Meath
Gardens.

118. _Peel Grove Burial-ground_ (also called North-East London Cemetery,
Cambridge Heath or Road Burial-ground and Keldy’s Ground). According to
a return in 1855 it was 4 acres in extent, but now there is hardly one
acre. It is in the occupation of J. Glover and Sons, dealers in building
materials, and is full of wood, pipes, &c. There are some sheds in it.
It was a private ground, formed 100 years ago, and was very much
crowded. The late Metropolitan Board of Works saved the existing part
from being built over. Before its present use it was often let out for
shows, fairs, &c.

119. _Gibraltar Walk Burial-ground_, Bethnal Green Road.—Another private
ground, formed about 100 years ago. It belongs to a lady who lives in
the house which opens into it, and who has let pieces of it as yards for
the shops and houses round. It is full of shrubs, trees, and weeds, and
covered with rubbish, and is about ¾ acre in size.

120. _Jewish Burial-ground_, Brady Street.—This existed 100 years ago,
and belongs to the United Synagogue. I believe it is about 4 acres. It
is crowded with upright gravestones, and there are no properly made
paths, but it is covered with neglected grass. Part of it is higher than
the rest, the soil having been raised and the ground having been used a
second time. This was the “Strangers’” portion.


                              WHITECHAPEL.

121. _St. Mary’s Churchyard._—¾ acre. This is a very old churchyard, and
was much overcrowded. It is maintained by the rector as a garden, but a
charge of 1d. is made for entrance. It is neatly laid out.

122. _Additional ground, Whitechapel Road_, entrance in St. Mary’s
Street.—This was called the workhouse burial-ground, the workhouse
having been built in 1768 upon a former graveyard, and this piece to the
north of it having then been set aside for interments and consecrated in
1796. The workhouse site was built upon some years ago, and the
burial-ground became the playground of the Davenant Schools, one of
which, the one facing St. Mary’s Street, was built in it. In the order
for closing it, dated May 9, 1853, it is called the Whitechapel
Workhouse and Schools Ground. It is difficult to say exactly how far
east the burial-ground extended, but from the Ordnance map and some
older plans it would appear that the recent addition to the school in
Whitechapel Road has been built in the burial-ground. In 1833 the size
was given as 2,776 square yards, but it was stated that in 1832 196
cholera cases were interred in an adjoining piece of ground. This is
probably what is now used as a stoneyard, with carts in it.

123. _Christ Church Churchyard_, Spitalfields.—1¾ acres. Laid out as a
public garden by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association in 1892,
the association having undertaken to maintain it for 5 years.

124. _St. Peter and Vincula Churchyard_, in the Tower.—This, with the
vaults under the church, was used for the interment of distinguished
prisoners. It is a part of the great courtyard, and is about 525 square
yards in extent.

125. _Holy Trinity Churchyard_, Minories.—A burial-ground possibly
dating back to 1348. It has been added to the roadway of Church Street,
some posts showing its boundaries. It was about 302 square yards in
extent. Part has been built upon.

126. _Aldgate Burial-ground_, Cartwright Street.—This belongs to the
parish of St. Botolph, Aldgate, and was consecrated in 1615. At the
beginning of this century it was covered with small houses, the Weigh
House School being built on it in 1846. The rookery was cleared by the
Metropolitan Board of Works, and Darby Street was made, gravestones and
remains being then discovered. The Metropolitan Public Gardens
Association informed the Board of the former existence of a
burial-ground, with the result that what remained of the burial-ground
was not built upon, but was made into an asphalted playground, about ⅛
acre in extent, for the children of the adjoining block of tenements.

127. _German Lutheran Church_, Little Alie Street.—A small yard exists
at the back of the church. Closed.

128. _Friends Burial-ground_, Baker’s Row.—Very nearly an acre. This
belonged to the Friends of the Devonshire House division, who acquired
it in 1687. It is leased by the society to the Whitechapel District
Board of Works, who maintain it as a public recreation ground. It is
well laid out and well kept, being chiefly used by children.

129. _Mile End New Town Burial-ground_, Hanbury Street.—This adjoined
the chapel, and extended from Hanbury Street to Old Montague Street. A
school and other buildings have been erected in it, and all that is left
is a paved yard, about 250 square yards in size, on the west side of the
chapel.

130. _Sheen’s Burial-ground_, Church Lane.—A private ground, immensely
used. It seems to have been at one time used by the congregation of the
Baptists in Little Alie Street, and was then called “Mr. Brittain’s
burial-ground.” If so it existed in 1763. After being closed for burials
it was used as a cooperage, and now it is Messrs. Fairclough’s yard, and
full of carts and sheds, &c. A new stable was built in 1894, but the
London County Council declined to prevent its erection. The size of the
ground is about ½ acre.

131. _The Landon Hospital Burial-ground._—In a plan of 1849 the whole of
the southern part of the enclosure is marked as a burial-ground, which
would be 1½ acres in extent. It was closed on November 25, 1853, but at
the hospital it is stated that bodies were interred there after 1859,
though not after 1864. Since then the medical school, the chaplain’s
house, and the nurses’ home have been built in it. The remaining part of
the ground is used as a garden and tennis-lawn for the students and
nurses.

                       ST. GEORGE’S IN THE EAST.

132. _St. George’s Churchyard._—Dates from about 1730. The wall between
this ground and the next one was taken down in 1875, and the two grounds
were laid out as a public garden. They are maintained by the vestry,
and, although in a densely crowded district, are beautifully kept. The
size of the whole garden, consisting of the two graveyards, is about 3
acres.

133. _St. George’s Wesleyan Chapel-ground_, Cable Street.—This forms one
garden with the above.

134. _New Road Congregational Chapel-yard_, Cannon Street Road, between
Lower and Upper Chapman Streets.—This was a much-used burial-ground,
part of which has been covered with sheds and houses. What is left is
about ⅓ acre in extent. The chapel was bought in 1832, and became
Trinity Episcopal Chapel, and was subsequently removed and its site used
for the new building of Raine’s School. The burial-ground is in three
parts, viz., the playground of the school, a cooper’s yard, belonging to
Messrs. Hasted and Sons, and a carter’s yard of Messrs. Seaward
Brothers.

135. _Danish Burial-ground_, Wellclose Square.—The Danish (or Mariners’)
Church has been supplanted by the Schools of St. Paul’s, London Docks,
and the whole of the garden is neatly laid out, and used as a private
ground for the people who look after the schools, the crèche, &c. There
are no tombstones now, and it is possible that only an enclosure round
the church was used, like the railed-in enclosure in Prince’s Square.

136. _Swedish Burial-ground_, Prince’s Square.—Round the Eleanora
Church, over ½ acre in size. It is very neatly laid out and well kept,
and contains many tombstones.

137. _Ebenezer Chapel Burial-ground_, St. George’s Street.—This was
described in 1839 as being very much overcrowded. The chapel has been
used us a school, but is now deserted, the small yard on the south side
of it is used as a timber-yard and closed. About 220 square yards.

138. _Congregational Chapel-ground_, Old Gravel Lane.—140 square yards.
Closed, bare, and untidy, with two gravestones against the wall.

139. _Baptist Burial-ground_, Broad Street, Wapping.—Mentioned by
Maitland in 1756, and shown on Rocque’s plan. The chapel has gone, but
part of the adjoining yard exists as a small yard belonging to a
milkman. Before he bought it it was the parish stoneyard. It is about
200 square yards in size. I have little doubt that this is a
burial-ground.

140. _Roman Catholic Burial-ground_, Commercial Road.—The tombstones are
flat and the ground is used as a private garden for the priests. It is
about ½ acre in extent.


                               LIMEHOUSE.

141. _St. Anne’s Churchyard._—3 acres. Consecrated 1730, and since
enlarged, but in 1800 a piece was cut of for Commercial Road, the bodies
being removed south of the church. Laid out as a public garden by the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association in 1887, and now maintained by
the London County Council. It is nearly kept, except the private passage
to the mortuary.

142. _St. Paul’s Churchyard_, Shadwell.—¾ acre. Consecrated in 1671, but
used before that as a pest-field for Stepney. Laid out by the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association in 1886, and now maintained and
kept in good order by the London County Council.

143. _St. James’s Churchyard_, Ratcliff.—Nearly 1 acre. Laid out as a
public garden by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association in 1891,
and maintained by the vicar.

144. _St. John’s Churchyard_, Wapping.—600 square yards. Consecrated in
1617. This ground used to be very low and full of water. It is closed
and fairly tidy, having many large altar tombs in it.

145. _Additional ground opposite St. John’s Church._—Rather over ½ acre.
This was one of the Stepney pest-fields. It is closed, but tidy. There
are quantities of tombstones in this ground, many of which seem to be
falling to pieces, and an unusual number of trees and flowering shrubs.

146. _Friends Burial-ground_, Brook Street. Ratcliff.—800 square yards.
This is approached through the house on the south side of the
meeting-house. It was acquired by the Society of Friends in 1666 or
1667, the land being originally copyhold, but enfranchised in 1734 for
£21. It is neatly kept, and has four small upright stones.

147. _Brunswick Wesleyan Chapel-ground_, Three Colt Lane.—Approached by
a passage at the back of the chapel. It is about 450 square yards in
size, and is used as a private garden. There are vaults under the chapel
and three tombstones. It is said that about 1,000 bodies were buried
here, the last interment taking place in 1849.


                           MILE END OLD TOWN.

148. _St. Dunstan’s Churchyard Stepney._—About 6 acres, or rather more.
At the time of the Great Plague about 150 bodies were interred here
daily, and several extra grounds were provided for the parish. It was
laid out as a public garden in 1887 by the Metropolitan Public Gardens
Association. It is a most useful and shady ground, and is very neatly
kept by the London County Council.

149. _Stepney Meeting-House Burial-ground_, White Horse Street (also
called the Almshouse ground and Ratcliff Workhouse ground).—There are
many tombstones and the ground is fairly tidy. The gate is generally
open, as the entrance to the almshouses is through it. Size ½ acre.

150. _Holy Trinity Churchyard_, Tredegar Square.—¾ acre. Laid out by the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association in 1887, and maintained by the
London County Council. The gravestones have not been moved, and some of
the graves are still occasionally used, though no new ones are dug.

151. _Wycliffe Chapel Burial-ground_, Philport Street, Stepney.—¾ acre.
This dates From 1831, and is behind the chapel and the Scotch church. It
is full of tombstones, closed and untidy. Chadwick divides it into a
part belonging to the chapel and a larger part belonging to the Scotch
church, but it appears to be all one now, and is in the hands of the
elders of Wycliffe Chapel.

152. _Globe Road Chapel Burial-ground_, also called Mile End
Cemetery.—The chapel is now Gordon Hall, and belongs to Dr. Stephenson
of the Children’s Homes. The burial-ground is in private hands. The
ground was very much overcrowded, and there were vaults under the
chapel, the schools and the sexton’s house, but all the part south of
the chapel was taken by the Great Eastern Railway Company. The existing
piece is about 670 square yards in extent, is closed and most untidy,
quantities of rubbish lying about amongst the tombstones.

153. _East London Cemetery_, Shandy Street, also called the Beaumont
Burial-ground.—2¼ acres. This was much crowded. It was laid out as a
playground by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association in 1885, and
is maintained by the London County Council.

154. _Burial-ground of the Bancroft Almshouses_, Mile End Road.—The
People’s Palace is on the site of the almshouses, and part of the
burial-ground has been merged into the roadway on the east side of the
palace. St. Benet’s Church, Hall and Vicarage were built in this ground,
the church being consecrated in 1872. Three pieces still exist, in all
less than ½ acre; one is the vicarage garden, another is open to the
road, and the northern point is closed and roofed over, forming a little
yard where flag-staff’s, &c., are stored. The open part is also a
store-yard, having heaps of stones in it, besides much rubbish. There
are gravestones against the wall.

155. _Stepney Pest-field._—Many acres to the south of the London
Hospital were used for interments at the time of the plague, and the
Brewers’ Garden and the space by St. Philip’s Church are, according to
some authorities, part of the site originally called Stepney Mount. At
the Home Office it is believed that there have been no burials in the
ground round St. Philip’s, nor have there since it was St. Philip’s
churchyard; but I think there were long before the first St. Philip’s
Church or the Brewers’ Almshouses existed. The Brewers’ Garden is open
to the public at a charge of 1d.

156. _Jewish Burial-ground_, 70, Bancroft Road.—About 1,650 square
yards. This ground belongs to the Maiden Lane Synagogue, and is crowded
with upright gravestones. The grass is neglected. Burials still take
place. It is in a densely-populated district.

157. _Jewish Burial-ground_, Alderney Road.—1 acre. Formed in 1700,
enlarged in 1733. Belongs to the United Synagogue. The tombstones are
upright, and they are not so thick as in most of the Jewish grounds,
while the grass is kept more neatly.

158. _Jewish Burial-ground_, Mile End Road.—This ground is nearly ¾ acre
in extent, and is at the back of the Beth Holim Hospital. It belongs to
the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, the tombstones are flat, there are
several trees, and the ground is very neatly kept. Part of the graveyard
(where it is said that there have been no interments) has some seats in
it, and is used by the patients of the hospital as a garden.

159. _Jewish Cemetery_, Mile End Road.—4¾ acres. This belongs to the
Spanish and Portuguese Jews, and is still in use. The gravestones are
flat ones and low altar tombs, and the ground is neatly kept, although
very bare.


                                POPLAR.

160. _All Saints’ Churchyard._—Size, with that part which was used for
the burial of cholera victims, on the other side of the road, 4 acres.
The northern part of the churchyard was laid out by the Metropolitan
Public Gardens Association in 1893, the rector having undertaken to
maintain it for a few years. It is much appreciated and well kept.

161. _St. Matthias’s Churchyard._—(This church was the chapel of the
East India Dock Company, and is sometimes called Poplar Chapel.) 1¼
acres. It is in the middle of the Poplar Recreation Ground, closed and
fairly tidy. There are many tombstones.

162. _St. Mary’s Churchyard_, Bow.—2,716 square yards. This is in two
portions, the eastern one is closed, but the western one has been laid
out by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association and provided with
seats, the rector maintaining it.

163. _St. Mary’s Churchyard_, Bromley-by-Bow, or Bromley St.
Leonard.—This churchyard is 1¼ acres in size and is closed, but very
neatly kept up by the parish, and has some tombstones of artistic value
in it. Its opening as a public garden is under consideration.

164. _Baptist Chapel-ground_, Bow.—⅓ acre. Part of this ground is railed
off as a private garden, the rest is used as a thoroughfare by the
school-children. There are several tombstones, some of which have been
put against the walls.

165. _Trinity Congregational Chapel-ground_, East India Dock Road.—⅓
acre. This was laid out in 1888 as a public garden, the minister of the
chapel maintaining it. On his removal from the district it was closed
and has not been re-opened.

166. _Roman Catholic ground_, Wade’s Place.—1,300 square yards. This
belonged to St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Finsbury Circus,
Moorfields, and was chiefly used for the poor Irish. It was a very damp,
unwholesome ground. It is now used as a playground for the adjoining
Roman Catholic school.

167. _City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery_ (partly in Mile
End).—33 acres. First used in 1841. By 1889, 247,000 bodies had been
interred here, many being buried in common graves. It is still in use
and open daily, a regular ocean of tombstones, many of which are lying
about, apparently uncared for and unclaimed; in fact, most of the
graves, except those at the edges of the walks, look utterly neglected,
and parts of the ground are very untidy. It is situated in a
densely-populated district.


                              WANDSWORTH.

168. _All Saints’ Churchyard_, High Street.—¼ acre. This is closed, and
is much more tidy at the eastern end than the western end.

169. _East Hill Burial-ground_, Wandsworth Road.—½ acre. This was
consecrated in 1680, and many French Huguenots were buried in it. It is
closed and fairly tidy.

170. _Garratt Lane Cemetery_, South Street, Wandsworth.—1¾ acres. This
was consecrated in 1808. It is closed to the public, and closed for
interments with the exception of widows, widowers, and parents of
deceased persons already interred there. It is maintained by the
Wandsworth Burial Board.

171. _Friends Burial-ground_, High Street, Wandsworth.—400 square yards.
This is attached to the meeting-house, is closed and very neatly kept.
There are a few upright tombstones.

172. _Baptist Burial-ground_, North Street, Wandsworth.—An untidy little
closed yard with no tombstones in it and neglected grass. The chapel now
belongs to the Salvation Army. I doubt if it was much used for burials,
but, at any rate, there was one interment in 1854. It is about the same
size as the Friends’ ground.

173. _Independent Burial-ground_, Wandsworth.—This is now a small
tar-paved yard adjoining Memorial Hall, which was built on the site of
an old chapel or school-house. There are a few trees.

174. _St. Mary’s Churchyard_, Putney.—½ acre. Closed and neatly kept.

175. _Putney Burial-ground_, Upper Richmond Road.—1 acre. This was a
gift to the parish from the Rev. R. Pettiwand, and consecrated in 1763.
It was laid out in 1886, but the tombstones were not moved, and many of
them are dilapidated brick altar tombs. It is maintained for the public
by the Putney Burial Board.

176. _St. Nicholas Churchyard_, Lower Tooting.—2 acres. This is still in
use. It is open daily and kept in good order.

177. _Lower Tooting Chapel-ground._—231 square yards behind the chapel
(Congregational in High Street) and about 30 square yards in front. Some
tombstones. Chapel dates from 1688, and was founded by Daniel Defoe.

178. _St. Leonard’s Churchyard_, Streatham.—1¼ acres. The present church
dates from 1831, but the churchyard is at least 100 years older. It is
closed for burials and well planted with flowers, grass, and trees. The
gates are sometimes open.

179. _St. Paul’s Churchyard_, Clapham, in the Wandsworth Road.—1½ acres.
This is closed, and very full of tombstones. It is maintained by the
Clapham Burial Board, but it is in a rather jungly condition.

180. _Union Chapel-ground_, Streatham Hill.—About 500 square yards. This
is a neat little garden between the chapel and the schools, both of
which have been rebuilt, the schools in 1878. There is a row of
tombstones against the walls. It is generally closed.

181. _Wandsworth Cemetery._—12 acres. First used in 1878. Open daily.

182. _Lambeth Cemetery_, Tooting Graveney.—41 acres. First used in 1854.
Open daily.

183. _Putney Cemetery._—3 acres. First used in 1855. This is an
encroachment on a common.


                               BATTERSEA.

184. _St. Mary’s Churchyard._—¾ acre. Closed. The laying out of this
ground is under consideration.

185. _St. George’s Churchyard_, Battersea Park Road.—¾ acre. This is
closed, and in a very neglected condition. There are not many
gravestones.

186. _Battersea Cemetery_, Bolingbroke Grove.—8½ acres. First used in
1860. Open daily.


                                LAMBETH.

187. _St. Mary’s Churchyard._—½ acre. A very old ground, enlarged in
1623 and 1820. It is very neatly laid out and the gates are left open,
though there are no seats in it.

188. _Additional ground in High Street_ (also called Paradise Row
burial-ground).—1½ acres. Given to the parish by Archbishop Tenison, and
consecrated in 1705. It was laid out in 1884 by the Lambeth Vestry, who
maintain it efficiently.

189. _St. John’s Churchyard_, Waterloo Bridge Road.—An acre in size.
This was laid out as a garden and playground in 1877, and is well kept
up by the Lambeth Vestry.

190. _St. Mark’s Churchyard_, Kennington.—1¾ acres. This is closed and
full of tombstones, but neatly kept.

191. _Regent Street Baptist Chapel-ground_, Kennington Road.—A little
ground at the back of the chapel, with a few tombstones and one great
vault in it.

192. _Esher Street Congregational Chapel-ground_, Upper Kennington
Lane.—About 480 square yards, closed, and very untidy.

193. _St. Matthew’s Churchyard_, Brixton.—2 acres. This dates from 1824.
It is closed, but neatly kept.

194. _Denmark Row Chapel-ground_, Coldharbour Lane.—This has been partly
built upon, and there is now only a small yard behind the chapel.

195. _Stockwell Green Congregational Chapel-ground._—¼ acre, or rather
more. This is behind the chapel, and is a particularly neglected and
untidy graveyard.

196. _St. Luke’s Churchyard_, Norwood.—1 acre. This dates from 1825. It
is tidily kept, except the part near the station. The gate is generally
open. The gravestones are in situ.

197. _Congregational Chapel-ground_, Chapel Road, Lower Norwood.—About ⅓
acre behind the chapel. It is closed, and has grass and a few tombstones
in it.

198. _Norwood Cemetery_, 40 acres.—First used in 1838. Open daily, and
fairly well kept. It is crowded with tombstones, and it includes a Greek
cemetery and a burial-ground belonging to the parish of St. Mary at
Hill, each about 550 square yards in size.


                              CAMBERWELL.

199. _St. Giles’s Churchyard._—3¼ acres. Enlarged in 1717, 1803, and
1825. Closed, full of tombstones, and not well kept.

200. _St. George’s Churchyard_, Well Street, Camberwell.—The church was
consecrated in 1824, the ground being given by Mr. John Rolls. The
churchyard measures about an acre, and was laid out in 1886 by the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. It is maintained by the vestry.
A mortuary has been built on it.

201. _Dulwich Burial-ground_, Court Lane, the graveyard of God’s Gift
College.—Size, 1½ roods. This ground dates from about 1700. It is closed
and very neatly kept. There are several large altar tombs in it, and it
is a most rural and picturesque spot.

202. _Wesleyan Chapel-ground._ Stafford Street, Peckham.—336 square
yards. The chapel in now a school, the burial-ground being the
playground, a paved yard.

203. _Friends Burial-ground_, Peckham Rye.—About 470 square yards. This
ground was purchased in 1821, it is behind the meeting-house in Hanover
Street, has some small flat gravestones in it, and is closed. It is most
beautifully kept with neatly mown grass and a border of flowers.

204. _Camberwell Cemetery_, Forest Hill Road.—29½ acres. First used in
1856. Open daily.

205. _Nunhead Cemetery_ (All Saints’).—50 acres. First used in 1840.
Open daily.


                               NEWINGTON.

206. _St. Mary’s Churchyard._—1¼ acres. This was enlarged in 1757 and
1834, and is now maintained as a public garden by the burial board, the
freehold being vested in the rector. It is well laid out.

207. _St. Peter’s Churchyard_, Walworth.—1¼ acres. This is also
maintained as a public garden by the Newington Burial Board, having been
laid out by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, at the sole
cost of the Goldsmiths’ Company, and opened in May, 1895.

208. _Sutherland Congregational Chapel-ground_, Walworth.—This is close
to St. Peter’s, about 300 square yards in size, and closed. It has been
somewhat encroached on by the school, which was enlarged in 1889. A few
tombstones exist in the passage on the north side of the chapel and in
the ground at the back. It is fairly tidy.

209. _York Street Chapel-ground_, Walworth.—About 700 square yards at
the rear of the chapel and not visible from the street. It is closed and
full of tombstones, but is to be laid out.

210. _East Street Baptist Chapel-ground_, Walworth.—About 400 square
yards, with one tombstone in it. It is closed and very untidy.

211. _St. John’s Episcopal Chapel-ground_, Walworth.—In 1843 it was
estimated at 6,400 square yards. The chapel is in Penrose Street, and is
now the workshop of a scenic artist, the front wall having been
heightened for the purpose of advertising the _South London Press_. The
burial-ground is approached from Occupation Road, Manor Place, the
railway line going across it on arches, and it is now the vestry depôt
for carts, manure, gravel, &c. An adjoining plot is the site for the
baths and washhouses. This ground is in danger of being encroached upon,
and new bays for dust and other erections of the sort are often built in
it.

212. _New Bunhill Fields_, Deverell Street, New Kent Road (also called
Hoole and Martin’s).—¾ acre. This was a private speculation, and was
most indecently crowded. Between 1820 and 1838 10,000 bodies were buried
here, the vault under the chapel containing 1,800 coffins. The ground
was closed in 1853, and it then became a timber-yard. The chapel now
belongs to the Salvation Army, but the burial-ground is still
“Deverell’s timber-yard,” and is covered with high stacks of timber.
There are many sheds in it, and iron bars, &c.


                         ST. GEORGE THE MARTYR.

213. _St. George’s Churchyard_, Borough.—This is about an acre in size,
and is maintained as a public garden by the rector and churchwardens,
having been laid out in 1882. It is much used.

214. _St. George’s Recreation ground_, Tabard Street (the Lock
burial-ground).—Rather over ¼ acre. This was originally the
burial-ground of the Lock Hospital, which was pulled down in 1809, a
portion of the site of the hospital and ground having been before then
consecrated as a parish burial-ground. It was chiefly used for pauper
burials, and was crowded with bodies. It is now a neat public garden,
laid out by the vestry in 1887, and in the possession of the rector and
churchwardens of St. George’s.

215. _Chapel Graveyard_, Collier’s Rents, Long Lane.—This is about 620
square yards in extent, and is on the north side of an old Baptist
chapel, which now belongs to the Congregational Union. The ground dates
from before 1719, and is closed. There are a few tombstones and grass,
but it is not very well kept.


                        ST. SAVIOR’S, SOUTHWARK.

216. _St. Saviour’s Churchyard._—This ancient ground has been often
enlarged and curtailed, and at times was used as a marketplace. What now
exists is about ½ acre on the south side of the church, which is at
present under restoration.

217. _Additional ground for St. Saviour’s_, called the College Yard or
St. Saviour’s Almshouse Burial-ground, Park Street.—This existed before
1732. Size, ¼ acre. The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway goes
over it on arches, and it is now the store-yard of Messrs. Stone and
Humphries, builders. Most of it is roofed in, but it is not actually
covered with buildings.

218. _Additional ground for St. Saviour’s_, called the Cross Bones,
Redcross Street.—This was made, at least 250 years ago, “far from the
parish church,” for the interment of the low women who frequented the
neighbourhood. It was subsequently used as the pauper ground, and was
crowded to excess. Nevertheless two schools were built in it. The
remaining piece is about 1,000 square yards. It has frequently been
offered for sale as a building site, and has formed the subject for much
litigation. It is made a partial use of by being let for fairs, swings,
&c. It was sold as a building site in 1883, but, not having been used by
1884, the sale was declared (under the Disused Burial-grounds Act) null
and void.

219. _Christ Church Churchyard_, Blackfriars Bridge Road.—1½ acres. This
dates from about 1737, and has been enlarged. An infant school was built
in it. It is closed, and not laid out.

220. _Deadman’s Place Burial-ground._ Deadman’s Place is now called Park
Street.—This ground was originally used for the interment of large
numbers of victims to the plague. Then it became the graveyard of an
adjoining Independent chapel, and was extensively used for the interment
of ministers, being a sort of Bunhill Fields for South London. Now it is
merely one of the yards over which trucks run on rails, in the middle of
the large brewery belonging to Messrs. Barclay and Perkins, about ½ acre
in extent. It existed as a burial-ground in 1839, but not, I believe, in
1843.

221. _Baptist Burial-ground_, Bandy Leg Walk (subsequently called
Guildford Street).—There was such a ground in 1729. In 1807 there
existed the St. Saviour’s Workhouse, with a burial-ground on the east
side of it which, from its position, may have coincided with the
Baptists’ ground, and what is now left of the burial-ground is a garden
or courtyard, about 1,000 square yards in size, between the new
buildings of the Central Fire Brigade Station, Southwark Bridge Road,
and the old house behind them. It is entered through the large archway.


                              ST. OLAVE’S.

222. _St. Olave’s Churchyard_, Tooley Street.—A stone-paved yard, 634
square yards in extent, between the church and the river. Closed.

223. _Additional ground to St. Olave’s and to St. John’s_, Horselydown,
near St. John’s Church.—About ½ acre, with a few tombstones in it. This
was laid out in 1888, being chiefly asphalted, and is maintained as a
recreation ground by the Board of Works For the St. Olave’s District. It
is well used and neatly kept.

224. _St. John’s Churchyard_, Horselydown.—Nearly 2 acres. Laid out as a
public garden in 1882, and maintained by the St. Olave’s Board.

225. _St. Thomas’s Churchyard._—This does not adjoin the church, but is
behind the houses opposite. Size about 787 square yards. It belongs to
St. Thomas’s Hospital, and is used as a private garden by a house in St.
Thomas’ Street.

226. _St. Thomas’s Hospital Burial-ground_, St. Thomas’ Street.—Part of
this has been covered by St. Olave’s Rectory and Messrs. Bevington’s
leather warehouse. The remaining piece measures about 1,770 square
yards, and is an asphalted tennis-court and garden for the students of
Guy’s Hospital, the building in it being the treasurer’s stables. It
belongs to St. Thomas’s Hospital, and is leased to Guy’s.

227. _Butler’s Burial-ground_, Horselydown.—This was made about 1822,
the entrance being in Coxon’s (late Butler’s) Place, and was 1,440
square yards in size. It is now Zurhoorst’s cooperage and is full of
barrels. A small piece, which I believe was a part of the burial-ground,
is a yard belonging to a builder named Field. There were vaults running
under four dwelling-houses. These still exist, and are under the houses
next to the entrance to Mr. Field’s yard.


                              BERMONDSEY.

228. _St. Mary Magdalene’s Churchyard._—Rather over 1½ acres. This was
enlarged in 1783 and 1810, and contains the remains of an ancient
cemetery belonging to Bermondsey Abbey. It is maintained as a public
garden by the vestry, the rector reserving certain rights. It is well
laid out, and forms a most useful and attractive garden.

229. _St. James’s Churchyard_, Bermondsey, Jamaica Road.—1¾ acres. It
was extensively used for a drying-ground for clean clothes when the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association secured it in 1886, and laid it
out as a garden. It is maintained by the vestry.

230. _Roman Catholic Ground_, Parker’s Row.—The land was given for the
purpose in 1833 or 1834. The ground between the church and the road
measures about 300 square yards, and was very much overcrowded. It is
closed and untidy, with no tombstones. Burials also took place in the
garden, which is used as a recreation ground for the schools, and is
neatly kept.

231. _Southwark Chapel Graveyard_ (_Wesleyan_), Long Lane.—900 square
yards. This is on the west side of the chapel, which dates from 1808. It
is closed, and contains a few gravestones and a hen-coop.

232. _Guy’s Hospital Burial-ground_, Nelson Street.—This is nearly 200
years old, and is rather over ½ acre. Since being closed for burials it
has been let as a builder’s yard. The Bermondsey Vestry is now
negotiating for its purchase as a recreation ground.

233. _Friends Burial-ground_, Long Lane.—¼ acre. This was bought in 1697
for £120. It was closed in 1844, but in 1860 a large number of coffins,
&c., were brought there and interred when Southwark Street was made and
the Worcester Street burial-ground annihilated. It is being laid out for
the public, and will be maintained by the Bermondsey Vestry, who have it
on lease from the Society of Friends. There are no gravestones in it.

234. _Ebenezer Burial-ground_, Long Lane.—This adjoins the above ground,
and it is hoped that it may eventually be added to the garden. It was
formed about 100 years ago. It originally belonged to the Independent
Chapel in Beck Street, Horselydown, and subsequently to the trustees of
Ebenezer Baptist Chapel. There is a “minister’s vault” in the centre. It
is closed and untidy, 220 square yards in extent.


                              ROTHERHITHE.

235. _St. Mary’s Churchyard._—¾ acre. This is closed, except on Sundays.
It is full of tombstones and kept in good order.

236. _Additional ground in Church Street._—1¼ acres. This is also only
open on Sundays, and is fairly tidy.

237. _Christ Church Churchyard_, Union Road.—700 square yards. This is
closed, and there are no tombstones on the north side of the church. The
south side is rather untidy, except round the grave of General Sir
William Gomm, who gave the ground for the church (being Lord of the
Manor), where there is a patch of good grass and flowers.

238. _All Saints’ Churchyard_, Deptford Lower Road.—Nearly 1 acre. This
land was given by Sir William Gomm in 1840, and was used for 17 years.
It is closed, and wooden palings separate it from the ground in front of
the church. It is not well kept.

239. _Holy Trinity Churchyard_, near Commercial Docks Pier.—About 1
acre. Consecrated in 1838. This ground was also only used for 20 years;
a part of it is railed of for the vicarage garden, where probably no
interments took place. It was laid out by the Metropolitan Public
Gardens Association in 1885, and taken over by the London County Council
in 1896. It is a very attractive, shady garden.


                               GREENWICH.

240. _St. Alphege Churchyard._—Enlarged in 1716, 1774, and 1808. Size
2,740 square yards. This was laid out by the Metropolitan Public Gardens
Association in 1889, and is maintained by the Greenwich District Board
of Works. There are no seats in it.

241. _Additional ground_, separated from the above by a public
footpath.—This is 2½ acres, and was consecrated in 1833. It was laid out
in 1889 by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, and is
maintained by the Greenwich District Board of Works. There are plenty of
seats in it, and it is well used and neatly kept.

242. _St. Nicholas Churchyard_, Deptford.—¾ acre. This is closed and
full of tombstones, but fairly tidy.

243. _Additional ground_, Wellington Street.—¾ acre. This ground,
belonging to the parish of St. Nicholas, was laid out in 1884 by the
Kyrle Society, and is very well kept up by the Greenwich District Board
of Works, who have lately acquired a piece of adjoining land to be added
to the recreation ground.

244. _St. Paul’s Churchyard_, Deptford.—2½ acres. This is vested in the
rector, and maintained by the Deptford Burial Board. The gravestones are
not moved, but there are a few seats in the ground, which is open to the
public.

245. _Baptist (Unitarian) Chapel Burial-ground_, Church Street.—This
touches the above, and is about ¼ acre. It is closed, the railings and
gravestones are broken, and there is a quantity of rubbish lying about.

246. _Friends Burial-ground_, High Street, Deptford.—About 360 square
yards. This is behind the meeting-house and closed. It is neatly kept
and only contains one gravestone.

247. _Congregational Chapel Burial-ground_, High Street, Deptford.—About
400 square yards. This is closed, but neatly laid out, and there are
gravestones against the walls.

248. _Congregational Chapel-ground_, Greenwich Road.—¼ acre, or rather
less. This dates from 1800. The gate is often open, and the gravestones
are flat or against the walls, but it is a bare, uninteresting-looking
ground.

249. _Congregational Chapel-ground_, Maze Hill, Greenwich.—A rather
neglected-looking ground in Park Place, with several flat tombstones,
about 500 square yards in size.

250. _Greenwich Hospital Burial-ground._—This adjoins the Royal Naval
Schools, and measures about 4 acres. An inner enclosure is full of
tombstones, but the outer part has only some monuments in it. It is very
well kept, with splendid trees and good grass, and the gate from the
school playground is generally open.

251. _Greenwich Hospital Cemetery._––In Westcombe. This is nearly 6
acres in size, and was first used in 1857.


                               LEWISHAM.

252. _St. Mary’s Churchyard._—2 acres. Laid out as a public garden in
1886, and maintained by the Lewisham District Board of Works.

253. _St. Bartholomew’s Churchyard_, Sydenham.—¾ acre. Closed for
interments. This is beautifully kept and is a very pretty ground. The
gates are generally open, but there are no seats.

254. _Deptford Cemetery._—17 acres. First used in 1858. By 1889, 50,000
bodies had been interred there.

255. _Lewisham Cemetery._––15½ acres, of which 4 are reserved and let as
a market-garden. First used 1858.

256. _Lee Cemetery._—In Hither Green. 10 acres, of which 4 are in
reserve. First used 1873. These are open daily.

                               PLUMSTEAD.

257. _St. Nicholas’s Churchyard._—Still in use for burials, but under
regulation. It is open daily, and measures about 4 acres.

258. _Woolwich Cemetery_, Wickham Lane. (Partly outside the boundary of
Plumstead.)—32 acres. First used in 1856. Open daily.

259. _Plumstead Cemetery_, Wickham Lane.—32¼ acres. First used 1890.
Open daily.


                                  LEE.

260. _St. John the Baptist Churchyard_, Lee, Eltham.—3 acres. This is
also in use, but under regulation, and is open daily.

261. _St. Margaret’s Churchyard_, Lee.—Still in use, open daily, and
very neatly kept. It is about 1½ acres in size.

262. _The Old Churchyard_, Lee.—This is opposite St. Margaret’s, and
contains the ruins of the old church. It is full of tombstones and
neatly kept. It is generally open, but has no seats in it.

263. _St. Luke’s Churchyard_, Charlton.—½ acre. This is full of
tombstones and closed, but very neatly kept. Burials occasionally take
place in existing vaults, but in each case permission has to be obtained
from the Home Secretary.

264. _St. Thomas’s Churchyard_, Charlton.—On the borders of Woolwich.
Nearly an acre. This churchyard was in use for burials in 1854 when it
was put under regulation.

265. _Morden College Cemetery_, Blackheath.—¼ acre. Closed. Neatly kept.
Contains about 80 tombstones. The college was founded about 1695.

266. _Charlton Cemetery._—8 acres. First used in 1855. Open daily.

267. _Greenwich Cemetery._—15 acres. Open daily.


                               WOOLWICH.

268. _St. Mary’s Churchyard._—Over 3 acres. In a fine situation
overlooking the river. Laid out as a public garden by the Metropolitan
Public Gardens Association, at the cost of Mr. Passmore Edwards, and
opened in May, 1895. It is maintained by the Woolwich Local Board.

269. _Enon Chapel-yard_, High Street.—112 square yards. A tar-paved and
closed yard, with some tombstones against the walls.

270. _Union Chapel Graveyard_, Sun Street.—⅓ acre. This is closed. There
is a very bad fence round it, and it looks uncared for. Negotiations are
on foot to secure it for the public.

271. _Salem Chapel-yard_, Powis Street.—300 square yards. Eighteen or
twenty years ago the London School Board took the chapel and adapted it
as a school. It is now the infant school, other buildings having been
added, and the graveyard is a tar-paved passage used as a playground.

272. _Wesleyan Chapel-yard_, William Street.—¼ acre. Here a school
building has evidently encroached upon the burial-ground. There are
several gravestones, and it is fairly tidy, the gate being often open.

273. _Roman Catholic Ground_, New Road.—This also has probably been
encroached upon. What now exists is a yard, ¼ acre in size, between the
school and the Roman Catholic church, with three graves in one enclosure
in the middle. The gate is open during school hours.


                               THE CITY.

I. Burial-grounds which are laid out as public recreation grounds—

274. _St. Paul’s Cathedral Churchyard._—Used as a burial-place since
Roman times. It includes the Pardon Churchyard, the burial-grounds for
the parishes of St. Faith and St. Gregory, and a piece allotted to St.
Martin, Ludgate. Size, 1½ acres. Maintained by the Corporation. Laid out
in 1878-1879.

275. _St. Botolph’s Churchyard_, Aldersgate Street.

276. _Additional ground for Christ Church_, Newgate Street.

277. _Additional ground for St. Leonard’s_, Foster Lane.—These three
form together one public garden, rather more than ½ acre in extent. Very
neatly kept up with parochial funds.

278. _St. Olave’s Churchyard_, Silver Street.—Site of the burned church.

279. _Allhallows’ Churchyard_, London Wall.

280. _St. Katharine Coleman Churchyard_, Fenchurch Street.

281. _St. Botolph’s Churchyard_, Aldgate.—¼ acre.—Four grounds laid out
by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association.

281. _St. Botolph’s Churchyard_, Bishopsgate. Size nearly ½ acre.

283. _St. Botolph’s_, Billingsgate, upper burial-ground, Botolph lane.

284. _St. Mary Aldermanbury Churchyard._

285. _St. Sepulchre’s Churchyard_, Holborn.

286. _St. Bride’s Churchyard_, Fleet Street.—Five small grounds laid out
with the assistance of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. No.
282 was laid out by the Association, but the entire cost was borne by
the parish.

287. _Additional ground for St. Dunstan’s in the West_, in Fetter Lane.
Asphalted and used as a playground for the Greystoke Place Board School.
Some tombstones remain in an enclosure at the edge. 4,750 square feet in
area.

II. Burial-grounds that are not laid out as open spaces for the public
use, although most of them are neatly kept, while a few are used as
store-yards, &c., and others are open at times—

288. _The Temple Churchyard._—Partly public thoroughfare, partly closed.

The churchyards of—

289. _St. Andrew_, Holborn.

290. _Christ Church_, Newgate Street.—On the site of the western end of
the church of the Greyfriars.

291. _St. Ann_, Blackfriars.—Two grounds. The western one is the site of
the burned church.

292. _St. Andrew by the Wardrobe_, Queen Victoria Street. Very little
left.

293. _St. Bartholomew the Great._—On the site of the ancient nave, the
_Green-ground_ on the site of the south transept, and a remnant of the
_Poor ground_ on the north side.

294. _St. Dionys Backchurch_, Lime Street.

295. _St. Bartholomew the Less._—In the hospital. At one time it
extended further south.

296. _St. Giles_, Cripplegate, with the _Green-ground_, an extension to
the south. Often Open. Neatly kept.

297. _St. Alphege_, London Wall.—The churchyard does not adjoin the
church. It contains a portion of the old wall.

298. _St. Ann and St. Agnes_, Gresham Street.

299. _St. John Zachary_, Gresham Street.—Site of burned church.

300. _St. Mary Staining_, Oat Lane.—Site of burned church.

301. _St. Alban’s_, Wood Street.

302. _St. Peter Cheap_, Wand Street.—Site of burned church.

303. _St. Vedast_, Foster Lane.

304. _St. Mildred_, Bread Street.—Yard full at ladders.

305. _St. Mary Somerset_, Thames Street.—Store-yard for old iron, behind
the tower. Most of this ground has gone.

306. _St. Peter_, Paul’s Wharf.—Site of burned church.

307. _St. Martin Vintry_, Queen Street.—No church.

308. _St. Thomas the Apostle_, Queen Street.—Little left except a large
vault.

309. _St. Mary Aldermary_, Watling Street.

310. _St. Antholin_, Watling Street.—Very little left except one great
vault.

311. _St. Pancras_, Pancras Lane.—Site of burned church.

312. _St. Benet Sherehog_, Pancras Lane.—Site of burned church.

313. _St. Martin Pomeroy_ (St. Olave, Jewry), Ironmonger Lane.—The site
of St. Martin’s Church, used as St. Olave’s Churchyard, when that became
a private garden.

314. _St. Stephen_, Coleman Street.

315. _St. Mildred_, Poultry.—Given by Thomas Morsted 1420. Almost lost
in 1594. Abridged before 1633, and enlarged 1693.

316. _St. Matthew_, Friday Street.

317. _St. John_, Watling Street.—Site of burned church.

318. _St. Michael_, Queenhithe.—Private garden for St. James’s Rectory.

319. _St. Martin_, Ludgate.—Stationers’ Hall Court. The vaults are under
the ground.

320. _St. Christopher le Stocks._—Garden of the Bank of England since
1780.

321. _St. Michael_, Cornhill.—Some shops were built in this ground in
1690.

322. _St. Peter_, Cornhill.

323. _St. Stephen_, Walbrook.—Encroached upon in 1693.

324. _St. Margaret_, Lothbury.—Improved and planted at the expense of
Dr. Edwin Freshfield, F.S.A.

325. _St. Martin Outwich_, Camomile Street.—The burial-ground of the
priory of St. Augustine Papey. Given by Robert Hyde 1538.

326. _St. Michael Paternoster Royal_, College Hill.

327. _St. James_, Garlickhithe.

328. _St. Nicholas Cole Abbey_, Queen Victoria Street.—Very little left.

329. _St. Swithin_, Cannon Street.—Additional ground. One adjoining the
church has gone.

330. _Allhallows the Great_, Upper Thames Street.

331. _Allhallows the Less_, Upper Thames Street.—Site of burned church.

332. _St. Lawrence Pountney_, Cannon Street.—Two grounds. One is the
site of the burned church.

333. _St. Martin Orgar_, Cannon Street.—Site of burned church.

334. _St. George_, Botolph Lane.

335. _St. Mary at Hill_, Eastcheap.—Saved by the City Church and
Churchyard Protection Society 1879.

336. _St. Andrew Undershaft_, Leadenhall Street.

337. _St. Catherine Cree_, Leadenhall Street.—A part of the cemetery of
Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate.

338. _St. Helen_, Bishopsgate.—This is very often open, but not provided
with seats.

339. _St. Ethelburga_, Bishopsgate.

340. _St. Clement_, Eastcheap.

341. _St. Leonard_, Fish Street Hill.—Site of burned church.

342. _St. Magnus the Martyr_, London Bridge.

343. _St. Mary Woolnoth_, Lombard Street.—In danger at the present time.

344. _St. Nicholas Acons_, Lombard Street.

345. _St. Edmund King and Martyr_, Lombard Street. The property of the
Salters’ Company. Laid out as a garden with seats.

346. _Allhallows_, Lombard Street.—Closed in the cholera year, 1849.

347. _St. Gabriel_, Fenchurch Street.—The gift of Helming Legget.

348. _Allhallows, Staining_, Mark Lane.—Church destroyed in 1870 except
the tower. The property of the Clothworkers’ Company.

349. _St. Olave’s_, Hart Street.

350. _Allhallows, Barking_, Town Hill.

351. _St. Dunstan’s in the East_, Lower Thames Street.—Its opening is
under consideration.

352. _The Burial-ground of Christ’s Hospital._—This has been almost
covered with buildings, but a small piece remains as a yard near the
great hall.

353. _The Burial-ground of the Greyfriars._—This is a courtyard,
surrounded by the cloisters, in Christ’s Hospital, used as a playground
by the boys.

354. _St. James’s Churchyard_, Duke Street.—This is used as a playground
for the Aldgate Ward Schools.

355. _Additional ground for St. Bride’s_, Fleet Street.—This is off
Farringdon Street, is about 750 square yards in extent, and used as a
volunteer drill-ground. There are no tombstones, and the ground is
untidy. Consecrated 1610. Given by the Earl of Dorset.

356. _St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church ground_, Finsbury Square.—Very
little left.

357. _Bridewell Burial-ground._—This is about 900 square yards in size,
and is at the corner of Tudor and Dorset Streets. It was the
burial-ground of the hospital, which has been removed. It is now a very
untidy yard, boarded up with a rough advertisement hoarding, in the
occupation of H. S. Foster, builder, 7, Tudor Street. It would make a
good public playground.

III. Burial-grounds which have been paved and added to the public
footway, but are still traceable. The churchyards of—

358. _St. Mary_, Abchurch Lane.—This was thrown into the pavement about
160 years ago, with posts round it.

359. _St. Margaret Pattens_, Rood Lane.

360. _St. Lawrence Jewry_, by the Guildhall.

361. _St. Michael Bassishaw_, Basinghall Street.—Two good trees.

362. _St. Benet Fink_, Threadneedle Street.—Railed in, with Peabody’s
statue in it.

363. _The Cloisters of the Augustine Friars._—Lately discovered on the
north side of the Dutch Church, Austin Friars Square forming part of the
site.

IV. Burial-ground still in use—

364. _Newgate Burial-ground._—A passage in the prison, used for the
interment of those who are executed; 10 feet wide and 85 feet long.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                              APPENDIX B.

BURIAL-GROUNDS IN LONDON WHICH HAVE BEEN ENTIRELY DEMOLISHED FOR NEW
    STREETS, RAILWAY LINES, PUBLIC BUILDINGS, PRIVATE HOUSES, &C.

                               THE CITY.

_Name of Churchyard or Burial-ground._ _What occupies the Site._

 1. │ There were Roman Cemeteries in various parts of the City.
 2. │  Sepulchral remains have been found in Newgate Street,
 3. │  Ludgate, Camomile Street, St. Mary at Hill, St. Dunstan’s
 4. │  in the East, St. Paul’s Churchyard, and Bishopsgate
 5. │  Churchyard (the last named being very ancient, possibly of
 6. │  British origin). See also Whitechapel, Limehouse, Bermondsey,
 7. │  and Lewisham.


     _Name of Churchyard or         _What occupies the Site_
       Burial-ground_

     8. Burial-grounds of St.       The General Post Office.
       Martin le Grand and St.
       Lennard, Foster Lane

     9. Jews original Burial-ground Jewin St. and neighbourhood.

     10. St. Nicholas Shambles      Newgate Street.

     11. St. Benet, Paul’s Wharf    Thrown into St. Benet’s Hill.

     12. The Workhouse Ground, Shoe The Farringdon Market occupied
       Lane, belonging to St.         the site, and a street has
       Andrew’s, Holborn              now taken its place

     13. Allhallows’, Honey Lane    The Old City of London School
                                      was built on its site.

     14. St. Mary le Bow            Warehouses and street full of
                                      vans, called Bow Churchyard.

     15. St. John, Cloak Lane       Taken by District Railway in
                                      1879 for Cannon Street
                                      Station, &c.

     16. St. Mary Bothaw            Cannon Street Station, S.E.R.

     17. St. Mary Mounthaw          Taken for Queen Victoria St.

     18. St. Nicholas Olave         Taken for Queen Victoria St.

     19. St. Mary Magdalen          Taken for Queen Victoria St.

     20. Elsing Spital Priory       Warehouses, London Wall.

     21. St. Peter le Poer, Broad   Houses in Broad Street.
       St.

     22. St. Thomas Acons           Mercer’s Hall.

     23. St. Bartholomew’s Priory,  This had a cemetery attached,
       Smithfield                     which  is covered by the
                                      buildings near the south
                                      transept of the church.

     24. St. Bartholomew’s Hospital West wing of hospital.
       Burial-ground

     25. St. Swithin, Cannon Street Roadway on north side of
                                      church.

     26. St. Dunstan in the West,   Probably north end of present
       Fleet Street                   church.

     27. St. Michael le Querne      Cheapside.

     28. Additional ground to       Southern end of St.
       Christ Church, Moorgate        Bartholomew’s Hospital.
       Street

     29. St. Mary Colechurch        Old Jewry.

     30. St. Margaret Moses, Friday Cannon Street.
       Street

     31. Garden in Hosier Lane,     Built upon about 1560.
       used for St. Mary le Bow

     32. Holy Trinity the Less,     Mansion House Station.
       Trinity Lane

     33. St. Mary Axe, Leadenhall   Houses on west side of the
       Street                         street called St. Mary Axe.

     34. St. Mary Woolchurch Haw    Mansion House.

     35. St. Bartholomew by the     Threadneedle Street.
       Exchange

     36. Bethlem Burial-ground      Liverpool Street Station.
       (also called Rowe’s)

     37. St. Benet, Gracechurch St. Corner of Fenchurch Street.

     38. St. Margaret, New Fish St. Metropolitan Railway.

     39. St. Andrew Hubbard         Houses between Botolph Lane
                                      and Love Lane. The old
                                      King’s Weigh House Chapel
                                      was on the site.

     40. St. Botolph, Billingsgate  Warehouse in Lower Thames
       (Lower Ground)                 Street, with terra cotta
                                      heads on the frontage.

     41. Garden of Hundsdon House,  95 bodies buried in two pits
       Blackfriars (French Embassy)   here in 1623 after an
                                      accident. Site now
                                      disappeared.

     42. Pest-field, Hand Alley     New Street, Bishopsgate
                                      Street.

     43. The Churchyard of the      This Burial-ground was on the
       Dutch Church, Austin Friars    south side of the Dutch
                                      Church, now built over.

     44. St. Michael, Crooked Lane  King William Street.

     45. St. James’ Hermitage       Houses south of the postern
       Burial-ground                  and the south wall of St.
                                      Giles’ Churchyard,
                                      Cripplegate.

     46. Cemetery of the Crutched   South of Fenchurch Street.
       Friars


                             ST. MARYLEBONE.

     47. Churchyard of Old Tyburn   Marylebone Court House,
       Church                         Stratford Place.

     48. Burial-place for those     Corner of Upper Bryanston
       executed at Tyburn             Street and Edgware Road.


                               PADDINGTON.

     49. Pest-field, Craven Hill    Craven Hill Gardens.
       Probably never used.


                               HAMMERSMITH.

     50. Convent Burial-ground,     Part of the buildings of the
       King Street                    Convent of the Sacred Heart,
                                      rebuilt by Cardinal Manning.


                 ST. MARGARET AND ST. JOHN, WESTMINSTER.

     51. Buckingham Chapel, Palace  Brewery on south side.
       Street


                       ST. MARTIN’S IN THE FIELDS.

     52. St. Martin’s additional    Part of the buildings of the
       ground                         National Gallery.

     53. Burial-ground for the      Castle Street, Long Acre.
       Friends of the Westminster
       Division

     54. Burial-ground of St. Mary  Northumberland Avenue.
       Rounceval Convent


                        ST. JAMES’S, WESTMINSTER.

     55. Pest-field                 Golden Square and district
                                      round.


                               THE STRAND.

     56. Additional ground for St.  French Chapel, Crown Street,
       Martin’s in the Fields         Soho, now Charing Cross
                                      Road.

     57. German Burial-ground,      Medical Examination Hall and
       Savoy                          Savoy Chambers.

     58. Old Somerset House         Somerset House.
       Cemetery

     59. Westminster Convent        Part of Covent Garden Market.
       Burial-Ground

     60. Almshouse Ground, Clemens  New Lane Courts.
       Lane

     61. Burial-ground by the       Possibly the Floral Arcade.
       Workhouse, St. Paul’s,
       Covent Garden

     62. Cemetery of old St. Mary   Somerset House, &c.
       le Strand


                        ST. GILES’ IN THE FIELDS.

     63. The Workhouse              Part of the Workhouse in
       Burial-ground                  Shorts


                                 HOLBORN.

     64. St. Sepulchre’s Additional Great Northern Goods Depôt.
       Ground, Durham Yard

     65. St. Sepulchre’s Workhouse  Ditto. This was the larger of
       Ground, Durham Yard            the two.

     66. Pardon Churchyard,         Wilderness Row, subsequently
       Charterhouse,                  Clerkenwell Road.

     67. Baptist Chapel-ground,     Goswell Road, just to the
       Glasshouse Yard                south of St. Thomas’s,
                                      Charterhouse.


                               CLERKENWELL.

     68. Nun’s Burial-ground        Houses west side of St. James’
                                      Walk.

     69. St. James’s Additional     Farringdon Road and the
       Ground, Ray Street             Railway.

     70. Corporation Row Burial-pit Artisans’ dwellings on north
                                      side.

     71. Priory Cemetery            St. John’s Square, &c.


                               ST. LUKE’S.

     72. Thomas’, Golden Lane       Factory on west side of St.
                                      Mary’s Church, Charterhouse,
                                      Playhouse Yard.

     73. Pest-field, Old Street     Bath Street, and many acres to
                                      the north

     74. Pest-field, Mount Mill     Seward Street, Goswell Road,
                                      north side.

     75. Cupid’s Court Ground,      Offices, &c., north of
       Golden Lane                    Brackley Street.


                               SHOREDITCH.

     76. Gloucester Street          Gas Light and Coke Company’s
       Chapel-ground                  premises.

     77. Shoreditch Burial-ground,  Wing of the Workhouse built in
       Hoxton                         1884.

     78. Burial-ground by the       New block of Artisans’
       Goldsmiths’ Almshouses         Dwellings  west side of
                                      Goldsmith Row.

     79. Worship Street Baptist     London and North Western Goods
       Chapel-ground                  Depôt.


                             STOKE NEWINGTON.

     80. Abney Congregational       School buildings.
       Chapel, Church Street


                              BETHNAL GREEN.

     81. Roman Catholic Ground,     Cambridge Road.
       Bethnal Green

     82. Pest-field, belonging to   South of Lisbon Street and
       Stepney                        Collingwood Street.


                               WHITECHAPEL.

     83. Roman Cemetery             Goodman’s Fields.

     84. Burial-ground, Whitechapel Whitechapel Workhouse.
       Road

     85. St. Katharine, near the    St. Katharine’s Docks.
       Tower

     86. Additional Ground to St.   St. Katharine’s Docks.
       Katharine

     87. Bone Yard, Gower’s Walk    Houses.

     88. Zoar Chapel, Great Alie    Warehouses, shops, and a
       St.                            forge.

     89. Pest-field, Spital Square  St. Mary’s Church, &c.

     90. Pest-field, east of the    The Royal Mint.
       Mint, and Cemetery of the
       Convent of St. Mary of Grace

     91. Pest-field, Petticoat Lane Built over.

     92. Tower Burial-ground        Demolished for Tower Bridge.
       (outside the wall)

     93. St. Mary Spital Priory     Spital Square and district.

     94. Pest-field or Plague-Pit   Messrs. Kinloch’s new
       in  Gower’s Walk               buildings.

     95. Mill Yard Sabbatarian      Railway by Leman St. Station.
       Chapel

     96. German Church, Hooper      Railway.
       Square.


                                LIMEHOUSE.

     97. Roman Cemetery             Sun Tavern Fields, Shadwell.
     98. Friends’ Burial-ground     Wapping Street.


                            MILE END OLD TOWN.

     99. Rose Lane Chapel-ground    East London Railway, public
                                      house and shops close to
                                      Stepney Station.


                    ST. GEORGE THE MARTYR, SOUTHWARK.

     100. London Road Chapel-ground Tailor’s Shop in London Road,
                                      east side.

     101. Baptist Chapel-ground,    Wilmott’s Buildings.
       Sheer’s Alley

     102. Zion Chapel, Borough      Artisans’ Dwellings, Chapel
                                      Court.


                              ST. SAVIOR’S.

     103. Friends’ Burial-ground,   London Bridge and Charing
       Worcester Street               Cross Railway.

     104. Chapel Burial-ground,     London Bridge and Charing
       Ewer Street                    Cross Railway.

     105. Baptist Chapel-ground,    Houses at corner of Pepper
       Pepper Street (Duke Street     Street.
       Park)

     106. St. Margaret, Southwark   Borough High Street and Market


                               ST. OLAVE’S.

     107. St. Olave, Additional     St. Thomas Street.
       Ground

     108. Flemish Burial-ground,    Approach to London Bridge
       Carter Lane                    Station.

     109. Mazepond Baptist Chapel   Guy’s Hospital Medical School.

     110. Baptist Chapel, Dipping   Fair Street or Charles Street,
       Alley                          Horselydown


                               BERMONDSEY.

     111. Roman Cemetery            Snow Fields, Union Street, and
                                      Deverell Street (Newington).


                                GREENWICH.

     112. Roman Cemetery            Neighbourhood of Blackheath.


                                WOOLWICH.

     113. Bethlem Chapel-ground,    Club House.
       Charles Street

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                              APPENDIX C.

  CHURCHES AND CHAPELS WITH VAULTS UNDER THEM THAT HAVE BEEN USED FOR
  INTERMENTS, BUT WITH NO GRAVEYARDS ATTACHED.


    The Foundling Chapel, W.C.
    Lincoln’s Inn Chapel and Cloisters, W.C.
    Gray’s Inn Chapel, E.C.
    Ely Place Chapel, E.C.
    Lambeth Palace Chapel, S.E.
    St. Pancras New Church, W.C.
    Camden Chapel, St. Pancras, N.W.
    Christ Church, Marylebone, N.W.
    Holy Trinity, Marylebone, N.W.
    Holy Trinity, Islington, N.
    St. John’s, Upper Holloway, N.
    St. John’s, Paddington, W.
    St. Barnabas, Kensington, W.
    All Saints, Islington, N.
    Aske’s Hospital Chapel, Hoxton, N.
    St. Barnabas, King Square, E.C.
    St. Thomas’, Charterhouse, E.C.
    St. Mark’s, Clerkenwell, E.C.
    St. Mark’s, North Audley Street, W.
    Grosvenor Chapel, South Audley Street.
    Hanover Chapel, Regent Street, W. (About to be destroyed.)
    St. Peter’s, Pimlico, S.W.
    St. Stephen’s, Westminster, S.W.
    St. James’s, Clapham, S.W.
    St. Anne’s, Wandsworth, S.W.
    Holy Trinity, Newington, S.E.
    St. Mary Magdalene’s, Peckham, S.E.
    Holy Trinity, Little Queen Street, W.C.
    Wesleyan Chapel, Great Queen Street, W.C.
    Mission Chapel, Little Wyld Street, W.C.
    Elim Chapel, Fetter Lane, E.C.
    Baptist Chapel, Blandford Street, N.W.
    Roman Catholic Chapel, Grove Road, N.W.
    Congregational Chapel, Kentish Town, N.W.
    Brunswick Chapel, Mile End Road, E. (Now connected with
       Charrington’s Assembly Hall.)
    Baptist Chapel, Romney Street, S.W.
    Surrey Chapel, Blackfriars Road, S.E. (Now a machine manufactory.)
    Queen Street Chapel, Woolwich, S.E.

Some vaults, such as those under the Guildhall Chapel, the Rolls Chapel,
and the notorious Elton Chapel, Clements Lane, have disappeared with the
buildings; and it must be remembered that the City churches that have
lost their churchyards have vaults underneath them, and so have other
buildings, such as the Charterhouse Chapel and cloisters, the
burial-ground there being of much later date, and detached from the
chapel.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                              APPENDIX D.


STEPS TO BE TAKEN FOR LAYING OUT AND THROWING OPEN TO THE PUBLIC A
    DISUSED CHURCHYARD OR BURIAL-GROUND, AND FOR ITS MAINTENANCE BY THE
    LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL, OR THE LOCAL AUTHORITY. (REPRINTED FROM THE
    ANNUAL REPORT OF THE METROPOLITAN PUBLIC GARDENS ASSOCIATION, 83,
    LANCASTER GATE, W.)

1. Decide how much assistance is to be sought from the London County
Council, or the Local Authority, that is the Vestry or District Board,
if in London, or the Urban or Rural Sanitary Authority, if in the
provinces, in the carrying out of the scheme. Thus, in approaching any
of these bodies, it should be considered—

    (_a_) Whether they are to be asked to lay out the ground, or only to
    take it over for maintenance after it has been laid out by others,
    _e.g._, the Association.

    (_b_) Whether they may require, or can have the freehold, or only a
    limited interest, such as a lease of the ground.

2. The Incumbent or Owner will, when the consent of the Local Authority
or London County Council has been obtained, be required to execute a
Deed transferring the Ground to the Local Authority, or the Council,
upon the terms and conditions that have been mutually arranged.

3. [Sidenote: Consecrated Grounds require a Faculty.] In the case of a
Consecrated Ground, a Faculty must be obtained from the Bishop of the
Diocese by the Local Authority, or the London County Council, as the
case may be, permitting such body to exercise powers of management over
it; and should it be needful to move tombstones, such Faculty must also
contain a license to do so, otherwise they cannot be moved (_vide_ para.
5).

4. The Consistory Court of the Diocese usually requires the following
preliminary steps to have been taken, before it will hear an application
for a Faculty:—

    (_a_) The preparation of a plan and detailed statement of what it is
    proposed to do to the ground, and of an estimate of the expense
    involved.

    (_b_) The submission of plan, statement, and estimate, to a meeting
    of the Vestry of the Parish, and the passing of a resolution (which
    should be carefully prepared) by the Vestry approving the plan,
    statement, estimate, and application for a Faculty.

    (_c_) The approval of plan, statement, and estimate, by the Local
    Authority or the London County Council, as the case may be.

    (_d_) The presentation of a petition for a Faculty to the Bishop or
    his Consistory Court, by the Local Authority or the Council, as the
    case may be, setting out the scheme, accompanied by the plan,
    statement, and resolutions.

    (_e_) This petition should in the ordinary course have the
    concurrence of the Incumbent, and he may be, and it is usually
    desirable that he should be, a party to it.

    5. [Sidenote: Removal of Tombstones in consecrated and unconsecrated
    grounds.] In the case of any disused churchyard, cemetery, or
    burial-ground, whether consecrated or not, if tombstones are to be
    moved, at least three months before any tombstone or monument is
    moved the following steps have to be taken:—

    (_a_) A statement shall be prepared sufficiently describing by the
    name and date appearing thereon the tombstones and monuments
    standing or being in the ground, and such other particulars as may
    be necessary;

    (_b_) Such statements shall be deposited with the clerk of the
    County Council or Local Authority, and shall be open to inspection
    by all persons;

    (_c_) An advertisement of the intention to remove or change the
    position of such tombstones and monuments shall be inserted three
    times at least in some newspaper circulating in the neighbourhood of
    the burial-ground, and such advertisement shall give notice of the
    deposit of such statement, as is hereinbefore described, and of the
    hours within which the same may be inspected;

    (_d_) A notice in terms similar to the advertisement shall be placed
    on the door of the church (if any) to which such churchyard,
    cemetery, or burial-ground is attached, and shall be delivered or
    sent by post to any person known or believed by the County Council
    or Local Authority to be a near relative of any person whose death
    is recorded on any such tombstone or monument.

[Sidenote: Ditto in consecrated grounds only.] In the case of any
consecrated ground a Faculty is also required (_vide_ page 3), but no
application for a Faculty can be made until the expiration of one month
at least after the appearance of the last of such advertisements.

Provided that on any application for a Faculty nothing shall prevent the
Bishop from directing or sanctioning the removal of any tombstone or
monument, if he is of opinion that reasonable steps have been taken to
bring the intention to effect such removal to the notice of some person
having a family interest in such removal.

[Sidenote: Ditto in unconsecrated grounds only.] In the case of an
unconsecrated burial-ground, no Faculty is requisite either for
management or for moving tombstones.

N.B.—Faculties, which only emanate from the Courts of Diocesan Bishops,
cannot apply to burial-grounds, unless consecrated by Bishops of the
Established Church.

6. [Sidenote: Playing of Games.]The playing of any games or sports is
not allowed in any churchyard, cemetery, or burial-ground in or over
which any estate, interest, or control is acquired under section five of
the Metropolitan Open Spaces Act, 1881.

Provided that—

    (_a_) In the case of consecrated ground, the Bishop, by any license
    or Faculty granted under the Metropolitan Open Spaces Act, 1881, or
    this Act (Open Spaces Act, 1887), and

    (_b_) In the case of any churchyard, cemetery, or burial-ground,
    which is not consecrated, the body from which any such estate,
    interest, or control as aforesaid is acquired may expressly sanction
    any such use of the ground, and may specify such conditions as to
    the extent or manner of such use.

    If an Incumbent or owner wishes to lay out a Disused Churchyard or
    Burial-ground, and to maintain it himself directly or by his agents,
    _e.g._, the Association, no application to the Local Authority, or
    London County Council, is required, and if it is a consecrated
    ground but no tombstones are moved, no Faculty or consent of any
    other person is required. Any arrangement of this nature _an
    Incumbent_ may make is not, however, binding on his successor. In
    unconsecrated grounds no Faculties are needed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                              APPENDIX E.

          THE DISUSED BURIAL-GROUNDS ACT, AND AMENDING CLAUSES IN
                        SUBSEQUENT OPEN SPACES ACTS.

    [Sidenote: A.D. 1884.] 47 & 48 VICT. [Ch. 72.]

                    _Disused Burial grounds Act, 1884._

    An Act for preventing the erection of Buildings on Disused Burial
    grounds. [14th August, 1884.]

    WHEREAS an Act was passed in the session of Parliament holden in the
    fifteenth and sixteenth years of Her Majesty, chapter eighty-five,
    to amend the laws concerning the burial of the dead in the
    metropolis, and an Act was passed in the session holden in the
    sixteenth and seventeenth years of Her Majesty, chapter one hundred
    and thirty-four, “to amend the laws concerning the burial of the
    dead in England, beyond the limits of the metropolis, and to amend
    the Act concerning the burial of the dead in the metropolis”: And
    whereas, in pursuance of the provisions of the above recited Acts,
    numerous Orders in Council have been made for the discontinuance of
    burials in certain burial-grounds within the metropolis and
    elsewhere: And whereas it is expedient that no buildings should be
    erected on any burial-ground affected by any of such Orders in
    Council:

    Be it therefore enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by
    and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal,
    and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the
    authority of the same as follows:

    [Sidenote: Short title.]1. This Act may be cited as the Disused
    Burial-Grounds Act, 1884.

    2. [Sidenote: Interpretation clause Amended by 50 & 51 Vict. c. 32.]
    In this Act a “disused burial-ground” shall mean a burial-ground in
    respect of which an Order in Council has been made for the
    discontinuance of burials therein in pursuance of the provisions of
    the said recited Acts.

    3. [Sidenote: Amended by 50 & 51 Vict. c. 32.] After the passing of
    this Act [Sidenote: No buildings to be erected upon disused
    burial-grounds for enlargement, etc.] it shall not be lawful to
    erect any buildings upon any disused burial-ground, except for the
    purpose of enlarging a church, chapel, meeting-house, or other place
    of worship.

    4. [Sidenote: Saving for buildings already sanctioned.]Nothing in
    this Act shall prevent the erection of any building on a disused
    burial-ground, for which a Faculty has been obtained before the
    passing of this Act.

    5. [Sidenote: Saving of burial-grounds already sold by Act of
    Parliament.]Nothing in this Act contained shall apply to any
    burial-ground which has been sold or disposed of under the authority
    of any Act of Parliament.

                  *       *       *       *       *

                     [48 & 49 VICT.]         [Ch. 167.]
         _Metropolitan Board of Works (Various Powers) Act, 1885._

    And whereas it is expedient to confer further powers upon the Board
    for enforcing the due observance in the metropolis of the provisions
    of the Disused Burial Grounds Act, 1884:

                                  PART IV.
                  Miscellaneous (Disused Burial-grounds).

    56. [Sidenote: A.D. 1885.
    Board to be the authority to enforce the Disused Burial-Grounds Act,
    1884.]The Board shall be and they are hereby constituted the
    authority for preventing the violation and for enforcing the due
    observance of the provisions of the Disused Burial-grounds Act,
    1884, within the metropolis, and they may from time to time
    institute and prosecute all such legal proceedings and do all such
    acts, manners, and things as may in the opinion of the Board be
    necessary or expedient for preventing the violation by any person
    and for enforcing the due observance by all persons of the
    provisions of the said Act within the metropolis.

                  *       *       *       *       *

    [Sidenote: A.D. 1887.] [50 & 51 VICT.] _Open Spaces Act, 1887._

                                 CHAPTER 32


    An Act for extending certain Provisions of the Metropolitan Open
    Spaces Acts, 1877 and 1881, with Amendments, to Sanitary Districts
    throughout England, Wales, and Ireland; and for other purposes.
    [23rd August, 1887.]

    [Sidenote: 40 & 41 Vict. c. 35. 44 & 45 Vict. c. 34.]WHEREAS by the
    Metropolitan Open Spaces Acts, 1877 and 1881 (herein called the
    principal Acts), certain facilities were provided for making
    available the open spaces and burial-grounds in the metropolis for
    the use of the inhabitants thereof for exercise and recreation, and
    it is expedient to provide facilities for making available open
    spaces and burial-grounds in all sanitary districts in England,
    Wales, and Ireland, for the like use of the inhabitants thereof, and
    to make other provisions for the [Sidenote: 47 & 48 Vict. c. 72.]
    purpose aforesaid, and also to amend the Metropolitan Open Spaces
    Act, 1881, and the Disused Burial-grounds Act, 1884:

    Be it therefore enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty by and
    with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and
    Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority
    of the same, as follows:

                  *       *       *       *       *

    4. [Sidenote: Amendment of 47 & 48 Vict. c. 72.] In the Disused
    Burial-grounds Act, 1884, and this Act, the expression
    “burial-ground” shall have the same meaning as in the Metropolitan
    Open Spaces Act, 1881, as amended by this Act, and the expression
    “disused burial-ground” shall mean any burial-ground which is no
    longer used for interments, whether or not such ground shall have
    been partially or wholly closed for burials under the provisions of
    any statute or Order in Council, and the expression “building” shall
    include any temporary or movable building.

                  *       *       *       *       *

    11. [Sidenote: Power over open spaces already vested in sanitary
    authority.] The Metropolitan Board[10] or the sanitary authority may
    exercise all the powers given to them by the Metropolitan Open
    Spaces, 1881, or this Act respecting open spaces, churchyards,
    cemeteries, and burial-grounds transferred to them in pursuance of
    the said Act or of this Act in respect of any open spaces,
    churchyards, cemeteries, and burial-grounds transferred to them in
    pursuance of the said Act or of this Act in respect of any open
    spaces, churchyards, cemeterie, and burial-grounds of a similar
    nature which are or shall be vested in them in pursuance of any
    other statute, or of which they are otherwise the owners.

Footnote 10:

      Read London County Council.

    N.B. Clauses 2 and 3 in this Act, which also refer to
    burial-grounds, are incorporated in Appendix D.

                  *       *       *       *       *

                                 SCHEDULE.

       Portions of the Metropolitan Open Spaces Act, 1881, repealed.

    In section one, the following words occurring in the definition of
    an “open space,” viz., “but shall not include any enclosed land
    which has not a public road or footpath completely round the same.”

    In the same section, the following words occurring in the definition
    of a “burial-ground,” viz., “and in which interments have taken
    place since the year 1800.”

    In the second paragraph of section five, the words, “but such
    Metropolitan Board,[11] vestry, or district board shall not allow
    the playing of any games or sports therein.”

Footnote 11:

       Ibid.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                            _The Gresham Press._

                              UNWIN BROTHERS.
                             WOKING AND LONDON.




------------------------------------------------------------------------






    ● Transcriber’s Notes:
       ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
       ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
       ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
         when a predominant form was found in this book.
       ○ Text in italics is enclosed in underscores (_italics_).





End of Project Gutenberg's The London Burial Grounds, by Isabella M. Holmes

*** 