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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