The transformation of urban burial grounds: from sacred chronicle to contested civic space

“ Burial-grounds, even in the humblest villages, are always interesting to a stranger. They are marble chronicles of the past; where, after studying the lively characters around him, he can retire, and over a page that knows no flattery, hold communion with the dead. ”

“ James’s Workhouse Ground, Poland Street.—The workhouse was built upon a “common cemetery” where, at the time of the plague, many thousands of bodies were interred. A small part of it was kept as the workhouse burial-ground, but this has now disappeared, and all that is left of the original ground used for interments is the garden or courtyard of the workhouse. It is a pleasant recreation ground for the inmates, and is well supplied with seats, being about 1⁄4 acre in extent. ”

“ To a casual observer they are utterly unrecognisable as burial-grounds, and it is many years since such relics can have existed in them. When, for instance, a burial-ground becomes a builder’s yard, tombstones are very much in the way, and they are soon converted into paving-stones, Some years ago a few inscriptions were still legible on the stones which paved the passage to Spa Fields from Exmouth Street, but by this time even these must be worn away. ”

“ The mansion was owned by ———— Hopper, one of the most active Whigs of the day. He was often employed by Washington in the secret service, and frequently visited his friends in New York city while the enemy had possession of it. On such occasions, he obtained much valuable information respecting the strength of the enemy, without incurring suspicion, as he never committed a word to paper. The remains of the patriot rest beneath a small marble monument, in a family cemetery, upon a grassy knoll by the road side, not far from the mansion. ”

“ We now turn to the French in London, and these have to be divided into the Roman Catholics and the Huguenots. No doubt Frenchmen and Frenchwomen have been laid to rest in the burial-grounds attached to all the Roman Catholic churches, and especially in All Souls Cemetery, behind the chapel of St. Mary, in Cadogan Place, Chelsea, which chapel was built by M. Voyaux de Franous, a French Émigré clergyman, and consecrated in 1811. ”

“ The Jews think a great deal of their tombstones, and erect very large ones. When one is “set up” they have a special ceremony, which they advertise beforehand, and the friends and relations gather at the grave. I have already referred to the very different custom of the Society of Friends—the Quakers—and I trust that they may long preserve the simplicity of their burial practices, for “it consorts not with our principles,” said W. Beck and T. F. Ball, in their history of the London Friends’ Meetings (1869) , “unduly to exalt the honoured dead ”

“ It is a picturesque ground between the two roads, but, with the exception of a pathway through it, it is not open to the public.
Foreigners now have to be buried in the cemeteries, and many a strange service or ceremony has been held at the graveside of those who belong to other climes, especially, perhaps, in Kensal Green Cemetery, Norwood Cemetery, and the others that are non-parochial. The Jews and the Greeks are, I believe, the only communities of strangers who still keep up separate burial-grounds of their own in London. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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.... ”

“ 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. ”

“ But Kensal Green Cemetery is truly awful, with its catacombs, its huge mausoleums, family vaults, statues, broken pillars, weeping images, and oceans of tombstones, good, bad, and indifferent. I think the indifferent are to be preferred, the bad should not be anywhere, and the good are utterly out of place. It is also the largest in the metropolis, and as the Roman Catholic ground joins it there are in this spot, or there very soon will be, ninety-nine acres of dead bodies. ”

“ When I entered the gateway, I was struck with surprise and admiration. Though destitute of trees, the cemetery is certainly more deserving, from its peculiarly novel and unique appearance, of the attention of strangers, than (with the exception of that at New-Haven, and Mount Auburn,) any other in the United States. From the entrance to the opposite side through the centre of the grave-yard, a broad avenue or street extends nearly an eighth of a mile in length; and on either side of this are innumerable isolated tombs, of all sizes, shapes, and descriptions, built above ground. ”

“ THEY bury their dead in vaults, above the ground. These vaults have a resemblance to houses—sometimes to temples; are built of marble, generally; are architecturally graceful and shapely; they face the walks and driveways of the cemetery; and when one moves through the midst of a thousand or so of them and sees their white roofs and gables stretching into the distance on every hand, the phrase 'city of the dead' has all at once a meaning to him. ”

“ It is often necessary, in order to see a graveyard, to go into one of the surrounding houses and ask for permission to look out from a back window. Such permission is sometimes refused at once, sometimes it is most kindly given. I remember arousing a divided opinion upon this matter by knocking at the door of one of the upper rooms in the almshouses in Bath Street. I wanted to see the ground used as a garden by the inmates of the St. Luke’s Lunatic Asylum in Old Street, and which was at one time a pauper burial-ground for the parish. ”

“ Of the parochial “poor grounds” not adjoining workhouses a few are worth noticing. St. Saviour’s, Southwark, in addition to the workhouse ground, the College or Almshouse ground, and the churchyard itself, which was from time to time added to, curtailed and used for markets, possessed still another graveyard, the famous Cross Bones ground in Union Street, referred to by Stow as having been made “far from the Parish Church,” for the interment of the low women who frequented the neighbourhood. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ A large piece of ground by the churchyard of All Saints, Poplar, on the north side of the Rectory, was also used for the purpose, and the circumstance is recorded on the monument which stands in the middle of it.
The fact that the bodies in the pest-fields and plague-pits were usually buried without coffins, and were only wrapped in rugs, sheets, &C., has accelerated their decay, and it can no longer be thought dangerous when such pits are opened. ”

“ One difficulty to be encountered needs much study to overcome; it is the different names by which the same ground is called in different books or plans. For instance, Chadwick mentions in his list one called St. John’s, Borough, whereas the proper name for this same ground is Butler’s burial-ground, Horselydown. As another instance, and there are scores, it may be mentioned that the Peel Grove burial-ground was called in some returns the North-east London Cemetery, in others Cambridge Heath burial-ground, and in others Keldy’s ground. ”

“ Look at England; every village there has its rural burying-ground, which on Sundays is filled with the well-dressed citizens and villagers, who walk among the green graves of parents, children, or friends, [Pg 151] deriving from their reflections the most solemn and impressive lesson the human heart can learn. In America, on the contrary, the footsteps of a solitary individual, the slow and heavy tramp of a funeral procession, or the sacrilegious intrusion of idle school-boys—who approach a grave but to deface its marble—are the only disturbers of the graveyard's loneliness. ”

“ Next to Mount Auburn, the cemetery in New-Haven is the most beautifully picturesque of any in this country. In Maine there is but one, the burial-place in Brunswick, deserving of notice. Its snow-white monuments glance here and there in bold relief among the dark melancholy pines which overshadow it, casting a funereal gloom among its deep recesses, particularly appropriate to the sacred character of the spot. ”

“ Leading out of the south transept is the “green-ground,” another small churchyard, and a paved yard on the north side of the church was once the pauper ground.
According to a writer in the Observator of August 21, 1703, the cloisters of the priory and the space which still existed there became the resort of very low characters, “lords and ladies, aldermen and their wives, squires and fiddlers, citizens and rope-dancers, jackpuddings and lawyers, mistresses and maids, masters and ’prentices” meeting there for lotteries, plays, farces, and “all the temptations to destruction.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ They have grown rich, and then it is “Let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” This is the fool’s theory, but it is not that of the man who dares, because he wanders off into new fields of operation, attempts new cultures, adds something to the phases of life, and as such, becomes renowned, whether he has a high sounding 144epitaph on his tombstone or not. People do not go to cemeteries to seek for souvenirs of the man who dares, his life and deeds are impressed upon the plastic material of every brain within reach of his influence. ”

“ One day I climbed a high, rickety fence in a builder’s yard in Wandsworth in order to see over the wall into the Friends’ burial-ground. No doubt the men in the place thought me mad,—anyhow they left me in peace.
I have often been assured that there is no possibility of a particular enclosure ever becoming a public garden by those who live, at a low rent, in the neighbouring cottage, on condition that they keep watch over the ground. ”

“ If one asks to go into a burial-ground, it is generally imagined that one wants to see a particular grave. I have been supposed to have “some one lyin’ there” in all quarters of the metropolis, and in all sorts of funny little places. I have been hailed as a sister by the quietest of Quakeresses and the darkest of bewigged Jewesses, by the leanest and most clean-shaven of ritualistic Priests, and by the bearded and buxom Dissenter. I remember, however, knocking at the gate of one Jewish ground which the caretaker was unwilling to let me enter. ”