THE LONDON BURIAL GROUNDS

ST. PETER’S, CORNHILL, IN 1817.

The London Burial Grounds

NOTES ON THEIR HISTORY FROM

THE EARLIEST TIMES TO

THE PRESENT DAY

BY

Mrs. BASIL HOLMES

“Thou that intendest to the Church to Day,

Come take a turn or two, before thou go’st.

In the Churchyard; the Walk is in the way.

Who takes best heed in going, hasteth most:

But he that unprepared rashly ventures,

Hastens perhaps to seal his Death’s Indentures”

George Herbert

ILLUSTRATED

LONDON

T. FISHER UNWIN

MDCCCXCVI

[All rights reserved.]

“First learn to love one living man;

Then may’st thou think upon the dead.”

Wordsworth.

To Those

who Love the Living

I Dedicate

these Details of

the Dwellings of the Dead.

“October sheds the leaf and April brings it;

So one flower fadeth and another springs;

Earth renovates itself.”

H. Bonar.

CONTENTS

APPENDIX.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

In looking one day at Rocque’s plan of London (1742-5) I noticed how many burial-grounds and churchyards were marked upon it which no longer existed. I made a table of them, and traced their destiny, and the result of this research was printed in the First Annual Report of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, which was issued in 1884. I then went further, and commenced to draw up a list of all the burying-places, of which I could find any record, still existing, or that had ever existed in London. It was no easy task. A return drawn up by the late Sir Edwin Chadwick in 1843, for the use of the Parliamentary Committee which sat to consider questions relating to the sanitary condition of the labouring classes, contains a most valuable, though not perfectly complete, table of the graveyards in actual use at that date. Then there are the returns of the grounds closed by order in Council in 1853 and 1854, and still open for interments in 1855, which are also very useful. There is a return, dated June, 1833, purporting to show all the “Places of Burial belonging to each Parish or Precinct under the Authority of the Bishop of London,” and all the “Places of Burial belonging to Dissenting Congregations within the Bills of Mortality,” &c., with their size, and the annual number of burials in them. This, when I found it, I thought would be a great treasure, but I soon discovered such entries as the following: “Three letters have been addressed to the Officiating Ministers of the parishes of St. Benet, Gracechurch, St. Martin, Ludgate, and St. Margaret, Westminster, respectively; but no return has been received from either.” “The united parishes of Allhallows, Bread Street, and St. John the Evangelist, not being under the authority of the Bishop of London, I have not any return to make.” “I beg to add that there are several other places used as burial-grounds in this parish (Stepney) belonging to Jews, Dissenters, and others, of which I have no official cognizance, and to which, in fact, I have no access,” &c. And with regard, generally, to the second part of the return, the following simple remark is made: “The Secretary of State is not able to ascertain the Places of Burial belonging to Dissenting congregations within the Bills of Mortality.” In 1839 Walker described the condition of 47 of the most crowded metropolitan places of interment, and the Parliamentary Committee which sat in 1842 heard evidence about these and some others. In Maitland’s “History of London” there is a list of 64 burial-places used in the year 1729, and not included in the Bills of Mortality. Some of these are outside London, and some are only vaults under buildings. I have also kept a list of about fifty books which I found of use, although in many of them only a few burial-grounds are mentioned or described. And this, with the addition of various ancient and modern maps and plans of London and its environs, is the material upon which I have had to work. But as it is never safe to take anything on trust, nothing but actual perambulations and inquiries on the spot could show the present size and condition of the burial-grounds, and even several that are marked on the ordnance maps have been built upon since they were published, as, for instance, the German ground in the Savoy, the additional ground to St. Martin’s in the Fields, and Thomas’ ground in Golden Lane, all of which have disappeared.

I have had some curious experiences while graveyard-hunting. At first I was less bold than I am now, and was hardly prepared to walk straight into private yards and look round them until asked my business and driven to retire. “My business” it is best not to reveal ordinarily. If one mentions that one is looking at a place because it was once a burial-ground the fact will generally be stoutly denied, and sometimes in good faith. But it is not unusual for an employé innocently to acknowledge that there are bones under the ground upon which he is standing, whereat his master, if he knew of it, would be very angry. For it must be remembered that it is to the interest of the owner of a yard to keep the circumstance of its having been used for interments in the background, and he is not pleased if, when he wants to put up a wall or enlarge a shed, he is stopped from doing so by the enforcement of the Disused Burial-Grounds Act of 1834, as amended by the Open Spaces Act of 1887.

I inquired of an old man once, in a court in Shoreditch, whether he remembered a graveyard existing by the workhouse.

“No,” he said.

I noticed a newer part of the building, evidently a recently erected wing, and asked him how long it had been built.

“Oh, I moind,” said he, “when they was buildin’ that, they carted away a ton of bones.” Here was the evidence I was seeking for.

One day a sleepy old Smithfield butcher, whose work-time was the night, and whose sleeping-time was the morning, was specially kept awake until 10 o’clock in order to see me, as he could remember the extent of a certain burial-ground before it was done away with. The information he was able to supply was very useful, but it was hard to keep him to the point, as the poor old man, once roused to remember the past, would persistently revert to the cottages which used to stand on the adjoining plot of land, and which ought, he said, to have come into his own possession if he had not been in some way defrauded out of his lawful inheritance.

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. The old man did not at all like my invading his room, but the old lady was most affable, and had much to say upon the subject. At any rate I saw what I wanted, and made my mental report, but I left the old man grumbling at my unnecessary intrusion, and the old lady in smiles. I hope she did not suffer for her kindness.

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. She asked me the direct question, “Are you a Jewess?” I had to say no, but happily I was armed with the name of a gentleman who had kindly told me to mention it in any such difficulty. It answered, and I was allowed in. 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. Alas, before many months are over, they find that the wires have been pulled somehow or other, and that their precious yard is no longer available for their fowls to run in or for their clothes to dry in, but is invaded by their neighbours and their neighbour’s unwelcome children. “They come four times a year to clear away the weeds.” That is the sort of caretaking that some burial-grounds are subjected to; and on the other 361 days in the year all sorts of rubbish is deposited in them.

Twice I have had mud thrown at me, once by a woman in Cable Street, E., and once by a man in Silchester Road, W., but these were wholly unprovoked attacks, in fact mere accidental occurrences. For my general experience has been of the greatest consideration and politeness. I have never been out of my way for the sake of idle curiosity, but have not hesitated to go down any street or court or to knock at any door which was in my way, and I have never had cause to regret it. An appearance of utter insignificance and an air of knowing where you are going and what you want, is the passport for all parts of London; and I have seen young men and maidens, one moment indulging in the roughest play, the next moment step off the pavement to let me pass. The clergy and others always seem to think their own people the very worst. “You don’t know what this neighbourhood is like,” I have heard over and over again, and I am thankful I don’t. But as far as a superficial knowledge of the streets goes they seem to be all much the same—north, south, east, and west—and their frequenters too. To the children, at any rate, one need never mind speaking. Poor little souls; they say “Miss,” or “Mum,” or “Missus,” or “Teacher,” or “Sister,” or “Lady,” but they never answer rudely.

Gravediggers and gardeners in cemeteries are generally communicative people, who do not at all mind stopping their work for a bit, and enlarging on the number of funerals, &c., which they daily witness. They speak of the actual headstones and monuments by the surnames engraved thereon, as, for instance, “Brown,” “Smith,” &c., and will point out a particular grave as “four behind Smith over there, Smith is the tall stone by the path; or if you look next to Wallace which has the shrub on it,” and so on.

It is interesting to trace on maps of different dates the rise and fall of a graveyard. First there is the actual field, which on some particular day was acquired for the purpose. Then there is the burial-ground formed and in use. Then the plot appears to be vacant—put to no purpose, or used as a yard. Lastly buildings are on it, and the graveyard has quite disappeared. 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. Occasionally a graveyard is described as being “near the free school,” or in some such vague terms, and it needs a knowledge of the districts and the buildings in them, past and present, to be able to locate some of these grounds which I have ventured to call “obscure.”

Since 1883, as complete a list as I could make of the London burial-grounds has appeared in the Reports of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, and I have, from time to time, been asked for information about the more obscure ones. In the summer of 1894 the London County Council instructed its Parks Committee to make a return of all the burial-grounds existing in the County of London, with their size, ownership, and condition. Having been applied to for information and assistance, I offered to undertake the work. It involved some additional research at the British Museum, and a fresh perambulation. The offer being accepted I commenced the task in February, 1895, and sent in the return in June, accompanied by 60 sheets of the ordnance survey (25 inch to the mile), upon which the grounds were marked in colours, viz., those still in use blue, those disused green, those converted into public recreation grounds green with a red border. I gave the number existing in the County and City of London as 362, of which 41 were still in use, and 90 were public gardens and playgrounds. This did not include churches and chapels with vaults under them, but without graveyards. It must also be remembered that the area was strictly limited (as it is in this work) to that of the metropolitan boroughs, or the administrative County of London with the City. The cemeteries in the county do not represent all the parochial ones. There are, for instance, those of St. George’s, Hanover Square, and Kensington at Hanwell, the Paddington Cemetery in Kilburn, the Jewish at Willesden, and very many more just outside the boundary, not to speak of a large number in what is called “London over the Border,” which to all intents and purposes is still London, although separated by the River Lea, and governed by the West Ham Corporation.

The kindly notice taken of the return, which was published by the Council in October, 1895, has encouraged me to prepare the present volume, in which there is scope for a general view of the subject, for further historical details, and for particulars of those grounds which no longer exist.

The more public interest is brought to bear upon the burial-grounds, the more likely is it that they will be preserved from encroachments. The London County Council has special powers to put in force the provisions of the Disused Burial-grounds Act, and it has the record of their actual sites on the plans prepared by me. It is for the public to see that these provisions are carried out, not only for historical, sentimental, and sanitary reasons, but also because each burial-ground that is curtailed or annihilated means the loss of another space which may one day be available for public recreation; and considering that land, even in the poorest part of Whitechapel, fetches about £30,000 per acre, it is easily understood of what inestimable value is a plot of ground which cannot be built upon.

CHAPTER I
BRITISH AND ROMAN BURIAL-PLACES.

“Where now the haughty Empire that was spread

With such fond hope? Her very speech is dead.”

Wordsworth.

Every chronicler of London history who can lay claim to be called an antiquarian, from Fitzstephen, Stow, and Pennant, to the Rev. W. J. Loftie and Sir Walter Besant, has tried to gather up the fragmentary evidence which from time to time has come to light, and to form some picture of the condition of London in the earliest times. Many have gone in largely for invention, and have weaved what they supposed to be circumstantial stories from discoveries of the most trivial kind, but these fictions are not worthy of repetition. As it is only with the evidences of the places of interment in London that this chapter has to deal, it is not possible to go into the question of the Roman roads, walls, villas, gardens and camps, of which traces have been found, although these relics really form the most interesting of the ancient remains, or “remarkables” as Maitland calls them, belonging to the several parishes.

A few tumuli scattered over London are supposed to mark the sites of British burial-places, Stukeley imagined he had discovered one by Long Acre, but the evidence is not trustworthy. Certainly there are some artificial mounds in Greenwich Park, which were opened in 1804 by the Rev. James Douglas, and found to contain spear-heads, beads, pieces of cloth, hair, &c., and there is the well-known one in Parliament Hill Fields, Hampstead, which the London County Council excavated in 1894. From the few broken pieces of human workmanship which were brought to light in this excavation, it was conjectured that the mound was an ancient British burial-place of the early bronze period, but no particular name can be associated with it. It is now railed round for its better protection, and planted with shrubs.

The Romans buried their dead outside their cities, often on each side of the highways immediately beyond the walls and gates, and they adopted this plan, to a certain extent, in Britain. But it must be remembered that Roman London, as first designed and built, was far smaller than that which is enclosed within the line of the city wall of which fragments still remain, and therefore some sepulchral monuments have been discovered inside this wall and its gates, as, for instance, near St. Martin’s, Ludgate, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, in Camomile Street and Lombard Street, and by the churches of St. Mary at Hill and St. Dunstan’s in the East. Near Dowgate some excavations made by Wren brought to light what were then thought to be British graves, but as there were Roman urns at a still lower level the matter was rather difficult of solution.

THE TUMULUS AT HAMPSTEAD.

The largest number of sepulchral remains have been found on the east side of the City, commencing at Bishopsgate and Moorfields, and extending to Wapping on the south, and Sun Tavern Fields, Shadwell, on the east; and it is not improbable that a cemetery of considerable size occupied all this district in Roman times. In 1756 many earthen urns, containing ashes, burnt human bones, and coins, were dug up in a field “called Lottesworth, now Spitalfield,” close to the present site of Christ Church, Spitalfields, together with some stone coffins and remnants of wooden ones which probably dated from British or Saxon times; and on many occasions during the last century, urns, lachrymatories, monumental stones, &c., were discovered in different spots in the district above mentioned. In many cases the monumental stones were erected to the memory of soldiers from various legions of the army, and on a few of them the inscriptions are still legible. Some of the Roman remains discovered in London are in the Guildhall Museum; the one represented in the accompanying picture, which was found near Ludgate, is with the Arundel marbles at Oxford. A few single graves have been identified among the traces of the gardens and villas which immediately surrounded the Roman Fort.

The following description of what Sir Christopher Wren found in St. Paul’s Churchyard, on the north side of the Cathedral, is interesting. “Upon digging the foundation of the present fabrick of St. Paul’s, he found under the graves of the latter ages, in a row below them, the Burial-places of the Saxon times—the Saxons, as it appeared, were accustomed to line their graves with chalk-stones, though some more eminent were entombed in coffins of whole stones. Below these were British graves, where were found ivory and wooden pins, of a hard wood, seemingly box, in abundance, of about six inches long; it seems the bodies were only wrapped up, and pinned in woollen shrouds, which being consumed, the pins remained entire. In the same row, and deeper, were Roman urns intermixed. This was eighteen feet deep or more, and belonged to the colony when Romans and Britons lived and died together.” (From Wren’s “Parentalia.”) The remains found in the north-east corner of the churchyard were the best preserved.

ROMAN MONUMENT.

Some evidences of a Roman cemetery have also been discovered on the south side of the Thames, in Snow’s Fields, Bermondsey, Union Street, Newington, and the burial-ground in Deverell Street. This district was probably the place of interment for those who lived in the small suburb which was growing up on the south side of the Bridge or Ferry. On Blackheath there have also been found traces of Roman burial, and in 1803 several urns were dug up in the Earl of Dartmouth’s garden, but they were supposed by some authorities to be the remains of the Danes who were encamped in that neighbourhood.

Such are the very scanty traces that have hitherto been brought to light relating to the burial-places of those who were amongst the worthiest pioneers in the making of London, and who occupied it before the time of the Christians who founded the earlier priories and churches. For as soon as these Christian institutions were established, it became the practice to bury the dead inside them or around them, and the cloisters and burial-grounds of the priories, and the churchyards and vaults of the churches, took the place of the more distant cemeteries and the more scattered graves.

Roman London is buried with British, Saxon, and Danish London, far below the surface of nineteenth-century London, and Longfellow might have been writing its epitaph when he described the ruins under the sea—

“Hidden from all mortal eyes

Deep the sunken city lies;

Even cities have their graves!”

The dedications of the London churches mark historical periods, and there are a few names, such as St. Olave and St. Magnus, which are of Danish derivation, but of the Danish interments in London very few traces remain. Beyond the remnants found at Blackheath, and the belief held by some chroniclers that the church of St. Clement Danes was so named because it stood in a plot of ground where the Danes were buried, only one discovery of any importance has been made. On the south side of St. Paul’s Churchyard, in digging the foundation for a new warehouse a few years ago, a relic was found with the following Runic inscription on it, which Mr. Loftie thinks must have belonged to an early stage of the Danish conquest, “Kina caused this stone to be laid over Tuki.” A tradition used to prevail in Fulham that human remains, which have been discovered at different times in the neighbourhood of the river, were survivals of the Danish invasion, although the actual skeletons found there in 1809 (on the property of the Earl of Cholmondeley) seemed, from coins, daggers, &c., which were with them, to belong to the time of Charles I.

CHAPTER II
THE GRAVEYARDS OF PRIORIES AND CONVENTS.

“Gone are all the barons bold,

Gone are all the knights and squires,

Gone the Abbot stern and cold,

And the brotherhood of friars;

Not a name

Remains to fame,

From those mouldering days of old!”

Longfellow.

Fitzstephen’s statement that “there are in London and the suburbs 13 churches belonging to convents, besides 126 lesser parish churches,” is not a very satisfactory one, as he does not proceed to name these several churches, or to tell his readers with what establishments they were connected. However, he was probably under the mark in putting the first figure at thirteen, for even in his time, and certainly very little later, there were many more than thirteen monastic and conventual buildings in London, and each had its church or chapel. The chief amongst these establishments which existed in London in the twelfth century, and which were made between that time and the dissolution of the priories in the days of Henry VIII., were:—

Inside the City Walls.

1. The Greyfriars or Franciscans, succeeded by Christ’s Hospital.

2. The Blackfriars or Dominicans in the west.

3. The Crossed or Crutched Friars, by Fenchurch Street.

4. The Augustine Friars, by Broad Street.

5. St. Helen’s Priory of Nuns, Bishopsgate Street.

6. The Priory of Holy Trinity, Aldgate.

7. The Priory and Sanctuary of St. Martin’s le Grand.

8. Elsing Spital, London Wall.

9. The Priory of St. Augustine Papey.

10. St. James’s Priory, the Hermitage in the Wall, Monkswell Street.

11. The Priory of St. Thomas Acon, Ironmonger Lane.

12. The Fraternities who had the care of St. Paul’s Cathedral, including the brotherhood of All Souls, specially connected with the Charnel Chapel.

Outside the City Walls.

13. The Whitefriars or Carmelites, south of Fleet Street.

14. The Abbey and the Convent of Westminster.

15. A Brotherhood of St. Ursula at St. Mary le Strand.

16. A Brotherhood of the Trinity, without Aldersgate.

17. The Knights Templars, in the Strand.

18. The Priory of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, at Clerkenwell.

19. The Black Nuns of St. Mary’s, Clerkenwell.

20. The Benedictine Priory of St. Bartholomew, with St. Bartholomew’s Spital, West Smithfield.

21. The Carthusian Priory of the Salutation, subsequently the Charterhouse.

22. St. Mary Spital, without Bishopsgate.

23. The Nunnery of the Minoresses of St. Clare, the Minories.

24. The Cistercian Abbey of St. Mary of Grace, beyond the Tower.

25. St. Katharine’s Hospital, by the Tower.

26. The Convent of St. Leonard, at Bromley-by-Bow.

27. The Priory of St. Mary Overie, Southwark, with a “House of Sisters.”

28. Bermondsey Abbey.

29. The Nunnery of St. John the Baptist, Holywell.

30. The Convent of St. Mary Rounceval, Charing Cross.

A very complete list of the ecclesiastical institutions will be found in Brewer’s “Beauties of London and Middlesex,” vol. ii. p. 39.

Some of these brotherhoods were but small, and were mendicants; and they may not have had special burial-places of their own. In other cases burials may have only taken place in the priory churches, which were always much sought after for the purpose by outsiders, or in the cloisters. But most of the conventual establishments had a cemetery of considerable size—“the cloister garth,” and peeps are given us now and then, by old writers, of the practices at the burial of the monks and nuns.

In the Church of the Crutched friars were two Dutch Fraternities, one of which was named in honour of the “Holy Blode of Wilsuak,” and among their rules and orders is the following:—

“Also when any Brother or Suster of the same Bretherhede is dede, he or she shall have 4 Torchys of Wex of the Bretherhede, to bring the Body in Erthe: And every Brother and Suster shall come to his Masse of Requiem, and offer 1^d and abide still to the Tyme the Body be buryed, uppon Pain of a l. Wex, yf he or she be within the Cite.”

BURIAL OF A MONK.
(From a Harleian Manuscript).

Burials did not always take place in the evening, as might be imagined from the mention of torches and tapers, but often after mass, before dinner, and always with as little delay as possible. The written absolution was placed on the body of the monk or nun, and buried with it. Very solemn they seem to have been, these monastic funerals, especially when the body to be buried was that of an abbot, a prior, or a canon, with the procession of monks, the lighted tapers, the sprinkling of holy water, the chanting of psalms, the singing of the requiem mass, and the ringing of the bell. Strype gives a detailed account of the finding of four heads in pots or cases of “fine pewter,” in a cupboard in the wall of the demolished building which belonged to the Black friars, when the rubbish was cleared away after the Great Fire of London. They were embalmed or preserved, and had tonsured hair. He imagined that they were the heads of “some zealous priests or friars, executed for treason ... or for denying the King’s Supremacy; and here privately deposited by these Black Friars.” It is probable that these heads were afterwards bought and taken to the Continent to be exhibited as holy relics. The City must have been a strange place in the thirteenth century, with the numerous churches and the very large priories and convents hedged in by narrow streets of wooden houses, where, even in those early days, men were busy, in their own several manners, in getting money. Neither the monks, nor the nuns, nor the mendicant friars were always exemplary in their behaviour, but at any rate the charitable works done at that time—the care of the sick, the prayers for the evil, the prayers for the souls of the dead, the building of the churches and the hospitals—were carried out by them, and we cannot imagine how we could have got on in our matter-of-fact generation without their efforts and their work. It is also pleasant to look back occasionally and to try and picture the life led in the more secluded priories outside the City, surrounded by fields and close to the Holy Wells, where there was time for prayer and meditation and good deeds.

“Yes, they can make, who fail to find,

Short leizure even in busiest days;

Moments, to cast a look behind,

And profit by those kindly rays

That through the clouds do sometimes steal,

And all the far-off past reveal.”

Of the cloister garths there is very little which remains intact. The burial-ground of the Greyfriars is now the quadrangle of Christ’s Hospital, but few traces of the old cloisters are left there. Of the grounds attached to Westminster Abbey I shall speak in the next chapter. That of St. Bartholomew’s Priory, West Smithfield, was built upon many years ago. The site of the priory cemetery and that of the canons are marked on the accompanying plan, but

“Time has long effaced the inscriptions

On the cloister’s funeral stones,”

and nothing is left to us except glimpses of the customs which used to take place there. The history of the establishment, founded by Rahere about 1113, is comparatively well known, owing to the recent efforts that have been made to restore what is left of the noble Norman Church. But there is not much remaining of what was once an extensive group of buildings except the choir of the original church, with its restored lady-chapel, crypt, and transepts. The nave has gone, and its site is marked by the churchyard, the bases of the pillars being buried among the bones. 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.” Stow describes far more respectable gatherings in “the churchyard of St. Bartholomew,” when the scholars from St. Paul’s, Westminster, and other grammar schools used to meet for learned disputations, for proficiency in which garlands and prizes were awarded; but these meetings finally degenerated into free fights in the streets, and had to be discontinued.

The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew The Great.
(Click image to enlarge.)

Some of the priory burial-grounds have survived in the parish churchyards, or at any rate parts of them have. The churchyard of St. Catherine Cree, in Leadenhall Street, is the successor of the burial-ground of Holy Trinity Priory, the church itself having been built in this cemetery. It was originally called Christ Church, which got corrupted to Cree Church, and so on. The churchyard is associated with the performance of miracle plays, moralities, or mysteries, and it was probably in this place that some of the latest of these shows were held. They are frequently mentioned by different chroniclers from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries. Such events as the Massacre of the Innocents, the Shepherds feeding their flocks on Christmas Eve, and the scenes in the history of St. Catherine, &c., were usually portrayed inside the churches; but Bishop Bonner put a stop to this practice in 1542, after which time stages were erected by strolling players in streets, by the wells, and in private houses. In London the churchyards seem to have been frequently used for the purpose, and in an old parish book belonging to St. Catherine’s was the following entry, quoted in “Londinium Redivivum”:—“Receyved of Hugh Grymes, for lycens geven to certen players to playe their enterludes in the churche-yarde from the feast of Easter, An. D’ni. 1560, untyll the feaste of Seynt Mychaell Tharchangell next comynge, every holydaye, to the use of the parysshe, the some of 27s and 8d.” The miracle plays were a prelude to a more advanced form of dramatic representation, and after the establishment of the theatres we hear no more of them. The modern “flower service” originated, I believe, in the church of St. Catherine Cree, having been instituted by Dr. Whittemore.

S. EAST S. WEST
VIEW OF THE CRYPT ON THE SITE OF THE LATE
COLLEGE OF S^t. MARTIN LE GRAND.
Discovered in clearing for the New Post Office
THE CRYPT OF ST. MARTIN LE GRAND IN 1818.

Recent discoveries have shown that the priory cloister of the Augustine Friars was immediately to the north-east of the Dutch Church in Austin Friars. St. James’s Priory, the Hermitage in the Wall, had a graveyard under the wall, on the other side of which was, and is, the churchyard of St. Giles’, Cripplegate. Huge warehouses and offices now cover its site. The burial-ground of the Priory of St. Thomas Acon, in Ironmonger Lane, where pilgrims were buried who died on their visits to the chapel in honour of Becket, has also disappeared; but that of the priory of St. Augustine Papey survives in the little churchyard of St. Martin Outwich, in Camomile Street, which was presented to the parish by Robert Hyde in 1538, while the nuns of St. Helen’s were probably buried in what is now St. Helen’s Churchyard, Bishopsgate Street, which used to be, according to Stow, much larger.

No trace is left of the burial-places of the monks of Elsing Spital, the Crutched Friars, the White Friars, or the Black Friars, or of that of the splendid priory and sanctuary of St. Martin le Grand; they have gone with the buildings, of which only slight traces remain here and there, such as the porch of St. Alphege, London Wall, which belonged to Elsing Spital Priory. Probably they all had burying-grounds within their precincts. The crypt of St. Martin’s was opened out in 1818, and a very perfect stone coffin found in it, when the present Post Office Buildings in Foster Lane were erected. The churches themselves were always much resorted to as places of interment by those who were not connected with the priories, especially the four magnificent churches, all of which are now gone, of the Greyfriars, the Whitefriars, the Blackfriars, and the Augustine Friars. The Dutch church is the successor to the nave of the last named. The site of the Greyfriars’ church is occupied by the present church and churchyard of Christ Church, Newgate Street. Here were buried Margaret, second wife of Edward I., Isabella, Widow of Edward II., Joan Makepeace, wife of David Bruce, King of Scotland, and Isabella, wife of Lord Fitzwalter, the Queen of Man, besides the hearts of Edward II. and Queen Eleanor, the wife of Henry III., and, according to Weever, the bodies of “four duchesses, four countesses, one duke, twenty-eight barons, and some thirty-five knights,” in all “six hundred and sixty-three persons of quality.” Malcolm states that ten tombs and 140 gravestones (the fine monuments at the east end of the church) were destroyed and sold, in 1545, by Sir Martin Bowes, Lord Mayor, for fifty pounds.

I have given a list of the principal convents and priories outside the city. The site of St. Katharine’s is buried in the Dock, and that of St. John the Baptist’s, Holywell (by Curtain Road, Shoreditch), has also gone. The churchyards of St. Mary, Bromley, and St. Saviour, Southwark, are the survivals of the conventual burying-places; the cemetery of the nuns at Bromley was on the south side of the church, and upon its site Sir John Jacob built the Manor House, the bones being put under the house. But about two hundred years later (1813) the greater part of this site was again added to the churchyard, and re-consecrated. The burial-ground of Westminster Convent, with the Abbot’s garden, have given place to the district and market of Covent Garden. The houses in White Lion Street and Spital Square are on the site of the cemetery or garth of St. Mary Spital. Here, after it ceased to be used for interments and before it was built upon, Spital Square was an open plot of ground with a pulpit in it and a house for the accommodation of the Lord Mayor and Corporation when they came on their annual visit to hear the “Spital Sermon.” Of the priory church of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, in Clerkenwell, very few traces remain. The beautiful old crypt, lately cleared of coffins and restored, is older than the priory church (which was built over it), and dates from 1080 or 1090. The truly magnificent church was consecrated in 1185, the present structure occupying merely the site of the choir, the nave having probably extended the length of St. John’s Square, and, together with the other buildings of the priory, it was pulled down at the Dissolution. The exact site of the cloisters and burial-ground is unknown. The present churchyard of St. John’s is a small, narrow one at the eastern end, from which steps lead down into the ancient crypt. Here, between the years 1738 and 1853, about 325 bodies were buried, or rather the coffins were stacked, for they were above the floor. In 1893 a faculty was procured for their removal, and all the remains were reverently conveyed to Woking, a vellum document recording the fact being placed in the vestry of the church. The crypt is open to the public on the first Saturday in each month. Its complete restoration is still in hand. I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. H. W. Fincham for the picture of St. John’s Crypt, and also for that of the garden in Benjamin Street, E.C.

The Nuns’ burial-ground at Clerkenwell, and part of the beautiful cloister, existed until about one hundred years ago in the garden of the Duke of Newcastle’s house, and its site is now occupied by the houses on the west side of St. James’s Walk, a little north-east of St. James’s Church. The Convent of St. Mary Rounceval was superseded by Northumberland House, subsequently pulled down when Northumberland Avenue was made; and the churchyard of Holy Trinity, Minories (now merely a part of the road) may be a relic of the Nunnery of the Minoresses of St. Clare. The Priory Church of St. Mary Overie (over the ferry) was purchased from the king by the parish in 1539, and has since been the parish Church of St. Saviour, Southwark, henceforth to be the Cathedral of South London.

CRYPT OF ST. JOHN’S, CLERKENWELL.

In the Crace Collection at the British Museum there is a plan, made by William Newton, purporting to show London in Elizabeth’s time, in picture form. He marks the priories with their burial-grounds, but I doubt if it is very trustworthy. In Van den Wyngaerde’s beautiful view (1550), reproduced by the Topographical Society in 1881, and the original of which is in the Bodleian Library, several of the conventual churches appear, not the least interesting being that of “S. Maria Spital.”

The Cistercian abbey of St. Mary of Grace and the Carthusian priory of the Salutation were built on plague burial-grounds. (See [Chapter VI].) The former has disappeared under the site of the Royal Mint, the latter survives in the Charterhouse. Probably they were very insanitary, but such, according to Dean Farrar, was the case with all the conventual establishments, and much accommodation was provided for sick monks.

Lastly we come to Bermondsey Abbey, the ancient and once famous settlement of Cluniac monks in the ea or eye (island) of a Saxon named Bearmund. Almost all traces of the abbey buildings have disappeared, though a good deal existed at the commencement of this century. There are some fragments of old windows and doorways among the shabby houses south of Grange Walk, and some pieces of the wall in the churchyard of St. Mary Magdalene. A considerable portion of the Abbey burial-ground was added to this churchyard in 1810. Amongst the benefactors of this establishment were William Rufus, Henry I., and King Stephen, and many eminent people were buried in the priory church, while much of great historic interest is connected with the history of Bermondsey Abbey.

The modern representatives of the ancient monasteries and nunneries lack the antiquarian flavour which is so attractive to us, and yet there is a certain interest attaching to them. But I have only to deal with their burial-grounds, and therefore need mention very few.

THE REMAINS OF BERMONDSEY ABBEY ABOUT 1800.

The third volume of Knight’s “London” commences with the following words:—“It is a curious circumstance, and one in which the history of many changes of opinion may be read, that within forty years after what remained of the magnificent ecclesiastical foundation of the Abbey of Bermondsey had been swept away, a new conventual establishment has risen up, amidst the surrounding desecration of factories and warehouses, in a large and picturesque pile, with its stately church, fitted in every way for the residence and accommodation of thirty or forty inmates—the convent of the Sisters of Mercy.” The writer of the article refers to the convent by the Roman Catholic Chapel in Parker’s Row, built in 1838. The chapel, with a small graveyard given in 1833 or 1834, existed previously. The garden of the convent was used for burials until August, 1853, but there appear to be no gravestones in it, and it is a neatly-kept ground between two schools, whereas the graveyard on the east side of the church is untidy. Another disused burial-ground is behind the Roman Catholic Chapel in Commercial Road. Here the tombstones are laid flat, and the ground forms a garden of considerable size for the use of the priests.

On the north side of King Street, Hammersmith, just east of the Broadway Station, is the large red building known as the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a seminary and establishment erected by the late Cardinal Manning on the site of a Benedictine convent which was founded, according to some authorities, before the Reformation, and according to others during the reign of Charles II., and which included the Sisterhood of the English Benedictine Dames and a famous school, where many ladies of distinction received their early education. Brewer, in his “Beauties of London and Middlesex” (1816), thus describes the burial-ground of this convent: “The gravestones are laid flat on the turf, and the sisters are placed, as usual, with their feet to the east; the priests alone having the head towards the altar. There are several inscriptions on the stones, of which we insert the following specimen:—Here lies the body of The Right Reverend Lady Mary Anne Clavering, late Abbess of the English Benedictine Dames of Pontoise, Who died the 8th day of November, 1795, in the 65th year of her age.” Cardinal Manning disposed of this little cemetery, which was by the lane on the east side, when erecting the present buildings. “It was dug up and done away with,” according to the statement of one of the sisters at present in the convent.

But two similar burial-grounds are still to be found in this immediate neighbourhood, one is disused and the other is in use. The former is behind the Convent of the Good Shepherd in Fulham Palace Road, only about 14 by 12 yards in size, and closed a few years ago. The latter is at the extreme end of the garden of Nazareth Home in Hammersmith Road, under the wall of Great Church Lane. It is even smaller than the one in Fulham Palace Road, and has been in use for upwards of forty years, but as only the sisters are interred here it would appear to be still available for about another twenty years. The graves are in neat rows, a small cross is on each, with the name (or the adopted name) of the sister whose body lies beneath. It forms a little enclosure in the large space and garden behind the buildings of the Home, where many children are taught and many old people live. Another enclosure contains their poultry, and another a cow. The whole establishment is very interesting, and not the least interesting part of it is this little cemetery, of the existence of which, in all probability, very few of the inhabitants of the surrounding streets have any knowledge.

I have visited one other convent burial-ground, and in each case it is necessary to go through the ceremony of being peeped at through a grating, and, when admitted, passed along passages and through rooms while the doors are locked behind, and only granted permission to see what I want after some time of waiting and a large amount of explanation. I have been since told that I was singularly favoured by being admitted into the Franciscan Convent in Portobello Road, where the Mother Superior herself most kindly took me to see the little cemetery, explaining that it was “sanctioned by the Home Secretary,”—of which I was well aware. It is a charming little corner of a very pretty garden, a triangular grass plot edged with trees, not above a quarter of an acre in extent. It was formed in 1862 and first used in 1870, only five burials taking place in twenty-three years. It is, of course, merely for the interment of the nuns who, having given up the world and shut themselves into the convent, find their last resting-place within its precincts.

CHAPTER III
THE CATHEDRAL, THE ABBEY, THE TEMPLE, AND THE TOWER.

“The Saints are there—the Living Dead,

The Mourners glad and strong;

The sacred floor their quiet bed,

Their beams from every window shed,

Their voice in every song.”

Keble.

There is one burial-ground in London which has received a large share of attention, and which has really been thought worthy of lengthy and detailed notices in histories of the metropolis—I mean St. Paul’s Churchyard. The words convey a very distinct meaning to us now. They suggest Messrs. Hitchcock and Williams, and a number of other firms with large premises, a constant stream of vans, carts, omnibuses, cabs, and bicycles passing between Ludgate Hill and Cheapside or Cannon Street, and a neat garden with flower-beds, seats, and pigeons under the shadow of the great Cathedral—Wren’s “monument”—which is so different from any other cathedral, and yet so suitable for the centre of the largest city in the world. Just as St. Paul’s Cathedral was not always as it is now, so St. Paul’s Churchyard is also vastly changed. Underneath the soil are the graves of Britons, Saxons, and Romans; and I have already referred to these, and have pointed out how far back into obscure history we can trace this particular graveyard.

Many books have been written about St. Paul’s; Dugdale’s is the best old history, and perhaps Dean Milman’s is the best modern one. The stories of its foundation, of the shrine of St. Erkenwald, the disastrous fire of 1136, the Boy Bishops, the chained bibles and the commotion they aroused, the difficulties of the Reformation, and finally the other “Great Fire” of 1666, which led to the rebuilding of the Cathedral, not again as a Gothic structure, but somewhat after the style of St. Peter’s at Rome, have all been told again and again. The crypt of the Cathedral was the parish church of St. Faith, and that of St. Gregory stood where the clock tower now is, at the west end. The site of St. Gregory’s Churchyard is within the posts in front of the west door, where Queen Anne’s statue stands, while the parish of St. Faith had a piece at the eastern end of the Cathedral, and, according to Newcourt, another piece was allotted to St. Martin’s, Ludgate Hill. It is to Dugdale that we are chiefly indebted for a knowledge of what old St. Paul’s, with its windows and monuments, was like—and a splendid church it must have been. He was an eminent antiquary who, thinking that the chief ecclesiastical buildings in England would suffer from the Civil War, made a most noble pilgrimage, and drew the monuments, copied the epitaphs, and took notes of the arms in windows, on walls, &c., in St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey first, and subsequently in Ely, Norwich, Peterborough, Lincoln, and a number of other cathedral, conventual, and parish Churches. The work he did at St. Paul’s was of exceptional value, owing to the ravages of the Great Fire.

The Cathedral has been surrounded by such interesting buildings as a Bishop’s Palace, the Chapter House and Library, a Bell Tower, several Chantries, a Charnel House, and St. Paul’s School, founded by Dean Colet, and which, some years ago, was totally destroyed, reappearing as a meaty-red structure of huge dimensions (where the foundation scholars, or “fish,” are in a small minority), in the uninteresting district of East Hammersmith, which is misnamed West Kensington.

St. Paul’s Churchyard extended, especially on its northern side, farther than it does now. Part of it was known as Pardon Church Yard, or “Haugh,” in which was a chapel founded by Gilbert Becket, rebuilt by Dean Moore in Henry V.’s time, and surrounded by a rich cloister with pictures of “The Dance of Death” painted by Machabre in it, somewhat like the ones still existing on the bridge at Lucerne, and with very fine monuments to those buried beneath. In 1549 the cloister, the chapel, the charnel house, the paintings, and the tombs were all cleared away by the Protector Somerset, the materials being used for his new mansion in the Strand, and the bones from the charnel house (Stow says one thousand cartloads) were reinterred in Finsbury Field. The churchyard seems to have been first entirely enclosed by a surrounding wall in 1285.

Paul’s Cross and Preaching there
Paul’s Cross or preaching place, was erected in the form it appears
in the plate, about the year 1449. by Thomas Kempe, then Bishop of
London, on the site of a more antient cross, which had been destroyed by
an earthquake in 1382. Its name first occurs in the
year 1259, when Hen. III commanded the Mayor of London to oblige all the
city youth of a certain age to take the oath of allegiance at Paul’s
Cross, to him and his heirs. From this period it was, for several
centuries, used for almost every purpose political as well as
ecclesiastical, and is continually noticed in history. It was destroyed
by the Lord mayor of London, Isaac Pennington, in consequence of a vote
of Parliament, in the year 1643.

PAUL’S CROSS.

But perhaps the most interesting object in the churchyard was Paul’s Cross, which existed as far back as the reign of Henry III., if not earlier. From that time until 1643, when it was ruthlessly destroyed by order of Parliament, it formed a notable monument, round which the religious history of London and of England centred itself. Paul’s Cross was an outdoor pulpit at the north-east corner of the Cathedral—“a pulpit cross of timber, mounted upon steps of stone covered with lead,” from which “announcements and harangues on all such matters as the authorities in Church or State judged to be of public concern were poured into the popular ear and heart.” It seems to have been used to preach sermons from as early as 1299, and men professing all shades of the Christian faith have discoursed there, miscreants have done penance there, bishops and clergy have renounced heresies, excited throngs have gathered round excited preachers, and tricks and delusions, called miracles, have been exposed there. Latimer and Ridley frequently occupied the pulpit, and “proclaimed to crowds of eager listeners that testimony which they both afterwards sealed with their blood.” During the time of the reforming struggles of our Church the pulpit at Paul’s Cross played an active part, and those who preached there in the reign of Mary had to be protected from the populace by the Queen’s guard. In 1628 James I. came in state to hear a sermon from Bishop King, and Charles I. listened to another discourse from Paul’s Cross in 1630. It is said that after its demolition an elm-tree marked its site, but even this has long since disappeared.

ELM ON SITE OF PAUL’S CROSS.

Yet the Churchyard was not only a religious centre, but was also a very worldly one. Many unseemly scenes used to take place there, and the ground was walled in because it was becoming the resort of those who did not behave themselves properly. The following account from Maitland gives us a sad, if a lively, picture of the times: “In the year 1569 a Lottery was set on Foot in St. Paul’s Churchyard, where it was begun to be drawn at the West Door of the Church on the 11th of January, and continued incessantly drawing Day and Night till the 6th of May following.” The Cathedral itself was put to a variety of unsuitable uses, and was made a judgment-hall for foreign heretics who were condemned to be burnt at Smithfield. The author of a tract written in the second half of the sixteenth century describes the south aisle as being used “for usury and popery, the north for simony, and the horse-fair in the midst for all kinds of bargains, meetings, brawlings, murthers, conspiracies; and the font for ordinary payments of money.” Traffic in benefices was largely carried on there, and the middle aisle (Paul’s Walk) was a rendezvous, every morning and afternoon, for a fashionable and eccentric medley. Thus was the chief temple in London treated as vilely as the Temple at Jerusalem, and there are those now living amongst us who wish to see our English churches used for secular purposes!

With one mighty blow the whole building was destroyed, and the beautiful Gothic Cathedral became a heap of cinders. It is told in “Parentalia” how, under the direction of Wren, the new St. Paul’s arose like a phœnix from the ashes of the old church. From an interesting print of 1701 it appears that the churchyard was even then a fashionable promenade, but it is improbable that the building itself, in its new form, was ever subjected to such abuses as the old one had been. I have heard Wren’s churches described as “religious rather than Christian,” but as time goes on the architecture seems to be more appreciated. Wordsworth has said:—

“They dreamt not of a perishable home

Who thus could build,”

but he has also told us that the Cathedral is—

“Filled with mementoes, satiate with its past

Of grateful England’s overflowing Dead”—

and herein lies its chief interest.

No one has done his duty by St. Paul’s who has not been in the crypt. Dr. Donne’s monument, which dates from before the fire, has been brought up and placed in the south aisle of the choir, amongst those of bishops and deans, but some fragments of other tombs from old St. Paul’s are still in the crypt, besides many tablets and monuments of later date. There was for many years a prejudice against admitting memorial monuments in the Cathedral at all, but one being erected to the memory of John Howard, the reformer, the spell was broken. Several old stones on the floor of the crypt have no graves below them, those they commemorate having been buried outside in the churchyard, but now the few internments that take place are under the floor of the building, Sir Frederic (Lord) Leighton’s being the newest grave. Here also lie Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Christopher Wren, Dean Colet, George Cruikshank, Opie, West, Turner, Lord Napier of Magdala, Lord Mayor Nottage (who died in office in 1885), Bishop Piers Claughton, and many other notable persons. There is one division where there are gravestones in memory of past vergers of the Cathedral. Directly under the dome are the remains of Nelson, in a coffin made from wood of the Victory, enclosed in a sarcophagus originally intended for Cardinal Wolsey, but put aside as he was not considered worthy of it, and subsequently brought out and altered to suit Lord Nelson. Close by is a larger sarcophagus containing the remains of the Duke of Wellington.

ST. MARGARET’S AND THE ABBEY CHURCHYARD ABOUT 1750.

The Churchyard is no longer a fashionable resort, but it has been a very useful one since 1879, and many are the visitors who may always be found sitting there, while the pigeons fly amongst the tall and smoky columns. The Rev. H. R. Haweis says the Cathedral should be washed. He is right, no doubt, but “stately Paule” still remains black.

Neither the graveyard of the Knights Templars, the great rivals of the Knights Hospitallers at Clerkenwell, nor the garth of the Abbey of St. Peter, have had a record so varied as that which clings round St. Paul’s Churchyard. The Temple Church, especially the round portion of it, is most ancient and interesting, but it has been much injured by the modern representatives of the Templars who have denuded the walls of many rich old monuments. The part of the churchyard which is immediately round the church is closed and turfed and has some fine old stone coffins in it. The northern part is paved and gravelled and is added to the public thoroughfare, the chief object in it of general interest being the grave and monument of Oliver Goldsmith.

We go on, along the Strand, past Charing Cross, until we reach the “minster in the west,” or the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, which was built in the Island of Thorney. It is probable that the whole space now occupied by the Abbey and St. Margaret’s and their churchyards was at one time used for interments. At present the Abbey Churchyard and that of St. Margaret’s (where at times a fair used to be held) are in one. They are neatly turfed and open to the public, and they form a simple but suitable base for the glorious old buildings which rise from them. On the south side of the Abbey are the large and small cloisters, with their grass plots and their ancient stones, while, according to Brayley, a part of Covent Garden Market is on the site of what used to be the burial-ground of the Westminster Convent. Portions of the cloisters are among the most ancient and interesting corners of the Abbey buildings, and the sight of them carries us back in thought to the days of the abbots and monks, who used to pace to and fro under the vaulted roof.

It is not, however, the burial-places outside the Abbey, but the church itself, round which the most thrilling associations gather. Here again the story has been often repeated, and if there are any of my readers (though I doubt if there can be one) who do not know what venerable tombs are contained there, they would do well to visit the Abbey, and not to rest until they have been carefully shown the treasures in Henry VII.’s Chapel. Beaumont sang—

“Think how many royal bones

Sleep within these heaps of stones....

Here’s an acre sown indeed

With the richest, royallist seed.”

From the shrine of Edward the Confessor and the tomb of Edward III. to the tablet in memory of Charles Dickens and the stone over the grave of Charles Darwin, they are one and all of the deepest interest, and it is perfectly needless for me to refer to the monuments here. Every Englishman is—or should be—proud of these relics, of the beautiful Chapel, the Poets’ Corner, and the hallowed nave and aisles.

GREAT CLOISTER, WESTMINSTER.

It is true that there are too many monuments in Westminster Abbey; a memorial chapel in which some of them (especially the huge statues from the north transept) could be put, would be very advantageous. But, at any rate, they are not likely now to be much further added to, and from the old, royal tombs, there is not one fragment of mosaic or one splinter of stone which we should not grieve to lose. Sir Godfrey Kneller, the painter and the friend of Pope, did not wish to be interred in the Abbey because “they do bury fools there.” But his monument is not missed amongst the tombs of England’s greatest children, her kings and queens, her bishops and deans, her statesmen, her soldiers, her poets, her artists, and her philosophers. The whole building is one grand memorial. There may be “fools there,” but they sink into utter insignificance, for “saints are there, the living dead.”

The South East Prospect of the Chapel Royal of S^t. Peter in the Tower.
ST. PETER’S CHAPEL IN THE TOWER ABOUT 1750.

To pass from the Abbey to the Tower is like passing from honour to shame, and yet amongst those who were imprisoned, executed, and buried in the great fortress and palace which became the state prison of England, many were innocent of the crimes for which they were punished, and many deserved to rest in Westminster even more than some of those who were interred there. There were four recognised burial-places connected with the Tower, the churchyard of St. Peter ad Vincula, the vaults under the church, the vaults “behind the church,” and the outer graveyard. The last named was a narrow strip by the eastern wall, probably used for the burial of the humbler members of the numerous households which composed the Tower precinct. This ground was demolished when the Tower Bridge was made, being required for the wide approach thereto. It is also probable that burials took place in a somewhat promiscuous fashion in other parts of the fortress. We know, for instance, that the young Princes, after they had been smothered, were buried at the foot of the staircase of the White Tower, “meetly deep in the ground, under a great heap of stones,” from whence their remains, or what was supposed to be their remains, were moved to Westminster Abbey in 1674 by Order of King Charles II.

In St. Peter’s Church were buried the headless bodies of many a noble prisoner who was executed close by, with the remains of others who died during their confinement in the Tower—the Earl of Arundel, the Dukes of Somerset, Monmouth, Norfolk, and Northumberland, Queen Katherine, poor innocent Anne Boleyn, her brother, Lord Rochford, the Countess of Salisbury, Catherine Howard, and a great many more whose names are recorded in English history. The chapel is not as beautiful as it might be, and the graveyard attached to it is little more than a part of the great Tower courtyard, but the sad memories connected with it will always hallow this spot. In the quaint little church of Holy Trinity, Minories, supposed by some to be a survival of the Abbey of the Minoresses of St. Clare, there is still shown what is said to be the head of the Duke of Suffolk, the father of Lady Jane Grey. It is in a glass case, preserved like leather, some hair still clings to the scalp, while the false blow of the executioner can be clearly seen just above the place where the head was severed from the trunk. The verger keeps this marvellous relic locked up in a pew; it is a sort of detached fragment of the history of the Tower.

THREE COFFIN LIDS FROM THE TOWER.

I feel that I have done but very scant justice to those London burial-places which contain the ashes of the most illustrious dead. But I have no wish to go over ground already trodden by far worthier chroniclers than myself, and I therefore commend to all who desire to know more about the Cathedral, the Abbey, the Temple, and the Tower, the many excellent books which have been written upon their history, such as Dean Milman’s “Annals of St. Paul’s Cathedral,” Dean Stanley’s “Memorials of Westminster Abbey,” and a number of more ancient and more modern works which especially relate to these buildings and to the monuments they contain. The Kyrle Society has recently published a capital little guide to the Cathedral, which can be bought with the tickets to view the crypt, the whispering gallery, &c., and which also serves as a handbook to the monuments in the nave and aisles.

“Death lays his icy hands on kings:

Sceptre and crown

Must tumble down,

And in the dust be equal made

With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

All heads must come

To the cold tomb,

Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.”

J. Shirley.

CHAPTER IV.
THE CITY CHURCHYARDS.

“Such strange churchyards hide in the City of London.”

Dickens.

I have already referred, in Chapter I., to the different areas occupied by the City of London at different periods. But the City, as we know it now, averages, roughly speaking, a mile and a half from east to west and three-quarters of a mile from north to south. It includes a considerable space outside the old wall, and the boundary line is very irregular, except on the southern side, where is the “silent highway.” It is governed by the Corporation, and its ancient wards are represented by Aldermen, while the Lord Mayor commences his year of office by a public procession through the streets on November 9th, supported by his dignified companions, the Sheriffs.

The City of London is the Office of the World. Its highways represent untold wealth, and its byways reek with poverty and dirt; it contains the most bustling thoroughfares and the most retired corners; it is full of business and affairs up to date, and yet teeming with antiquarian interest, and relics of ancient history. As on one side of a busy road we have Cannon Street Station and on the other side the venerable “London Stone,” so the City churches, with their old-world churchyards, are wedged in between huge modern warehouses, offices, and public buildings; “churchyards sometimes so entirely detached from churches, always so pressed upon by houses; so small, so rank, so silent, so forgotten—except for the few people who ever look down into them from their smoky windows. As I stand peeping in through the iron gates and rails I can peel the rusty metal off, like bark from an old tree. The illegible tombstones are all lopsided, the grave-mounds lost their shape in the rains of a hundred years ago, the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-tree that was once a drysalter’s daughter and several common-councilmen, has withered like those worthies, and its departed leaves are dust beneath it.... Sometimes, the queer hall of some queer Company gives upon a churchyard such as this, and, when the Livery dine, you may hear them (if you are looking in through the iron rails, which you never are when I am) toasting their own Worshipful prosperity.... Sometimes, the commanding windows are all blank, and show no more sign of life than the graves below—not so much, for they tell of what once upon a time was life undoubtedly.”

Poor little churchyards, they are so insignificant, and many of them are even more shrunken than when Charles Dickens visited them. Thus we hear of an injunction being sought for to restrain the would-be reformer from cutting off a two-foot-wide strip of St. Martin Orgar’s ground to make a dry area behind the houses in Crooked Lane; and the Commissioners of Sewers possess the right, and sometimes use it, of curtailing a churchyard in order to widen a road. In 1884, for instance, they gave £750 for a piece at the eastern end of Allhallows’ Churchyard, London Wall. The remainder of that little ground is now a public garden, laid out in 1894 by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, and is a quiet resting-place in the busy thoroughfare, with a piece of the ancient City wall still existing in it. Most of the churchyards “entirely detached from churches” are the sites of the burned buildings, which were used as burial-grounds for the amalgamated parishes—for the mournful calamity of 1666 visited the churches of London with “peculiar severity,” 89 of them being destroyed, 51 of which were rebuilt by Wren and his followers, and 35 of which were not replaced. All the City churchyards are now protected from being built upon by the Disused Burial-grounds Act of 1888, but that Act has not yet been read to include the sites of the churches themselves which are from time to time removed, and which have all had interments in the vaults underneath them. The site of Allhallows’ the Great, Upper Thames Street, was recently sold to a brewery company, but has not yet been built upon, because it is thought that an injunction will be served upon the builder and that it will be made a test case.

Of the burial-grounds attached to the Cathedral, the Temple, and the churches which are the survivals of the priories, I have already written; apart from these one of the oldest of the churches founded in the City is sometimes supposed to be that of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street. The present building, which is threatened by a railway company, is by Hawksmoor, but a church existed on the site in very early days. In St. Peter’s, Cornhill, is a tablet, the authenticity of which is certainly open to grave doubt, recording the fact that a church was erected on this spot by Lucius in A.D. 179, but the genuine history of the foundation can only be traced as far back as 1230. The burial-ground of St. Benet Sherehog, in Pancras Lane, marks the site of a church dating from Saxon times, dedicated to St. Osyth,—Size Lane, which is close by, being a survival of the name. The City churches still standing, of which the whole or a part date from before the Great Fire, are St. Bartholomew’s the Great; Allhallows’, Barking; the Temple; St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate Street; and St. Catherine Cree, Leadenhall Street, all connected with priories; and St. Bartholomew’s the Less; St. Giles’, Cripplegate; St. Olave’s, Hart Street; St. Ethelburga’s, Bishopsgate Street; St. Andrew’s Undershaft, Leadenhall Street; and Allhallows’, Staining, Star Alley.

The church of St. Bartholomew the Less, of which but a very small portion of the tower is ancient, is within the Hospital enclosure, and the churchyard is smaller than it was, some of it having been thrown into the paved courtyard. St. Ethelburga’s churchyard is a quaint little courtyard with a few tombstones in it, only approached through the church and vestry. In St Andrew’s Undershaft (or “under the maypole,” which used to be suspended on the houses in St. Mary Axe) the monument of John Stow is to be found—poor Stow, whose survey of London is the foundation for all modern histories. The adjoining churchyard is very small. That of Allhallows’, Barking, has lately been entirely covered with building materials, owing to the restoration of the church. It was, according to Stow, “sometime far larger.”

The churchyard of St. Olave’s, Hart Street (Dickens’ St. Ghastly Grim), is an interesting one. The church itself is one of the most beautiful pieces of ecclesiastical architecture in London—a small Gothic building, admirable in its proportion. The old gate of the churchyard has skulls and cross bones on it, and in this ground were interred a vast number of the victims of the plague of 1665, which is said to have taken its origin in this parish in the Drapers’ Almshouses.

ALLHALLOWS’, STAINING, 1838.

Of the church of Allhallows’, Staining, only the tower remains, in the centre of a neatly-kept little burial-ground. This was the model for the churchtower in “Old London” at the exhibition at South Kensington in 1886.[^[1]] The churchyard of St. Giles’, Cripplegate, the church which contains the monument to Milton, has a long and varied history. It is well known to antiquarians, as the valuable relic, the postern of the City wall, is situated in it. The story of this ground is one of additions and encroachments, and it has found a careful chronicler in Mr. Baddeley, a former churchwarden. The addition running south was called the “Green Churchyard,” a name which we find repeated in other parishes—for instance, it was given to the higher portion of the churchyard of St. James’, Piccadilly, and to the little piece by St. Bartholomew the Great, approached through the present south transept. The gravestones at St. Giles’ have been laid flat, and the ground is neatly kept and generally open, but not provided with seats for the public. Until Michaelmas, 1640, “the military” used to be trained in this churchyard.[^[2]]

[1]. In 1873 a crypt was made under the tower, in which were deposited the remains from Lambe’s Chapel, St. James’s in the Wall, Monkswell Street.

[2]. Malcolm’s “Londinium Redivivum.”

CRIPPLEGATE CHURCHYARD ABOUT 1830.

There were four churches in the City dedicated to St. Botolph, a pious Saxon who built a monastery, in 654, in Lincolnshire. It is a little curious that all the four churchyards are now public gardens—St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate; St. Botolph’s, Aldgate; St. Botolph’s, Aldersgate; and St. Botolph’s, Billingsgate, The last-named church was not rebuilt after the Fire, and the site of one of its churchyards, the “lower ground,” is now occupied by a new warehouse with red heads on the frontage, on the south side of Lower Thames Street. What remains of the “upper ground” is a small, three-cornered, asphalted court, open to the public, with seats, a drinking fountain, and a coffee stall. The charming little garden in Aldersgate Street includes three churchyards, that of St. Botolph, an additional one for St. Leonard’s, Foster Lane, and an additional one for Christ Church, Newgate Street, which is at the western end, and was given to the parish in 1825 by the Governors of Christ’s Hospital when the Great Hall was built and a small burial-ground at the north-west corner of the buildings could no longer be used. The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association laid out Aldgate churchyard in 1892; it is much appreciated, and is maintained by an annual grant from the charity funds of the parish. A melancholy incident took place here in September, 1838, when two men, a gravedigger and a fish-dealer, lost their lives in a grave by being poisoned with the foul air. The grave was a “common one,” such as was often kept open for two months until filled with seventeen or eighteen bodies. It may safely be said that all the City burial-grounds were crowded to excess. Their limited area would invite such treatment, and it was only natural that the City parishioner should choose to be interred in the parish churchyard, unless the still greater privilege were afforded him of being buried in the vaults under the church. The other churchyards in the City which have been laid out for public recreation are those of St. Paul’s Cathedral; St. Olave, Silver Street; Allhallows, London Wall; St. Katherine Coleman, Fenchurch Street; St. Mary, Aldermanbury; St. Sepulchre, Holborn; and St. Bride, Fleet Street; while the churchyard of St. Dunstan in the West, situated in Fetter Lane, is the playground of the Greystoke Place Board School; and that of St. James, Duke Street, is the playground of the Aldgate Ward Schools.

ST. MILDRED’S, BREAD STREET, ABOUT 1825.

Most of the remaining City churchyards are quiet little spaces, surrounded by huge warehouses. Many are only approached through the churches, and are invisible from the road. St. Mildred’s, in Bread Street, is unfortunately used as a store-yard for ladders of all sizes, and it seems, from the accompanying illustration, to have been turned to account many years ago, while the very small piece that remains by the tower of St. Mary Somerset, Thames Street, where the Weavers of Brabant used to hold their meetings, is full of old iron, &c. One or two are private gardens, such as St. Michael’s Churchyard, Queenhithe. Others have been paved and added to the public footway, such as that of St. Mary Abchurch, their extent being still visible. This is the Case with the churchyard of St. Michael Bassishaw, in Basinghall Street. The ground is now part of the pavement, but the two large trees which grew in it are still flourishing. On the site of the churchyard of St. Benet Fink, in Threadneedle Street, is Peabody’s statue. The untidy little yard in Farringdon Street, which is used as a volunteer drill-ground, was once an additional burying-place for St. Bride’s, Fleet Street. It was given to the parish in 1610 by the Earl of Dorset, on condition that no more burials should take place in the southern part of the churchyard which was opposite his house. The house was destroyed by the Great Fire and the churchyard used again. The graveyard of St. Christopher le Stocks is the garden of the Bank of England, and Timbs states, although he does not vouch for the authenticity of the story, that the mould for the burial-ground of Whitfield’s Tabernacle in Tottenham Court Road was brought from this churchyard, “by which the consecration fees were saved.”

GROUND PLAN OF ST. BENET FINK IN 1834.

Of the City churchyards which have been completely annihilated, apart from other kinds of burial-grounds within this area, there must have been at least forty. And this destruction has been due to the dissolution of the priories, the formation of new streets, and the invasion of the railways. Norden mentions three churches in Farringdon Ward Within which have gone—St. Nicholas in the Fleshshambles (which was in Newgate Street), St. Ewans (south of Newgate Street), and St. Genyn within St. Martin le Grand. When Queen Victoria Street was made the churchyards of St. Mary Mounthaw, St. Nicholas Olave, and St. Mary Magdalen, Knightrider Street, disappeared; that of St. Michael, Crooked Lane, a plot of land given by one Robert Marsh and consecrated in 1392, was sacrificed for King William Street; and that of St. Benet, Paul’s Wharf (now the Welsh Church), where Inigo Jones was buried, for St. Benet’s Hill. A complete list of them will be found in the Appendix. Cannon Street Station of the South Eastern Railway covers the churchyard of St. Mary Bothaw; and for Cannon Street Station of the District Railway that of St. John’s, Cloak Lane, was destroyed, the human remains being “dug up, sifted, put in chests with charcoal, nailed down, put one on the top of the other in a brick vault and sealed up for ever, or rather till some others in time come to turn them out again.” Part of the General Post Office is on the churchyard of St. Leonard, Foster Lane; the Mercer’s Hall is on that of St. Thomas Acons, where the pilgrims were buried; the Mansion House Station is on that of Holy Trinity the Less; and the Mansion House itself is on that of St. Mary Woolchurch Haw, in which a balance used to stand “for the weighing of wool.”

THE CHURCHYARD OF ST. BENET, PAUL’S WHARF, 1838.

Most of the existing churchyards have but few tombstones left in them, several have none at all. But some of them can still boast of fine trees, which add much to the interest and picturesque appearance of the City streets, and I hope it may be a long time before those in Stationers’ Hall Court, under which there were vaults belonging to St. Martin’s, Ludgate, and in the churchyards of St. Peter Cheap, Wood Street, and St. Dunstan in the East, cease to grow and flourish.

We want to see all of these little churchyards opened to the public and provided with seats. The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association is always ready to put them in order, but it is difficult to secure their maintenance. The parish funds which might be available for such a purpose have been so cut down and diverted by the Charity Commissioners that it is, in many cases, impossible for any provision to be made for the upkeep of the churchyard, small though the cost may be. But I trust that this difficulty may be, before long, removed, and then we may expect a great improvement in the condition of the City churchyards which have all been closed for burials for upwards of forty years, and which are so singularly well suited for conversion into “outdoor sitting-rooms” for those who can take a few moments of rest from their work in the surrounding offices and warehouses. And they are worthy of the utmost respect, for they contain the ashes of some of the noblest citizens of London, some of its greatest benefactors and its hardest workers, those who have helped, stone by stone, to raise the great city to the height to which it has attained in its influence in the world.

In 1668 the Lord Mayor “issued out a Precept, commanding, amongst other wholesome orders ... that the Inhabitants, Householders, and others concerned, should not throw or suffer any Ashes, Dirt, or other Filth, to be cast out ... before any Church or Churchyard ... upon pain of 20 shillings.” But in 1896 we need visit very few of these same churchyards before we come to one in which rubbish of all kinds is allowed to accumulate and to remain. Yet they are sacred spots, consecrated ecclesiastically and historically, and instead of being permitted to sink into the oblivion of insignificance they should all be made beautiful in memory of the dead and for the benefit of the living, for in them are “the tombs of the wealthy and the humble heaps of the poor.” The Old Society for the Protection of City Churches and Churchyards did something towards their preservation, and lately a new City Church Preservation Society has been formed, the Chairman of Council being Mr. H. C. Richards, M.P., and the Hon. Secretary the Rev. Rowland B. Hill. It has already displayed most praiseworthy activity, and is, at the present time, endeavouring to save the church of St. Mary Woolnoth, in Lombard Street (built by Hawksmoor) from being demolished for a railway station. There is a very small churchyard attached to this church.

And it may be interesting here to give particulars of a case in which the decision arrived at is valuable to those who are fighting the battle of protection. In the Session of 1881 the London School Board, through the Education Department, introduced a Bill, called the Elementary Education Provisional Order Confirmation Bill, for the purpose of acquiring compulsory powers over the burial-ground in Bream’s Buildings, Fetter Lane, belonging to the church of St. Dunstan in the West, and which adjoins the Greystoke Place Board School. The rector and churchwardens, supported by the vestry of the parish, entered an opposition to the Bill, and appeared against it before the Committee of the House of Lords. Their opposition was entirely successful (and it must be remembered that the Disused Burial Grounds Act had not then been passed), and the London School Board was merely given a right of way to the school through the graveyard. The costs of the opposition amounted to £236 12s. 10d., which was charged upon the poor rate. The auditor disallowed the charge, but on appeal to the Local Government Board it was sanctioned.

CHAPTER V
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.

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,

[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.

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.

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!”

THE VILLAGE OF SHOREDITCH.
(From Aggas’ Plan, 1560.)

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,