Perhaps the most interesting of these burial-grounds is one which belonged to the Bancroft Almshouses in Mile End Road. The fate of the asylum itself is well known; it has been replaced by the People’s Palace, and the improvement from an antiquarian or architectural point of view is nil. The recent interest taken in the proposed destruction of the Trinity Hospital in Mile End Road points to the fact that the pendulum of public opinion is now swinging towards the preservation of historical buildings. The graveyard of Bancroft’s Almshouses was a long strip on the eastern side. Part of it has been merged into the roadway. St. Benet’s Church (consecrated in 1872), Hall, and Vicarage were built upon it, and the bones of the pensioners are under the Vicarage garden. The northernmost point of the graveyard is enclosed and rooted over, and forms a little yard where flag-staffs, &c., are stored. But between this and the wall of the Vicarage there is a piece open to the road, with some heaps of stones in it and rubbish. There are, at any rate, four gravestones left, against the wall, and there may be others behind the stones; but I daresay it is only a very small proportion of those who pass in and out of the Palace who have ever noticed this relic of the Bancroft Almshouses. In a large number of the London parishes it was necessary to have “poor grounds,” _i.e._, graveyards where bodies could be interred at a trifling cost or entirely at the cost of the parish; for, notwithstanding the great dislike of the poor to “a pauper’s funeral,” and the efforts they will make to avoid it, there always have been cases in which no other sort of funeral can be arranged. Some of the “poor grounds” were attached to the workhouses, others were merely a part of the parish churchyards, while others again were older additional burial-grounds secured by the parishes before the days of workhouses.