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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