There are few spots in England more peaceful, more suggestive, and more hallowed than our village churchyards, when they are treated with that reverence which is their due. I have many in my mind now, but I will try to think of one only “where the churchyard, grey with stone and green with turf, holds its century of dead,” where “side by side, the poor man and the son of pride, lie calm and still.” The church is grey and ivy-grown. Its broad tower, that has weathered many a storm, is half hidden amongst tall trees bursting into leaf, which hold, high up in their branches, the nests of the cawing rooks. Far below winds the gentle river, between wide stretches of meadow-land, and there is the old one-span bridge with the picturesque cottages of the village following each other down to it and up again, and in the background of the picture are the sheltering, sheep-covered hills. An old gabled parsonage adjoins the church, and the pathway which leads to it is through the peaceful sleeping-place of those whose tired bodies have been laid upon “the pillow of the restful earth.” The birds are making music in the trees, the gentlest of vernal breezes stirs the air, and from the seat in the venerable porch I can look out upon that quiet scene in the “lengthening April day.” Green grass, long and sweet, is growing amongst the “grey tombstones with their half-worn epitaphs,” and is trying to hide the primroses and the early bluebell buds which are peeping from the ground, for there

It is so green and fresh, so calm and sweet a spot in which to await the resurrection morn, that we can understand what Keble felt when he said,

As there is “no fear in love,” so there should be no “fear” in death, for death is but our translation into the presence of the greater love “which passeth knowledge.”

Our London churchyards of to-day were once village churchyards, and were attached to quiet old churches which, with a few neighbouring houses, stood far away from the town and were encircled with fields. There are many now living who can remember walking from the City to St. Mary’s, Islington, by a footpath through the meadows, and such was also at one time the case with Paddington, St. Pancras, Hackney, Shoreditch, Stepney, Bow, Bromley, Rotherhithe, Lewisham, Camberwell, Wandsworth, Battersea, and many other parishes. It is difficult to realise it now, and yet it is only in the present century that they have been merged into the great metropolis, and separated by many miles of houses from the hedges and fields. Nor is it long since the village stocks were moved from several of the churchyard gates.

Most of the original parish churches have been replaced, some of them more than once. The oldest ones now in existence are St. Saviour’s, Southwark, Stepney, Bow, Chelsea, Fulham, the Savoy, Westminster (St. Margaret’s), Lambeth, Deptford (St. Nicholas’), and Putney, with the tower of old Hackney Church. Many of the others belong to the eighteenth century. In the tenth year of the reign of Queen Anne the number of houses in the districts adjacent to the City having increased so rapidly, it was enacted by Parliament that fifty new churches should be built “for the better Instruction of all in the Principles of Christianity,” and for “redressing the inconvenience and growing mischiefs which resulted from the increase of Dissenters and Popery.” In order to raise the necessary funds it was agreed to levy an additional duty of two shillings per chaldron “upon all Coals and Culm” that were brought into London, and two shillings per ton upon weighable coals for a term of 137 days, after which for eight years the duty was to be three shillings per chaldron and per ton. But although some old churches were rebuilt or repaired at that time, only ten new ones were erected, such as St. Anne’s, Limehouse, St. George’s in the East, St. Luke’s, Old Street, and St. John the Evangelist’s, Westminster.

Descriptions of the churchyards attached to these churches are not easy to find, nor were they of any great interest, except that many notable men were buried in them. Yet there is one point in connection with them that is interesting, and it is that although the churches are in the severe and sometimes almost grotesque style of architecture of Gibb, Hawksmoor, and others, yet in the eighteenth century it was customary to erect headstones over graves with elaborately carved designs. Eighteenth-century tombstones have hour-glasses, scythes, cherubs’ heads—blowing or smiling or weeping—elaborate scenes, generally allegorical of the flight of time, and epitaphs upon which much thought and care were expended. With the nineteenth century the carved tombstones disappeared.^[3] St. Paul’s churchyard,

Deptford, contains many quaint specimens, and here also is a “shelter,” the roof of which was the old pulpit sounding-board, But the older churchyards, those which may be more rightly described as the merged village churchyards, have been pictured from time to time.

One of Mr. Loftie’s original ideas is to describe London as known by Stow, Norden, and Shakespeare, who lived and wrote at about the same time, i.e., 1600. I do not mean to say that he tells us what the burial-grounds were like in that day, for no historian of London ever seemed to think it worth while to do more than refer to one here and one there, or I should not have ventured to put forward this work at a time when we are satiated with histories of the metropolis; but I will, for a moment, adopt his plan. It is impossible to read Hamlet and the vivid description of the gravediggers who played at “loggats” with the skulls and bones, while they drank and sung, without coming to the conclusion that Shakespeare had witnessed the very same practices in the graveyards in his day as were exposed and stopped no less than two and a half centuries later, when “skittles” were played with bones and skulls at St. Ann’s, Soho, and other churchyards. But I cannot entirely give up the idea that Shakespeare walked in some churchyards which awoke peaceful and reverent thoughts in his contemplative mind.

Stow scarcely mentions the churchyards at all. He and his later editors give up many pages of his survey to inscriptions copied from monuments, some being from tombstones in the churchyards, but most being from the tablets in the churches, and he occasionally refers to the gift by citizens of pieces of ground for graveyards, these being mainly in the City itself. Perhaps, however, it may not be out of place to quote from one or two passages which give us an idea of the condition of the open land immediately adjoining the City, and which point to the fact that such parish churches as lay beyond this land must indeed have been rural and remote.

We read in the edition of 1633 that “filthie cottages” and alleys extended for “almost halfe a mile beyond” Whitechapel Church, “into the common field.” He also refers to the fine houses, with large gardens, which were being built round the City, where former generations, more benevolently inclined, had erected hospitals and almshouses. He mentions the “wrestlings” that took place at Bartholomewtide by “Skinners Well, neere unto Clarkes Well.” This Clarkes Well, or Clerkenwell, “is curbed about square with hard stone: not farre from the west end of Clarkenwell Church, but close without the wall that encloseth it.” ... “Somewhat north from Holywell (Shoreditch) is one other well, curbed square with stone, and is called Dame Annis the cleere; and not far from it, but somewhat west, is also another cleere water, called Perilous Pond, because divers youths (by swimming therein) have been drowned.” Stow most carefully enumerates the wells and conduits of the City and its surroundings, several being “neere to the Church.” And it is a fact that many wells, conduits, and pumps in and around London were—and some still are—not only in close proximity to the churchyards, but actually in them. The water from St. Clement’s Well and St. Giles’ Well came through the burial-grounds. The site of the Bride’s Well, which gave the name to the precinct and the hospital, is still marked by the pump in an alcove of the wall of St. Bride’s Churchyard, Fleet Street. There was a pump by St. Michael le Querne and one in the churchyard of St. Mary le Bow, against the west wall of the church. There was a well in the crypt of St. Peter’s, Walworth, a pump in Stepney Churchyard, and another in St. George’s in the East, to which his parishioners used to resort for drinking water until the Rev. Harry Jones, during a cholera scare, hung a large placard on it, “Dead Men’s Broth!” and Dickens used to picture the departed, when he heard the churchyard pumps at work, urging their protest, “Let us lie here in peace; don’t suck us up and drink us!”

And Norden, what did he say? His plan of London, like the one by Aggas and later ones, gives us a picture of the remoteness of the outer parishes. Here is his description of old St. Pancras Churchyard: “Pancras Church standeth all alone, as utterly forsaken, old and wether-beaten, which, for the antiquity thereof, it is thought not to yield to Paules in London. About this church have bin many buildings now decayed, leaving poor Pancras without companie or comfort, yet it is now and then visited with Kentishtowne and Highgate, which are members thereof.... When there is a corpse to be interred, they are forced to leave the same within this forsaken church or churchyard, when (no doubt) it resteth as secure against the day of resurrection as if it laie in stately Paules.” It would indeed be curious to see what Norden would think now of this churchyard, with the Midland Railway trains unceasingly rushing across it, and the “dome” and “trophy” of headstones, numbering 496, not to speak of the stacks and walls of them round about, which were moved into one part of the ground when the other part (Catholic Pancras) was acquired by the railway company. Poor Pancras is not forsaken now, it is in the midst of streets and houses, and what remains of the churchyard is full of seats and people.

This particular ground, with others in the same neighbourhood, were famed later on as the scenes of the operations of body-snatchers, as is evident from Tom Hood’s rhyme, entitled “Jack Hall,” from which one verse will be sufficient:—

When Jack Hall is himself dying, and twelve M.D.’s are round him, anxious for his body, he tells them:—

Timbs in his “Romance of London” gives a detailed account of the first indictment for body-stealing—the act taking place at St. George the Martyr ground (behind the Foundling Hospital) in 1777. But it must be remembered that, although at one time body-snatchers or resurrection-men carried on a brisk trade, yet where one body may have been disinterred for hospital use one hundred were removed to make room for others.

The churchyards in London to which a somewhat rural flavour still clings are, perhaps, those in the extreme south east, such as St. Nicholas’, Plumstead, and St. John the Baptist’s, Eltham, which, together with Lee and Tooting Churchyards, are still used for interments, St. Mary’s, Bromley-by-Bow (originally the chapel of St. Mary in the Convent of St. Leonard), with its beautiful altar tombs, and St. Mary’s, Stoke Newington. There is something particularly picturesque about the last named, with the old church in its midst. Mrs. Barbauld lies buried here, and a lady whose death was caused by her clothes catching fire, upon whose tombstone this very quaint inscription was placed:—

“Reader, if you should ever witness such an afflicting scene, recollect that the only method to extinguish the flame, is to stifle it by an immediate covering.”

All the parish churches had their churchyards, the only ones not actually adjoining them being those of St. George’s, Hanover Square, St. George’s, Bloomsbury, and St. George the Martyr, Queen Square, where the first body interred was that of Robert Nelson, author of “Fasts and Festivals.” Some were added to many times, some have been seriously curtailed. The largest of the churchyards are Stepney, Hackney, and Camberwell. That of St. Anne’s, Limehouse, had a strip taken off it in 1800, when Commercial Road was made, that of St. Paul’s, Hammersmith, was similarly curtailed in 1884. The present churches of Hammersmith and Kensington are far larger than their predecessors, and therefore the churchyards dwindled when they were built. St. Clement Danes and St. John’s, Westminster, once stood in fair-sized churchyards; now, in each case, there is only a railed-in enclosure round the church. But one of the most serious shortenings was at St. Martin’s in the Fields. In fact, of those buried from this particular parish, few can have been undisturbed, except, perhaps, in the cemetery in Pratt Street, Camden Town, now a public garden, which belongs to St. Martin’s. One of the parochial burial-grounds is under the northern block of the buildings forming the National Gallery, another one is lost in Charing Cross Road, while a third one (now a little garden) in Drury Lane was so disgustingly overcrowded that no burials could take place there without the disturbance of other bodies, which were crowded into pits dug in the ground, and covered with boards. But to return to the churchyard itself, the burial-ground immediately surrounding the church, where Nell Gwynne and Jack Sheppard were buried. A strip on the north side and a piece at the east end still exist, flagged with stones, and were planted with trees, provided with seats, and opened to the public by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association in 1887. But once there was a large piece of ground on the south side, where now there is none, called the Waterman’s Churchyard. Its disappearance is accounted for by the following inscription on a tablet on the church wall:—

“These catacombs were constructed at the expense of the Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Woods and Forests, in exchange for part of the burial-ground of this parish, on the south side of the church, given up for public improvements, and were consecrated by the Lord Bishop of London on the 7th day of June, 1831.”

In The Sunday Times of June 12, 1831, these vaults are thus described:—

“The new vaults under St. Martin’s burying-ground are the most capacious structure of the sort in London. They were opened on Tuesday, at the consecration of the new burial-ground. They consist of a series of vaults, running out of one another in various directions; they are lofty, and when lighted up, as on Tuesday, really presented something of a comfortable appearance.” After relating something about the size and number of the arches, the quantity of coffins they would hold, &c., the description closes with these words: “Crowds of ladies perambulated the vaults for some time, and the whole had more the appearance of a fashionable promenade than a grim depository of decomposing mortality.”

This account reminds me very much of the ceremony which took place after the opening of St. Peter’s Churchyard, Walworth, as a garden, in May, 1895. The Rector had kindly provided tea in the crypt, a huge space under the church where gymnastic and other classes are held. This crypt used to be full of coffins lying about at random, with a well in the centre, but a faculty was obtained for their removal to a cemetery. The scene on the day to which I refer was a very gay one. Where, a few months previously, there had been coffins and dirt, there was a well white-washed building, lighted with plenty of gas, lace curtains between the solid pillars and low arches, a number of little tables with tea, cakes, &c., and many brightly-attired girls to wait on the visitors, who enjoyed their refreshment to the enlivening strains of a piano.

The churchyard of St. Giles’ in the Fields is a very interesting one. It might well be now called St. Giles’ in the Slums, although of late years the surrounding streets have been much improved and the worst courts cleared away. Before there was a church of St. Giles’ there was a lazaretto or leper hospital on the spot, and what is now the churchyard was the burial-ground attached thereto. As a parish the settlement seems to date from 1547, but the hospital was founded 200 years earlier, and was entrusted to the care of the Master and Brethren of the Order of Burton St. Lazar of Jerusalem, in Leicestershire. The churchyard, which holds many centuries of dead, was frequently enlarged, Brown’s Gardens being added in 1628, until the parish secured an additional burial-ground, in 1803, adjoining that of St. Pancras. And yet it is barely an acre in extent. It is related in Thornbury’s “Haunted London” that in 1670 the sexton agreed to furnish the rector and churchwardens with two fat capons, ready dressed, every Tuesday se’nnight in return for being allowed to introduce certain windows into the churchyard side of his house. But it could not have been a pleasant churchyard to look at. It was always damp, and vast numbers of the poor Irish were buried in it (the ground having been originally consecrated by a Roman Catholic), and it is hardly to be wondered at that the parish of St. Giles’ enjoys the honour of having started the plague of 1665. And the practices carried on there at the beginning of this century were equal to the worst anywhere—revolting ill-treatment of the dead was the daily custom.

Now the churchyard is a public garden, Pendrell’s tombstone being an object of historical interest, the inscription upon which runs as follows:—

“Here lieth Richard Pendrell, Preserver and Conductor to his sacred Majesty King Charles the Second of Great Britain, after his Escape from Worcester Fight, in the Year 1651, who died Feb. 8, 1671.

This ridiculous epitaph belongs to the truly eulogistic group. It has its counterpart on a tombstone in Fulham Churchyard, erected to the memory of a lady, where the epitaph is “Silence is best,” or in the following one from Lambeth:—

Old Chelsea Church is noted for its monuments, many persons of distinction having been buried there, and in the churchyard is a great erection in memory of Sir Hans Sloane, but the ground is closed to the public, and the tombstones are sadly neglected. From a dramatic point of view the burial-ground attached to St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, is most interesting, as it contains the graves of a large number of actors.

So many works have been written about monuments and epitaphs that it is not my intention to refer to many, but some are interesting as giving a peep into the life of those they commemorate. There are several in London which describe the number of times the deceased person was “tapped for dropsy.” A tombstone at Stepney is in memory of one “Elizabeth Goodlad, who died in 1710, aged 99, and her twenty daughters.” They must have been exemplary daughters not to have worn out their mother sooner! The Rev. Matthew Mead was also buried here, a most prolific writer of sermons and treatises on religion, including one with this quaint title, “The almost Christian tried and cast.” Stepney Churchyard is very old; it is highly probable that there was a church there in Saxon times. The other churchyards in East London which can boast of considerable antiquity are Bromley, Bow, Whitechapel, and Hackney, although Sir Walter Besant, in his novel, “All Sorts and Conditions of Men,” says that the churchyards in East London “are not even ancient.” No doubt if he re-wrote that novel now he would alter many of his remarks. It is hardly possible to think that the eastern districts of London ever formed a “marvellous, unknown country,” or that Rotherhithe needed any “discovery.”

By the close of the last century and at the beginning of this one, the want of additional burial space was much felt in several parishes. Some had “poor grounds,” and some, like St. James’s, Clerkenwell, had a “middle ground,” this particular one being now the playground of the Bowling Green Lane Board School, but the extra graveyards were all small and all crowded. The parishes of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, St. James’s, Piccadilly, St. Andrew’s, Holborn, St. James’s, Clerkenwell, St. Marylebone, and St. Mary’s, Islington, secured additional burial-grounds in which chapels of ease were erected. These are Christ Church, Victoria Street, St. James’s, Hampstead Road, Holy Trinity, Gray’s Inn Road, St. James’s, Pentonville Road, St. John’s Wood Chapel, and the Chapel of Ease in Holloway Road, the ground surrounding which is one of the best kept churchyard gardens in London. Many of the district churches, built at the commencement of this century, also had graveyards attached. In Bethnal Green, for instance, not only is there the burial-ground of St. Matthew’s, which was consecrated in 1746, and has vaults under the school as well as the church, but there are those of St. Peter’s, St. Bartholomew’s, and St. James’ the Less, the two first being laid out as gardens, and the last being a dreary, swampy waste, containing about ten sad-looking tombstones and a colony of cocks and hens.

It is impossible, in a chapter already too long, to touch upon all the churchyards outside the City, but I must refer briefly to the four principal parish churches which have disappeared. The present building of St. Mary le Strand only dates from 1717; the original one stood in a “fair cemetery,” much nearer the river, and was also called the Church of the Innocents. This ground was enlarged in 1355 by a plot 70 feet by 30 feet in size, but the church and churchyard disappeared about 1564 to make room for Somerset House. The church of St. John the Evangelist, Tybourn, was removed in 1400 by Bishop Braybrooke, and the first church of St. Marylebone was built to take its place. Provision was made for the preservation of the churchyard, but it also disappeared before long. It was near the site of the present Court House in Stratford Place, under which, and the older one, bones were dug up in 1727 and 1822.

Tybourn Church was removed because it was in so lonely a situation, and yet so near the main road from Oxford to London, that robbers and thieves were always breaking into it to steal the bells, images, ornaments, &c. The Church of St. Margaret, Southwark, stood in the middle of the Borough High Street, with a much-used graveyard round it, which was enlarged in 1537. But it was in so inconvenient a place, and the ground was so much used for holding markets in, that it was removed about 1600, and the parish amalgamated with St. Saviour’s. The old town hall took the place of the church, and the Borough Market is still held on or near the site of the churchyard. When St. Katharine’s Docks were made, in 1827, St. Katharine’s Church, the ruins of the hospital (dating from 1148), two churchyards of considerable size, and the whole parish,—inns, streets, houses and all, were totally annihilated. The church was a beautiful one; it has been described by Sir Walter Besant and other chroniclers, and must have been amongst the finest specimens of ecclesiastical architecture in London. The whole establishment was, to a certain extent, rebuilt near Regent’s Park. It is said that a quantity of the human remains from the churchyard were used to fill up some old reservoirs, &c., in the neighbourhood; but, at any rate, it is a fact that they were distributed amongst the East-end churchyards, and several cartloads were taken to Bethnal Green and deposited in St. Matthew’s ground, where the slope up to the west door of the church is composed of these bodies from St. Katharine’s. There were originally steps leading to the entrance, but the steps are buried under this artificial hill, the ground having been raised several inches.

What may be called the parish churchyards in London, outside the City, number about seventy-two. Of these no less than forty are now being maintained as public gardens, and this does not include the additional parochial graveyards, nor those attached to district churches. A few, such as Streatham and Hampstead, are generally open to the public, but are not provided with seats, and one of the best kept is that of St. Bartholomew’s, Sydenham, which, although not a public garden, is indeed “a thing of beauty.” The old churchyard at Lee is also attractive, and contains tombs and effigies belonging to many families of note, including those of the Ropers, Boones, and Floodyers, and a monument to the memory of Sir Fretful Plagiary, of whom, notwithstanding the uncomfortable name with which he was endowed, his epitaph says, “He science knew, knew manners, knew the age.”