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
On the south side of the Thames there are some other burial-grounds
which should be mentioned here. Greenwich Hospital possesses no less
than three cemeteries. In 1707 Prince George of Denmark gave a plot of
ground for the purpose, measuring 660 by 132 feet. This is on the west
side of the Royal Naval School. It is enclosed and full of tombstones.
But in 1747 an extra two and a half acres, surrounding the old ground,
were appropriated for interments. This space is well kept, containing
some fine trees and only a few monuments. The gate from the school
playground is generally open. Then there is the Hospital Cemetery in
West Combe, nearly six acres in size, and first used in 1857. The
burial-ground of God’s Gift College (Dulwich) is at the corner of Court
Lane. It dates from about 1700, and is a picturesque, well-kept little
ground, with several handsome altar tombs in it. The cemetery of Morden
College, Blackheath (founded for decayed merchants about 1695) also
exists. It is about a quarter of an acre in size, with about eighty
tombstones, but the graves have been levelled, and the ground, though
still walled round, forms part of the College gardens.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE ALMSHOUSES, WHITE HORSE STREET, STEPNEY.]
There were several almshouse graveyards in London, including the
“College yard” for St. Saviour’s Almshouses, Southwark, which is now a
builder’s store-yard in Park Street, and over which the London,
Brighton, and South Coast Railway passes on arches, and one behind the
Goldsmith’s Almshouses, now covered by the artisans’ dwellings on the
west side of Goldsmith Row, Shoreditch. The frightfully crowded
“almshouse ground” in Clement’s Lane formed part of the site of the new
Law Courts; while one in Crown Street, Soho, adjoining St. Martin’s
Almshouses, disappeared when the French Chapel was built, and has now
been lost in Charing Cross Road. In order to enter the almshouses in
White Horse Street, Stepney, it is necessary to pass through a
graveyard, and it cannot be a lively outlook for the pensioners, who
have gravestones just under their windows. It was connected with the
Independent Chapel, and first used in 1781.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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