The London Burial Grounds: Notes on Their History from the Earliest Times to the Present DayHolmes, Isabella M.
History
The London Burial Grounds: Notes on Their History from the Earliest Times to the Present Day
Holmes, Isabella M.
Cemeteries -- England -- London -- History
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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