GRAVEYARDS AS PUBLIC GARDENS.
“Some young children sported among the tombs, and hid from each
other, with laughing faces. They had an infant with them, and had
laid it down asleep upon a child’s grave, in a little bed of
leaves.... Nell drew near and asked them whose grave it was. The
child answered that that was not its name; it was a garden—his
brother’s. It was greener, he said, than all the other gardens, and
the birds loved it better because he had been used to feed
them.”—_From the “Old Curiosity Shop_,” DICKENS.
THE late Sir Edwin Chadwick, in the Report which he drew up in 1843 (ten
years before the burial-grounds were closed), wrote the following
significant words:—“The only observation I at present submit upon the
space of ground now occupied (as burial-grounds) is that it would serve
hereafter advantageously to be kept open as public ground.” Happily he
lived long enough to see some of these very graveyards upon which he had
reported converted into open gardens. Their conversion and their
preservation have gone hand in hand. Partly to facilitate their being
acquired as open spaces an Act was framed, by the passing of which it
became illegal to build on any ground that had been set aside for
interments. And there could be no better way of securing the
preservation of a burial-ground from encroachment or misuse, than by
laying it out and handing it over to a public body to be maintained for
the benefit of the public under the Open Spaces Act. Once given to the
people, the people are not likely to give up an inch of it again without
a struggle.
By the year 1877 seven disused burial-grounds in London had been
converted into public gardens; those of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, St.
George’s in the East, and the Wesleyan graveyard adjoining (forming one
ground), the additional ground for St. Martin’s in the Fields in Drury
Lane, St. John’s, Waterloo Bridge Road, and St. Pancras’ old churchyard,
with the adjoining graveyard belonging to St. Giles’ in the Fields
(forming one ground). These may be called the five pioneer gardens. But
St. Botolph’s was closed again for several years, and St. Martin’s for a
short time, and St. Pancras’ and St. Giles’ had to have much more done
to them before they became attractive open spaces, so that the one which
really stands out as the recreation ground that has had the longest
existence is St. George’s, for this has been in constant use for twenty
years. The Rev. Harry Jones, in his books, “East and West London,” and
“Fifty Years,” describes the difficulties he went through to get the
vestry to agree to the scheme, and to secure a faculty for laying out
the ground. He and his co-workers were in the Consistory Court for two
days, but they succeeded in the end, the wall between the churchyard and
the Nonconformist burial-ground was done away with, and a most valuable
new thoroughfare was opened out from Cable Street to St. George’s Street
(Ratcliff Highway). Thus a precedent was created, and the way was made
easier for others, including the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, to lay
out their churchyards. Since that time, 1875, the part adjoining the
church has also been opened, the whole ground being about three acres in
area, and it is always bright and neat and full of people enjoying the
seats, the grass, the flowers, and the air.
[Illustration: CHURCHYARD OF ST. GEORGE’S IN THE EAST.]
Mr. Loftie has written: “Of St. George’s in the East there is not much
to be said.” He refers to the church, but even this, one of Hawksmoor’s
chief works, is rather too lightly disposed of. Of the parish there is
indeed much to tell. No other church in London can boast of
nineteenth-century riots continued Sunday after Sunday for eighteen
months, necessitating the presence of police in the sacred building. No
other parish ever contained a Danish and a Swedish church, with the
bones of Emmanuel Swedenborg. St. George’s is in touch with all corners
of the globe, for the London Docks contain countless stores of treasures
from the east and the west, the north and the south. Here several of the
chief of those commonly known as the “broad churchmen” of the day have
served as curates; and here the famous life of Father Lowder was lived
for twenty-four years, while the famous church of St. Peter’s, London
Docks, arose in the southern part of the parish,—Father Lowder, of whom
the Rev. Harry Jones, in a memorial sermon, has said: “He was simply
fearless.... He ever meant what he said, and said what he meant.... The
mention of him meets the most sacred moods of the soul.” And the pioneer
garden is still unique in being an amalgamation of a churchyard and a
dissenting burial-ground. How different it is from what it was once like
may be gathered from the following description in _Household Words_ of
November 16, 1850: “The graveyard was dank and clayey, and air blew
coldly through the masts and rigging of the shipping moored in the
Thames and the Docks.” The curate comes to the parish, the curate who
eventually built Christ Church, Watney Street, dispirited and
discouraged. He had fancied it was to St. George’s, Hanover Square, he
was going! And “the occasional funeral duty of the country was changed
for the constant day by day, week by week, repetitions of a gorged
London graveyard,” to which “the close courts and poverty-stricken
streets of his parish sent every year many hundred tenants.” Then the
churchyard, like all the others in London, was closed, and became the
usual useless cat-walk, with high walls around, and blackening
tombstones, until the day when those negotiations began which resulted
in the present charming garden. And this is a story which has now been
repeated in every division of London.
In the year 1882 the Earl of Meath (then Lord Brabazon) started the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. It began on this wise. The
Kyrle Society and the National Health Society had each an Open Spaces
sub-committee, Miss Octavia Hill, of the Kyrle Society, having always
been a prominent supporter of the movement for promoting open spaces,
“outdoor sitting-rooms” she called them, in poor districts. But the
funds of these committees were very small, and the work they could
accomplish, except in the matter of influencing public opinion, very
limited. They made grants of seats to a few churchyards which were being
laid out, and joined in deputations to public bodies respecting open
spaces, &c. Lord and Lady Brabazon had laid out the churchyards of St.
John, Hoxton, and St. Mary, Haggerston, and had taken much interest in
the formation of other grounds, such as the Brewers’ Garden at Stepney,
which mainly owed its existence to the Rev. Sydney Vatcher, present
vicar of St. Philip’s; and Lord Brabazon felt that there was room and
need for a separate association for preserving, acquiring, and laying
out open spaces, and for promoting similar objects. He therefore invited
representatives of the Kyrle and National Health Societies, and others
interested in the matter, to meet him and to discuss the advisability of
sinking their own committees in a new and separate body, or rather of
amalgamating their efforts in the same direction. The National Health
Society only too gladly acquiesced, and from that time forward passed on
all work connected with open spaces to the new body, Mr. Ernest Hart,
Chairman of their Council, becoming the first vice-chairman of the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. There are now eighteen. But
Miss Octavia Hill held back. And this is the reason why there is still
an Open Spaces branch of the Kyrle Society, and why on the title-page of
the annual reports of the Gardens Association the words “In connection
with the National Health Society,” are always inserted. The following
graveyards have been laid out as gardens by the Kyrle Society in
London—St. Peter’s, Bethnal Green, E., St. George’s, Bloomsbury, W. C.
(the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association giving £100 towards the
laying out of each of these), St. George the Martyr, Bloomsbury, W.C.,
and the burial-ground of St. Nicholas’, Deptford, in Wellington Street,
S.E.—four very useful grounds.
[Illustration: CHURCHYARD OF ST. BOTOLPH, ALDGATE.]
The new association was formed in November, 1882, and soon flourished
amazingly. By the end of 1895 it had carried through upwards of 320
successful undertakings, had 60 other works on hand, and had made offers
and attempts, without success, respecting about 200 schemes. But the
indirect work of the Association has also been most valuable; the tone
of public opinion on the subject of open spaces has entirely changed
during the past twelve years, and this is due, in great measure, to the
untiring exertions of the Earl of Meath and his co-workers. New Acts of
Parliament, including the Disused Burial-grounds Act, have been passed,
useful clauses have been inserted in the Open Spaces Acts, and several
Bills threatening open spaces have been opposed and extinguished. The
Association has worked with the Commons Preservation and Kyrle Societies
to forward many most important schemes; it has secured, after much
labour, the opening on Saturdays of upwards of 200 Board School
playgrounds, and its influence upon the work of the public bodies has
been wonderful. It is, for instance, scarcely too much to say that a
week seldom goes by without some communication passing between the
Association and the London County Council.
But my subject is graveyards only, and the following is a list of those
that have been laid out as recreation grounds and opened by the
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association since the Spring of 1885:—
1. St. Bartholomew’s Churchyard, Bethnal Green, E.
2. The East London Cemetery, E.
3. Holy Trinity Churchyard, Rotherhithe, S.E.
4. St. Paul’s Churchyard, Shadwell, E.
5. Spa Fields, Clerkenwell, E.C.
6. St. John at Hackney Churchyard, E. (a part).
7. St. Mary le Strand Ground in Russell Court, W.C.
8. St. James’s Churchyard, Bermondsey, S.E.
9. Holy Trinity Churchyard, Mile End, E.
10. St. Martin’s in the Fields Churchyard, W.C.
11. St. George’s Churchyard, Camberwell, S.E.
12. St. Dunstan’s Churchyard, Stepney, E.
13. St. Anne’s Churchyard, Limehouse, E.
14. Trinity Chapel-ground, Poplar, E.
15. St. Alphege Churchyard, Greenwich, S.E.
16. Seward Street Burial-ground, E.C.
17. St. James’s Churchyard, Ratcliff, E.
18. St. Botolph’s Churchyard, Aldgate, E.
19. St. Ann’s Churchyard, Soho, W.
20. Shoreditch Old Ground, Hackney Road, E.
21. Christ Church Churchyard, Spitalfields, E.
22. All Saints’ Churchyard, Poplar, E. (a part).
23. St. Botolph’s Churchyard, Bishopsgate, E.C.
24. St. Katharine Coleman Churchyard, E.C.
25. St. Olave’s Churchyard, Silver Street, E.C.
26. Victoria Park Cemetery, or Meath Gardens, E.
27. Allhallows’ Churchyard, London Wall, E.C.
28. St. Mary’s Churchyard, Bow, E. (a part).
29. St. Peter’s Churchyard, Walworth, S.E.
30. St. Mary’s Churchyard, Woolwich, S.E.[8]
Footnote 8:
The laying out of four more churchyards is in hand.
The other grounds laid out by the Association have been squares, vacant
sites, and churchyards not used for interments. In addition to these,
grants have been given, amounting to many hundred pounds, towards the
laying out of some fourteen graveyards, and seats, &c., for another
twenty-eight, besides which the Association has secured the opening of
many more and has saved others from being built upon.
One year the income of the Association amounted to over £11,000. This
was due to a shower of wealth from the Mansion House Fund for the
Employment of the Unemployed. The Earl of Meath, at the Mansion House
Committee, boldly promised, with a smiling face and a sinking heart,
that if a grant were made to it the Association would find labour at
once and use up the money in wages. I remember being sent for to
Lancaster Gate in this emergency. It was no easy matter then and there
to provide the work, and the money could not be spent on materials. But
within a few weeks hundreds of men were employed, and their food
arranged for into the bargain. This process was repeated the following
winter (1887-8), but since then the Mansion House Funds have been
smaller and their distribution far more careful, while the Association
has had to depend for its income upon the subscriptions and donations of
its members and friends.
There are now within the metropolitan area ninety burial-grounds
actually dedicated to the public as recreation grounds, and being
maintained as such under the Open Spaces Act of 1881, or by trustees, or
under agreement with the vicar, &c., including four that are Board
School playgrounds. To those who remember these places before they were
converted the transformation is wonderful. One Sunday in the year 1878,
the Rev. H. R. Haweis told his congregation at St. James’s, Westmoreland
Street, that in a hasty walk through their own parish burial-ground in
Paddington Street, Marylebone, he had met “orange-peel, rotten eggs,
cast-off hair-plaits, oyster-shells, crockery, newspapers with bread and
meat, dead cats and five live ones,” and that on the grave of one
Elizabeth Smith, “in the very centre of the churchyard,” he found
“twelve old kettles, two coal-scuttles, three old hats, and an
umbrella.” Some of the congregation doubted it, but they went to look,
and found it true. This particular ground was laid out as a garden by
the St. Marylebone Vestry in 1886, the Association providing £200 and
the wages of the labourers. I remember, in a paper I wrote some ten
years ago, describing a similar ground (and there were, and still are,
many such in London)—I think it was St. James’s, Clerkenwell. This is
also now a neat garden, towards the laying out of which, in 1890, the
Association gave £50 and several seats.
[Illustration: A CORNER OF ST. JOHN’S GARDEN, BENJAMIN STREET.]
I have already referred, in previous chapters, to some of the more
interesting of the graveyards which have been laid out as open spaces.
There is a very charming little garden in Benjamin Street, near
Farringdon Road, which belongs to the parish of St. John’s, Clerkenwell.
It was consecrated in 1755 by the Bishop of Lincoln, acting for the
Bishop of London, having been conveyed to trustees as an extra parochial
burial-ground, the site being a gift to the parish by the will of Simon
Michell, who died in 1750. After being closed for burials it fell into
the hands of a member of the Clerkenwell Vestry, and was covered with
workshops and rubbish until the then Rector, the Rev. W. Dawson,
instituted proceedings against him, secured the land, laid it out by
public subscription (in 1881), and maintained it at his private expense.
It is now in the hands of trustees, and the Holborn District Board of
Works and the Clerkenwell Vestry contribute towards its upkeep. Several
other gardens in London have had a somewhat similarly checkered history.
The burial-ground in Hackney Road belonging to Shoreditch has a quaint
old building in it, once the parish watch-house, and used as a temporary
hospital at the time of the cholera visitation. A new-gateway has lately
been made at St. James’s, Ratcliff, leading into the churchyard garden,
erected as a memorial to the late vicar, the Rev. R. K. Arbuthnot, who
spent very many years in the parish and died in harness. A special
service was held on November 30, 1895, when the choir walked in
procession through the grounds, the ceremony ending by the singing of
the Rev. H. R. Haweis’s hymn, “The Homeland.” The gate was dedicated by
the Rural Dean, Prebendary Turner, present Rector of St. George’s in the
East, and opened by Sir Walter Besant. Greenwich and Woolwich
Churchyards, which were laid out by the Association, the cost of the
latter being borne by Mr. Passmore Edwards, are both fine gardens,
Woolwich is especially attractive, as it stands high above the river,
with an extensive view. H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge opened Greenwich
Churchyard, and H.R.H. the Duchess of Fife opened that of Woolwich. St.
James’s Churchyard, Bermondsey, was extensively used for airing clothes
before the Association laid it out.
In this matter of the conversion of churchyards into public gardens
there has, indeed, been a wonderful change in public opinion. It used to
be necessary to visit the clergy and to ask them to allow the grounds to
be laid out, with the result, usually, that the request or offer was
declined. But a new race of clergy seems to be springing up, and such
men as the present Rectors of Woolwich, Walworth, and Bethnal Green no
sooner came into possession of their livings than they wrote to the
Association, begging that their churchyards might be taken in hand. The
new Rector of Bethnal Green, already well known as the “head” of Oxford
House, not only asked the Association to lay out his churchyard but also
made a Christmas present of it to the Vestry, and ere long it will be a
most useful open space. And this has happened in very many places, most
of the parish churchyards being new public gardens, except Camberwell,
Rotherhithe, Battersea, Clapham, Wandsworth, Kensington, Wapping,
Homerton, and a few others; but there are still several district
churchyards which it would be very advantageous to lay out.
To return to some of the quainter spots. In the burial-ground of St.
George the Martyr, Bloomsbury, there stands a private gentleman’s
dissecting-room. Hackney Churchyard includes the ground surrounding the
tower of the older church (St. Augustine’s), while Bermondsey Churchyard
includes the cemetery of the Abbey. The little playground in Russell
Court, Drury Lane, which was a graveyard attached to the parish of St.
Mary le Strand, is immortalised as “Tom all alones” in Dickens’ “Bleak
House.” This was “that there berryin’ ground,” where, said poor Jo,
“‘they laid him as was werry good to me’”—the place “with houses looking
on on every side, save where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives
access to the iron gate....
“‘He was put there,’ says Jo, holding to the bar and looking in.
“‘Where? Oh, what a scene of horror!’
“‘There,’ says Jo, pointing, ‘over yinder—among them piles of bones, and
close to that there kitchen winder! ... Look at the rat! Hi! Look! There
he goes! Ho! into the ground.’”
When the Association got hold of it, it was little else than a heap of
decaying rubbish thrown from the surrounding houses, and the carcases of
eighteen cats were removed at once. It is now an asphalted recreation
ground, and is often crowded with children using the swings and the
seats. But it has lately lost its characteristic appearance, the
surrounding houses have been pulled down, and it is at present “opened
out.” The “kitchen winder” no longer leads into a kitchen, though the
iron gate is still in its original state, with the worn step upon which
Lady Deadlock’s life was brought to a close.
It must not be supposed that there has been no opposition to the
conversion of graveyards into public gardens. Many owners have refused
to allow it, and from time to time (though the times are now getting
very few and far between) letters have been written to the newspapers
pointing out the danger of admitting the public into them. But the
burial-grounds are there—in the midst of crowded streets—whether we like
them or no, and they become far more wholesome when fresh soil is
imported, good gravel paths made, and the ground drained, and when
grass, flowers, trees, and shrubs take the place of the rotting rubbish.
A certain gentleman, somewhat well known, wrote on several occasions to
the _Times_, arguing against the laying out of churchyards, and saying
that a “blue haze” hung about a square in New York which once was a
burial-ground. But no blue haze hangs about our gardens in London,
children are born and bred by the hundred in those very kitchens whose
“winders” look upon them, and they are of the utmost value as open
spaces in all parts of the town.
[Illustration: THE CHURCHYARD OF ALLHALLOWS, LONDON WALL.]
On the other hand, every consideration should be shown for those whose
objections to the transformation have been on sentimental grounds. In
Appendix D will be seen the steps to be taken for laying out and
throwing open to the public a disused churchyard or burial-ground, and
from this those who are not already aware of it may notice two
points—first, that any person interested in any particular tombstone has
the right and the power to prevent such tombstone from being moved;
second, that the inscriptions on the stones, and their exact positions
in a ground to be laid out, are preserved in perpetuity in the office of
the Registrar of the Diocese; whereas the actual inscriptions themselves
on the tombstones, whether a ground is closed, or open, are daily
becoming more defaced, and when it is closed there is no such record of
them and no guarantee that they may not be broken, shifted, or stolen.
Nor must it be imagined that the tombstones in all graveyard gardens
have necessarily to be moved. It is only where they are standing so
thickly that the ground cannot be laid out otherwise. In some places,
such as Spa Fields, not a single gravestone existed when it came into
the hands of the Association; in others, such as St. Mary le Strand,
there were only a few and these already on the walls; while in others,
again, such as Holy Trinity, Rotherhithe, there were so few that it was
not necessary to get a faculty to remove them, but they were left _in
situ_. There is rather an amusing tombstone at All Saints’, Poplar. It
stands tall and solitary in the middle of a path, which could not be
diverted because of other stones; and when the path was made this
particular monument was left in the very centre. I think the best way of
disposing of tombstones is by putting them against the walls, even if it
necessitates two or three rows. They are very dismal standing in groups,
as at St. James’s, Hampstead Road, and the wall of headstones at St.
Luke’s, Chelsea, is by no means attractive. Nor are the “dome” and
“trophy” at St. Pancras, to which I have already referred. In St. John’s
Garden, Horseferry Road, they are cemented into an even row against the
wall, and look as if they would last for ever.
I would not say that a converted graveyard is a better garden than a
converted square, but yet there is something more interesting about
it—it is so very human; and where there are monuments to notable persons
(which naturally are undisturbed) they form something with an historical
flavour about it which is attractive to look at. At Paddington
Churchyard, for instance, there is the grave of Mrs. Siddons, in front
of which it is said that Miss Mary Anderson, during her first tour in
England, was often seen to stand.
“Isn’t it foine!” said a ragged little urchin to me on the day when that
particular ground was thrown open to the public. He was simply bursting
with delight at having a garden to go into. I answered that I thought it
was. This reminds me of another little denizen of the slums, at
Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He was inside—I had just left the ground after the
opening ceremony. He peeped through the railings, overflowing with
smiles; “You can come _in_, Miss,” he said. I was not a Miss, but I
thanked him for the information.
[Illustration: IN THE GRAVEYARD OF ST. JOHN’S IN HORSEFERRY ROAD.]
Apart from the question of the moving of tombstones, there are many
people who think it irreverent for a ground once used for burial ever to
be used for recreation; they do not like the idea of people walking
about over the graves. This feeling is worthy of all respect. It is
found largely developed among the Jews, and has prevented them,
hitherto, from allowing any of their graveyards to be laid out as public
gardens. There are other people—and I am thankful that I do not come
across them—who would like our churches turned into theatres and our
churchyards into “Tivolis.” They do far more harm to the cause of open
spaces than do those who are slow to adapt themselves to modern ideas.
But as far as my experience goes, I have found that the people who
chiefly object to the conversion of burial-grounds into gardens are
those who stay at home. They have in their mind’s eye a picture of a
well-kept cemetery, where burials take place every day, or of a sweet
village churchyard, where the grass is soft and green and the graves are
peaceful and undisturbed. One of the last things that I should ever wish
to see is a village churchyard turned into the village recreation
ground; and it was sad to find as I did a short time ago, that a certain
rural churchyard in West Middlesex was being used as a drying-ground for
clean clothes. But the London disused graveyards are _so_ different,
that I believe it is only necessary to take these objectors (though they
will never come) into a neglected ground, to point out to them the
sinking graves, to help them to pick their way so that they may avoid
the dirty rubbish lying about, and the pitfalls into which they may
stumble, in order to convince them that the ground, if turned into a
public garden, would be treated with more reverence and in a more seemly
manner. Then show them a graveyard garden; let them sit there for a bit
to watch the people who come in and out, the men who have a brief rest
in the middle of the day, the women who can snatch a few moments from
their crowded and noisy homes, the big children with the “prams,” and
the little children they have in charge—and the change in the minds of
the objectors will be complete.
The laying out of the churchyards is being carried out in many large
towns besides London, though the initiative came from the metropolis.
Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Glasgow, and other places are adopting the
plan, and in Norwich there is a young and flourishing Open Space Society
which has already done much in this direction. As the City of Norwich
contains about fifty churches, nearly all of which have churchyards, the
Society has its work cut out for it, in this one way alone, for a good
many years.
My impression is that amongst the London burial-grounds which are still
closed and useless, there are fewer very untidy ones than there used to
be. The agitation that has led to the laying out of 80 or 90 as public
recreation grounds has also had a beneficial effect upon those which are
not yet laid out. If this is the case it is very satisfactory, and it is
an indirect result of the labours of the members of the Metropolitan
Public Gardens Association, and of others who have interested themselves
in the matter, which should be a cause for thankfulness and
encouragement.
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