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
In Milman’s Row, Chelsea, there is a quaint and curious burial-ground
belonging to the Moravians. The adjoining buildings have passed out of
their hands, their present chapel being in Fetter Lane, E.C. In 1750
Count Zinzendorf purchased two acres of land (a part of the garden and
stables of Beaufort House) of Sir Hans Sloane, about one acre of which
was set aside for burials, and divided into four parts—the first for
male infants and single brothers, the second for female infants and
single sisters, the third for married brothers and widowers, and the
fourth for married sisters and widows. The stones are flat on the grass
and very small, not more than about 11 or 15 inches by 10 or 12 inches
in size, and the ground was closed for interments about the year 1888.
There is no purely Dutch place of interment in London now. Besides the
Dutch Church in Austin Friars (the survival of the priory of the
Augustine Friars), which has lost its churchyard, they used to have a
few chapels which seemed to change hands, sometimes belonging to Dutch
and at other times to German congregations. Such was Zoar chapel, in
Great Alie Street, Whitechapel, which is now a Baptist conventicle. It
had a fair-sized burial-ground behind it at the beginning of the
century, the site of which is covered by houses and a forge. One day
recently I knocked at the door of this chapel, hoping to be allowed to
look round it, in order to make sure that no part of the yard was left.
The woman who opened it, when I politely asked if I might go in, said
“No!” and slammed the door again at once. One meets with varied
receptions in different places, Two German churches, with graveyards
attached, were also in this neighbourhood—the Lutheran (St. George’s),
in Little Alie Street, and the Protestant Reformed Church, in Hooper
Square. The latter has entirely disappeared, the railway covering its
site. The former church still exists, with the little yard behind it,
separated by a wall from the adjoining schoolyard, but the entrance from
Little Alie Street has been bricked up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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