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 slope 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.”
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