London parks and gardens

The disused burial-grounds within the London area must now be counted among its gardens. There are those who would not have the living benefit by these hallowed spots set apart for the dead, but the vast majority of people have welcomed the movement which has led to this change. In some instances there is no doubt the transformation has been badly done. Here and there graves have been disturbed and tombstones heedlessly moved, but on the whole the improvement of the last fifty years has been immense. It is appalling even to read the accounts of many of the London graveyards before this reaction set in. The hideous sights, the foul condition in which God’s acre was often allowed to remain, as revealed by the inquiry held about 1850, together with the horrors of body-snatchers, are such a disagreeable contrast to the orderly graveyards of to-day, that the removal of a few head-stones is a much lesser evil.

Loudon, in the Botanical Magazine, was one of the first to write about the improvement of public cemeteries, and to point out how they could be beautified, and the suggestion that the smaller burial-grounds could be turned into gardens was made as early as 1843 by Sir Edwin Chadwick. But the closing of them did not come until ten years later, and it was many years after that, before any attempt was made to turn them into gardens. By 1877 eight had been transformed, and from that time onwards, every year something has been done. The Metropolitan Gardens Association, started by Lord Meath (then Lord Brabazon) in 1882, has done much towards accomplishing this work. One of the earliest churchyards taken in hand was that of St. Pancras, and joined to it St. Giles-in-the-Fields. The Act permitting this was in 1875. Perhaps because it was one of the first, it is also one of the worst in taste and arrangement. The church of St. Pancras-in-the-Fields is one of the oldest in Middlesex. “For the antiquity thereof” it “is thought not to yield to St. Paul’s in London.” In 1593 the houses standing near this old Norman church were much “decaied, leaving poore Pancras without companie or comfort.” The bell of St. Pancras Church was said to be the last tolled in England at the time of the Reformation, to call people to Mass. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, adjoining to the south side of the churchyard, was “a good spaw, whose water is of a sweet taste,” very clear, and imbued with various medicinal qualities. These “Pancras Wells” had a large garden, which extended from the Spa buildings by the churchyard, between the coach road from Hampstead, and the footpath across the meadows to Gray’s Inn. As late as 1772 the coach was stopped and robbed at this corner, and the footpads, armed with cutlasses, made off through the churchyard. It was of this then lonely, rural churchyard that it was said the dead would rest “as secure against the day of resurrection as ... in stately Paules”; but, alas for modern exigencies, the Midland Railway now spans the sacred ground by a viaduct, and the would-be improvers, in turning what remained into a garden, have moved the tombstones, levelled the undulating ground, and heaped the head-stones into terrible rocky mounds, or pushed them in rows along the wall. Numerous were the interesting monuments it contained; many a courtly French emigré here found a resting-place, such as the Comte de Front, on whose tomb was the line, “A foreign land preserves his ashes with respect.” Although a monumental tablet put up to record the opening, and the names of the designers of the garden, proclaims it to be “a boon to the living, a grace to the dead”; it is doubtful how that respect to the dead was shown. The lines go on to say it was “not for the culture of health only, but also of thought.” Surely health and thought could have been equally well stimulated by making pretty paths, lined with trees and flowers, wind reverently in and out among the tombs, and up and down the undulating ground, with seats in shade or sun, arranged with peeps of the old church; and there might even have been room for the fine sun-dial (the gift of Baroness Burdett-Coutts) without levelling the whole area and laying it out with geometrically straight asphalt walks. The asphalt paths are in themselves a necessity in most cases, as the expense of keeping gravel in order is too great, and the majority of the renovated disused burial-grounds suffer from this fact.

Westward from St. Pancras the next large churchyard is that of Marylebone, and further to the north is St. John’s Wood burial-ground. Its large trees and shaded walks are familiar to the thousands who go every year to Lord’s Cricket Ground. Another large one, still more westward, now used as a garden, is Paddington. The small green patch round St. Mary’s Church, and a large cemetery beyond, together make over 4 acres. All round London these spaces are being used, and in most cases little has been done to upset the ground—among the more prominent are St. George’s, Hanover Square, in Bayswater; St. John’s, Waterloo Road; Brixton Parish Church, with a row of yew trees; Fulham Parish Church, with Irish yews, and tall, closely clipped hollies; St. Mary’s, Upper Street, Islington, and many others. Some are large spaces, such as St. John-at-Hackney, which covers 3 acres, and in it stands the tower of the old church, the present very large church which dominates it being in the Georgian style of 1797.

Stepney is the largest of all these disused churchyards, and covers 7 acres. It was opened as a public garden in 1887. The beautiful old Perpendicular church of St. Dunstan, with its carved gargoyles and fine old tower, which escaped the fire that destroyed the roof, stands on a low level, with the large square stone graves, of which there are a great quantity, on higher mounds round it. The central path, the old approach to the church, has trees on either side, and runs straight across the graveyard, and is as peaceful-looking as the walk in many a country churchyard. The way the laying out as a garden has been carried out is unfortunate in many respects. The number of the big, stone, box-like monuments made it difficult to carry intersecting paths across between them, so a plan hardly to be commended has been followed, of half burying a number of these, and planting bushes in the earth thus thrown about, and putting the necessary frames for raising plants in the centre. To place the frames against the wall, and make a raised path or terrace among the tombs, and not to have banked them up with a kind of rockery of broken pieces, might have been more fitting. The part of the ground which is less crowded is well planted. Birch and alder (Alnus cordifolia) are doing well, and a nice clump of gorse flourishes.

One of the best-arranged of these old East End graveyards is that of St. George’s-in-the-East, near Ratcliffe Highway. It is kept up by the Borough of Stepney, having been put in order under the direction of the rector, Rev. C. H. Turner (now Bishop of Islington), at the expense of Mr. A. G. Crowder, in 1866. The tombstones have for the most part been placed against the wall, or left standing if out of the way, as in the case of the one to the Marr family, whose murder caused horror in 1811. In the centre stands the obelisk monument to Mrs. Raine, a benefactress of the parish, who died in 1725. The whole of the ground is laid out with great taste and simplicity, and is thoroughly well cared for. The flowers seem to flourish particularly well, and the borders in summer are redolent with the scent of old clove carnations, which are actually raised and kept from year to year on the premises. A small green-house supplies the needs of the flower-beds, The superintendence of the garden is left to Miss Kate Hall, who takes charge of the Borough of Stepney Museum in Whitechapel Road, and also of the charming little nature-study museum in the St. George’s Churchyard Garden. What formerly was the mortuary has been turned to good account, and hundreds of children in the borough benefit by Miss Hall’s instruction. Aquaria both for fresh-water fish and shells, and salt-water collections, with a lobster, starfish, sea anemones, and growing sea weeds are to be seen, and moths, butterflies, dragon-flies, pass through all their stages, while toads, frogs, and salamanders and such-like are a great delight. The hedgehog spends his summer in the garden, and hibernates comfortably in the museum. The bees at work in the glass hive are another source of instruction. Outside the museum a special plot is tended by the pupils, who are allowed in turn to work, dig, and prune, and who obtain, under the eye of their sympathetic teacher, most creditable results. The charm of this East End garden, and the special educational uses it has been put to, shows what can be achieved, and sets a good example to others, where similar opportunities exist. A less promising neighbourhood for gardening could hardly be imagined, which surely shows that no one need be disheartened.

Some of the burial-grounds were in such a shocking state before they were taken in hand, that very few of the head-stones remained in their right places, and many had gone altogether, while some even reappeared as paving-stones in the district. Spa Fields, Clerkenwell, had a very chequered history. The site was first a tea garden, near the famous Sadler’s Wells. For a few years, from 1770, its “little Pantheon” and pretty garden, with a pond or “canal” stocked with fish, and alcoves for tea drinkers, was thronged by the middle class, small tradesmen, and apprentices, while the more fashionable world flocked to Ranelagh or Almack’s. It was the sort of place in which John Gilpin and his spouse might have amused themselves, on a less important holiday than their wedding anniversary. Twenty years later the scene had changed. The rotunda was turned into a chapel, by the Countess of Huntingdon, who took up her residence in a jessamine-covered house that had been a tavern, near to it. The gardens had already been turned into a private burial-ground, which soon became notorious for the evil condition in which it was kept. There every single gravestone had disappeared long before it was converted into the neat little garden, the delight of poor Clerkenwell children. The rotunda was at length pulled down, and in 1888 a new church was erected on the site. The same disgraceful story of neglect and repulsive overcrowding, can be told of the Victoria Park Cemetery, although the ground had not such a strange early history. It was one of those private cemeteries which the legislation with regard to other burial-places did not touch. It was never consecrated, and abuses of every kind were connected with it. It is a space of 9½ acres in a crowded district between Bethnal Green and Bow, a little to the south of Victoria Park. After various difficulties in raising funds and so forth, it was laid out by the Metropolitan Gardens Association, opened to the public in 1894, and is kept up by the London County Council, and is an extremely popular recreation ground, under the name of “Meath Gardens.”

One of the quiet spots near the City is Bunhill Fields. This has for over two hundred years been the Nonconformist burial-ground. The land was enclosed by a brick wall, by the City of London in 1665 for interments “in that dreadful year of Pestilence. However, it not being made use of on that occasion,” a man called “Tindal took a lease thereof, and converted it into a burial-ground for the use of Dissenters.” As late as 1756 it appears to have been known as “Tindal’s Burial-ground.” The name Bunhill Fields was given to that part of Finsbury Fields, on to which quantities of bones were taken from St. Paul’s in 1549. It is said “above a thousand cartloads of human bones” were deposited there. No wonder the ghastly name of “bone hill,” corrupted into Bunhill, has clung to the place. At the present time the gravestones here are undisturbed, and more respect has been shown to them than to the bones in the sixteenth century. Asphalt paths meander through a forest of monuments, and a few seats are placed in the shade of some of the trees. Those who live in this poor and busy district no doubt make much use of these places of rest, but the visitor is only brought to this depressing, gloomy spot on a pilgrimage to the tomb of John Bunyan. He rests near the centre of the ground, under a modern effigy. Not far off is the tomb of Dr. Isaac Watts, whose hymns are repeated wherever the British tongue is spoken, and near him lies the author of “Robinson Crusoe,” Daniel Defoe. This quaint old enclosure opens off the City Road, opposite Wesley’s Chapel, and on the western side it is skirted by Bunhill Row. But a few yards distant is another graveyard of very different aspect, as it contains only one stone, and that a very small one, with the name of George Fox, who died in 1690. The other graves in this, the “Friends’ Burial-ground,” never having been marked in any way, it has the appearance of a dismal little garden, like the approach or “gravel sweep” to a suburban villa. But it is neatly kept.

Of all the churchyards, that of St. Paul’s is best known, and least like the ordinary idea of one. But this was not always so. It was for centuries an actual burying-place. When the foundations of the present cathedral were dug, after the Great Fire, a series of early burials were disclosed. There were Saxon coffins, and below them British graves, where wooden and ivory pins were found, which fastened the woollen shrouds of those who rested there, and below that again, between twenty and thirty feet deep, were Roman remains, with fragments of pottery, rings, beads, and such-like.

The original churchyard was very much larger, as the present houses in “St. Paul’s Churchyard” are actually on part of the ground included in it. It extended from Old Change in Cheapside to Paternoster Row, and on the south to Carter Lane, and the whole was surrounded by a wall built in 1109, with the principal gateway opening into “Ludgate Street.” This wall seems to have been unfinished, or else part of it became ruinous in course of time, and the churchyard became the resort of thieves and ruffians. To remedy this state of things, the wall was completed and fortified early in the fourteenth century. It had six gates, and remained like this until the Great Fire, although long before that date houses had been built against the wall both within and without. Round here were collected the shops of the most famous booksellers, such as John Day, who came here in 1575.

On the north side was a plot of ground known as Pardon’s Churchyard, and here was built a cloister in Henry V.’s time, decorated with paintings to illustrate Lidgate’s translation of “The Dance of Death.” Here, too, was a chapel and charnel-house, and the whole was pulled down by order of the Protector Somerset, who used some of the material in building Somerset House. It was on that occasion that the cartloads of bones were removed to Finsbury Fields. There, covered with earth, they made a solid, conspicuous hill on which windmills were erected. It was part of this same ground which has already been referred to as Bunhill Fields. Great as was the damage done by the Fire, perhaps no site has been so completely altered as that of St. Paul’s. The modern cathedral, dearly loved by all Londoners, stands at quite a different angle from the old one, the western limit of which is marked by the statue of Queen Anne. Nestling close to the south-west corner of the great Gothic cathedral with its lofty spire, was the parish church of St. Gregory, and the crypt was the parish church of St. Faith’s. Both these parishes were allocated a portion of the churchyard for their burials.

To the north-east of the cathedral stood Paul’s Cross, the out-door pulpit whence many notable sermons were preached. It is described by Stowe. “About the middest of this Churchyard is a pulpit-crosse of timber, mounted upon steps of stone, and covered with Lead, in which are Sermons preached by learned Divines, every Sunday in the fore-noone. The very antiquity of which Crosse is to me unknowne.” The earliest scene he records as taking place at this “crosse,” was when Henry III., in 1259, commanded the Mayor to cause “every stripling of twelve years of age and upward to assemble there,” to swear “to be true to the King and his heires, Kings of England.” In later times, the most distinguished preachers of the day were summoned to preach before the Court and the Mayor, Aldermen and citizens, and the political significance of such harangues may well be imagined. It was here Papal Bulls were promulgated; here Tyndal’s translation of the New Testament was publicly burnt; here Queen Elizabeth listened to a sermon of thanksgiving on the defeat of the Armada—only to mention a few of the associations that cling round the spot, which, until within the last fifty years, was marked by an old elm tree which kept its memory green. Now it is treated with scant respect. There is, indeed, a little wooden notice-board, like a giant flower-label, stuck into the ground by an iron support, which records the fact that here stood Paul’s Cross, destroyed by the Fire of 1666. The notice is not so large or conspicuous as the one a few feet from it, beseeching the kindly friends of the pigeons not to feed them on the flower-beds! It is to be hoped that before long the bequest of £5000 of the late H. C. Richards, for the re-erection of the Cross, may be embodied in some visible form.

What a picture such recollections call up!—the excited crowds with all the colour of Tudor costumes, the eager, fanatical faces of the “defenders of the Faith,” the sad and despondent faces of the intensely serious Reformers, as they see the blue smoke curl upwards, and the flames consume the sacred volumes.

Picture the churchyard once more in still earlier times, when strange, fantastic customs clung round the cathedral services. One of the most original seems to have arisen from the tenure of land in Essex granted to Sir William Baud by the Dean and Chapter. The twenty-two acres of land were held on the condition that “hee would (for ever) upon the Feast day of the Conversion of Paul in Winter give unto them a good Doe, seasonable and sweete, and upon the Feast of the Commemoration of St. Paul in Summer, a good Buck, and offer the same at the high Altar, the same to bee spent amongst the Canons residents.” On the appointed days the keeper who had brought the deer carried it through the procession to the high altar. There the head was severed, and the body sent off to be cooked, while the horns, stuck on a spear, were carried round the cathedral. The procession consisted of the Dean and Chapter in their copes—special ones for the two occasions—one embroidered with does, the other with bucks, the gift of the Baud family, and on their heads garlands of roses. Having performed the ceremony within the church, the whole procession issued out of the west door, and there the keeper blew a blast upon his horn, and when he had “blowed the death of the Bucke,” the “Horners that were about the City presently answered him in like manner.” The Dean and Chapter paid the blowers of horns fourpence each and their dinner, while the man who brought the venison got five shillings and his food and lodgings, and a “loafe of bread, having the picture of Saint Paul upon it,” to take away with him. What a strange picture of mediæval life and half-pagan rites! yet all conducted with perfect good faith, in all seriousness. It is just one of the great charms of knowing London and its traditions, that one is able to clear away in imagination the growth of centuries, and throw back one’s mind to the past—to stand at the top of Ludgate Hill and to remove Wren’s building and to see the Gothic pinnacles; to blot out the garden and fountain and modern seats, and see Paul’s Cross; on the left to see the arches of the cloisters, and on the right the high wall and timbered houses; then to open the western door and see this strange procession issue forth, with the antlers borne aloft, and hear the bugle-blast and answering notes.

Surely no place can be more crowded with memories than busy, “roaring London,” and nowhere are the past and present so unexpectedly brought together. The City is full of surprises to those who have leisure to wander among its narrow, crowded streets. The quiet little graveyards afford many of these telling contrasts. Suddenly, in the busiest thoroughfares, where a constant stream of men are walking by every weekday, come these quiet little back-waters. In many cases the churches themselves have vanished, or only remain in part. St. Mary’s Staining is one of these, so hidden away that one might walk along Fenchurch Street hundreds of times and never find it. The approach is by a very narrow alley, at the end of which is this quiet little graveyard, where, among other worthies, reposes Sir Arthur Savage, knighted at Cadiz in 1596. The church, all except the tower, was destroyed in the Great Fire, and never rebuilt. The picturesque old tower stands in the centre of this little plot, which now forms the garden of the Clothworkers’ Company, whose hall opens on to one side of it.

Another church which perished in the Fire and was never rebuilt is St. Olave’s, Hart Street, but its churchyard remains, and a few large tombs stand in a small garden with seats, where at all times of the year some weary wayfarers are resting.

Another such graveyard where the burnt church was not restored is at the corner of Wood Street and Cheapside. The old tree inside the closed railings may have inspired the lark to carol so joyously as to call up the “vision of poor Susan.”

St. Botolph’s, Aldersgate, has one of the largest churchyards in the City, but it really consists of four pieces of land thrown into one in 1892, by a scheme under the London Parochial Charities, which contributed part of the purchase-money of some of the land, and gives £150 a year for the upkeep—£100 being paid to them by the General Post Office, which has the right of light over the whole space. One-half of the churchyard is St. Botolph’s, and the rest is made up of the burial-grounds of St. Leonard, Foster Lane, and Christ Church, Newgate Street, and a strip of land which might have been built on, but which, under the revised scheme in 1900, became permanently part of this open space. The garden is carefully laid out; there are nice plane trees and a little fountain, regular paths and numerous seats. A sheltered gallery runs along one side, and in it are tablets to commemorate deeds of heroism in humble life—Londoners who lost their lives in saving the lives of others. The church of St. Botolph was one which escaped the Fire, but had fallen into such disrepair that it was rebuilt, by Act of Parliament, in 1754. The Act specially stipulates that none of the gravestones were to be removed, but where some of them are, now that it is a trim garden, it would be hard to say. Being not far from the General Post Office, this garden is so much used by its officials during the middle of the day, it has earned the name of the “Postman’s Park.”

Another much-frequented but much smaller churchyard is that of St. Katharine Coleman. Suddenly, in a corner of crowded Fenchurch Street, comes this retired shade. The church, with its old high pews, and tiny graveyard, devoid of monuments, is a peaceful oasis. These surprises in the densest parts of the City are very refreshing, and they are too numerous to mention each individually. Most of them now are neatly kept, though some look dreary enough. None of them recall the neglect of half a century ago. St. Olave’s, Hart Street, in Seething Lane, is perhaps among the most gloomy. It is the church Pepys speaks of so often as “our owne church,” and was one of the churches that escaped the Fire. The archway with the skulls over it, leads from Seething Lane to the dismal-looking churchyard. Nothing is done to alter or brighten this place of many memories. One shudders to think of what it must have been like when Pepys crossed it for the first time after the Great Plague, when he went to the memorial service for King Charles I., on 30th January 1666. No wonder he says it “frighted me indeed to go through the church more than I thought it could have done, to see so many graves lie so high upon the churchyard, where people have been buried of the Plague. I was much troubled about it, and do not think to go through it again a good while.” The parish registers show that no less than 326 were interred in this very small place, during the previous six months, so Pepys’ feelings were well justified. The old church has a special interest to lovers of gardens, as in it is the tomb of William Turner, the author of the first English Herbal.

In more than one City churchyard a portion of the old wall makes its appearance. There is St. Alphage, London Wall, and Allhallows-in-the-Wall, where the little gardens by the wall have been formed with a view to preserving it. The most picturesque is St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, where Milton is buried. The graveyard is large, and the ground rises above the footpath, which was made across it some thirty years ago, to a bastion of the wall, of rough stones and flint, which is in its old state, although part of the wall was rebuilt in 1803. There has been no attempt here to make it a resting-place for the living, although it is used as a thoroughfare.

Few people who have not entered the Bank of England would suspect it of enclosing an extremely pretty garden. There the inner courtyard possesses tall lime trees, gay rhododendrons, and a cool splashing fountain, with ferns and iris glistening in the spray. It is quite one of the most delightfully fresh and peaceful corners on a hot summer’s day, and carries one in imagination to Italy. Yet this is but another of the many old City churchyards. The parish of St. Christopher-le-Stocks was absorbed, with five other parishes, into St. Margaret’s, Lothbury, in 1781. Some of the tombs, and pictures of Moses and Aaron, were removed from it, and are still to be seen in St. Margaret’s, which is crowded with monuments from all six churches. The Bank was already in possession of most of the land within the parish, and by the Act of Parliament of 1781, the church and churchyard became part of the Bank premises, which cover nearly three acres. The church site was built over, but the graveyard became the garden. This enclosure at first was a simple grass plot, as shown in an engraving dated 1790. The lime trees may have been planted soon after, as they appear as large trees sixty years later, and are spoken of in 1855 as two of the finest lime trees in London. The fountain was put up in 1852 by Mr. Thomas Hankey, then the governor. The water for it came from the tanks belonging to the Bank, supplied by an artesian well 330 feet deep, said to be very pure, and free from lime. Perhaps that is why the rhododendrons look so flourishing. Most of the Bank, as is well known, was the work of the architect Sir John Soane, but some of the portions built by Sir Robert Taylor, before his death in 1788, when Soane was appointed to succeed him, are to be seen in the garden court. It is said that the last person buried there was a Bank clerk named Jenkins, who was 7½ feet in height. He was allowed to rest there, as he feared he might be disinterred on account of his gigantic proportions.

Very different is the churchyard of St. Martin’s, on Ludgate Hill. It belongs to Stationers’ Hall, and although it boasts of one fine plane tree, is an untidy, grimy, dingy little square. By permission of all the necessary authorities, the coffins (480 in number) were removed and reverently buried in Brookwood Cemetery in 1893, a careful register of all the names and dates, that could be deciphered, being kept. This having been done, the earth was merely left in an irregular heap round the tree, and no attempt has been made to improve in any way the forsaken appearance of the place.

This sketch does not aim at being a guide-book, and it would only be tedious to enumerate the many churchyards, without as well as within the City, which of late years have been made worthy “gardens of sleep.” St. Luke’s, Old Street; St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch; St. Anne’s, Soho; St. Sepulchre, Holborn, and many others in every part of the town, from being dreary and untidy, have become orderly and well kept; and instead of being unwholesome and unsightly, have become attractive harbours of refuge in the sea of streets and houses.