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
The East London Railway has swallowed up the graveyards by Rose Lane
Chapel, Stepney, and the Sabbatarian or Seventh Day Baptists’ Chapel in
Mill Yard, by Leman Street; the Medical School of Guy’s Hospital is on
the Mazepond Baptist Chapel-ground; the site of one which adjoined the
London Road Chapel, S.E., is now occupied by a tailor’s shop, the next
house being on the space where the chapel stood, and these two shops are
easily picked out in the row as they are higher and newer than their
neighbours on either side. A little Baptist graveyard in Dipping Alley,
Horselydown, which had a baptistery in it, disappeared very many years
ago; the site of the Baptist Chapel and burial-ground in Worship Street,
Shoreditch, forms a part of the yard used as the goods depôt of the
London and North Western Railway; a similar one in Broad Street,
Wapping, is now, I believe, a milkman’s yard, and was for many years
previously the parish stoneyard; while the very crowded ground which
used to be behind Buckingham Chapel, Palace Street, has a brewery on it.
There is a little graveyard in front of Maberley Chapel, Ball’s Pond
(now called Earlham Hall), but the three tombstones that are left in it
are not only put upon the north wall of the chapel, but have actually
been painted with the wall.
I have mentioned that a few of the chapels have been replaced by
schools, but I ought also to mention that the graveyards behind Abney
Chapel, Stoke Newington, N., Denmark Row Chapel, Coldharbour Lane, S.E.,
and the chapel in Hanbury Street, Mile End New Town, E., were only
closed for a very few years before school buildings were erected on
them. A small yard remains of the last named, but practically nothing is
left of the others. The site of the graveyard in the rear of the chapel
in Gloucester Street, Shoreditch, has, together with that of the chapel
itself, been merged into the premises of the Gaslight and Coke Company.
These are specimens of the uses to which the Dissenters’ grounds have
been put, and which we want to prevent in the future, for I hope that it
may not be long before many of those that have not been entirely lost
are “converted” into cheerful resting-places for the use of the living.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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