“Methodism was only to be detected as you detect curious larvÆ, by diligent search in dirty corners.”—George Eliot.

Foremost amongst the burial-grounds devoted especially to Dissenters is Bunhill Fields,—not the New Bunhill Fields in Newington, nor Little Bunhill Fields in Islington, nor the City Bunhill Ground in Golden Lane, not the Quakers’ ground in Bunhill Row—but the real, genuine, original Bunhill Fields, City Road.

The land on the north side of the City and south of Old Street was variously called the Moorfields, Finsbury Fields, the Artillery Ground, Windmill Hill, and Bone-hill or Bon-hill. In the year 1549, when the Charnel Chapel in St. Paul’s Churchyard was pulled down, “the bones of the dead, couched up in a charnel under the chapel, were conveyed from thence into Finsbury Field, by report of him who paid for the carriage, amounting to more than one thousand cartloads, and there laid on a moorish ground, which, in a short time after, being raised by the soilage of the City, was able to bear three windmills.” The number of windmills was, later on, increased to five, and they may be seen on many old maps of London. Heretics used to be interred in Moorfields, and bones from St. Matthew’s, Friday Street, were moved to Haggerston, in fact several acres in this district were in use for the purpose of burying in.

The land north of the Artillery Ground was known as Bonhill or Bunhill Field, “part whereof, at present denominated Tindal’s, or the Dissenters’ great Burial-ground, was, by the Mayor and Citizens of London, in the year 1665, set apart and consecrated as a common Cemetery, for the interment of such corps as could not have room in their parochial burial-grounds in that dreadful year of pestilence. However, it not being made use of on that occasion, the said Tindal took a lease thereof, and converted it into a Burial-ground for the use of Dissenters.” So wrote Maitland in 1756, but before that time a large plot was added on the north, and eventually the whole cemetery measured about five acres. There at least 100,000 persons found their last resting-place, including vast numbers of Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Independent ministers. In Walter Wilson’s History of the Dissenting Meeting-houses, which might be more rightly called a history of dissenting divines, the burial of the ministers in Bunhill Fields is constantly mentioned, and the elaborate inscriptions from their tombs are given. These have, however, become much defaced, and numbers of them are now illegible. The ground belongs to the Corporation; it is not laid out as a garden, but paths have been made and seats placed in it, the gates being open during the day. The most frequented paths lead to the tombstones of John Bunyan, on the south side of the public thoroughfare in “Tyndal’s Ground,” and Daniel Defoe, on the north side, both being at the eastern end of the cemetery. Bunyan’s tomb was restored in 1862 by public subscription, a piece of the original stone being now in the Congregational Church at Highgate. The monument to Defoe was raised in 1870 by a subscription in the Christian World. Amongst other celebrities buried here were Dr. Williams, the founder of the Library in Red Cross Street (now in Gordon Square), Susannah Wesley, mother of John and Charles, Isaac Watts, Sir Thomas Hardy of Reform Bill fame, and several members of the Cromwell family. The Corporation restored the tombstone of Henry Cromwell, which was found seven feet below the surface.

On the south side of the Thames the largest and most important of the Dissenters’ burial-grounds was that attached to the Independent Chapel in Deadman’s Place (now called Park Street, Southwark), originally a plague-ground, and very much used for the burial of the victims. Here many more ministers were buried, whose names are household words wherever Dissenters are gathered together. I cannot say what has become of their tombstones, but the site of the ground is now only one of the paved yards in Messrs. Barclay and Perkins’ Brewery.

If the mantle of Bunhill Fields has fallen anywhere, I suppose that Abney Park Cemetery claims the distinction. It was first used in 1840, and has always been the favourite cemetery of the Dissenters, there being no separating line in it to mark off a consecrated portion. Its formation is also associated with the memory of Dr. Watts, who lived for some years, and who died, in the neighbourhood, at the house of his friend Sir Thomas Abney. There is a monument to him in the cemetery, although he was buried at Bunhill Fields, and there are many huge monuments to other eminent dissenting divines of latter days. The tombstones are crowded together as closely as it seems possible, and yet they are being constantly added to, although the greater part of this cemetery is already over-full.

The first dissenting meeting-houses were in the City and its immediate neighbourhood. They were frequently but “upper rooms” in narrow courts, and had no graveyards attached to them. But when the persecution of the Dissenters, under the Act of Uniformity, was relaxed, meeting-houses and chapels sprang up in every part of London, and these, in some cases, had burial-grounds adjoining them. A few of the larger grounds, such as Sheen’s, in Commercial Road, and the one in Globe Fields, were bought by private individuals and carried on as private speculations entirely apart from the Chapels. They are described in Chapter IX. But of the genuine Dissenters’ graveyards i.e., the little grounds attached to chapels and meeting-houses in London, there must have been at one time or another about eighty—there may have been more. This number of course represents but a very small portion of the meeting-houses themselves, which were in existence at the beginning of this century. The following remarks of the Rev. John Blackburn, one of the secretaries of the Union of Congregational Ministers, show how the respectable Dissenters repudiated the private burial-grounds: “I may with confidence disclaim the imputation that the graveyards of Dissenters were primarily and chiefly established with a view to emolument. Many graveyards that are private property, purchased by undertakers for their own emolument, are regarded as dissenting burial-grounds; and we are implicated in the censures that are pronounced upon the unseemly and disgusting transactions that have been detected in them.... By far the greatest portion of the persons buried in these grounds are not Dissenters at all.... The denomination to which I belong have about 120 chapels in and around London, and I believe there is not more than a sixth part of them that have graveyards attached.”

In the returns of the Metropolitan burial-grounds which were made fifty or sixty years ago, those to whom the work was entrusted generally expressed their inability to find out the correct number of the Dissenters’ grounds, and Walker wrote, “I have not been able to procure any satisfactory accounts of the numbers interred in burying-grounds unconnected with the Established Church. By some parties information was refused, by others the records of the place were stated to have been lost or neglected, and in some cases the parties most interested in suppressing, had alone the power to communicate.” When I first began, twelve years ago, to make as complete a list as I could of the London burial-grounds, I wrote to the secretaries at the centres of the chief dissenting bodies, as I thought they might possess information about the burial-grounds of their own chapels. From the Congregationalists I had no reply; the Wesleyans kindly answered that they were endeavouring to procure the information, but it never came; the Baptists wrote two or three letters and took some trouble on my behalf, but they failed even to find the number of their grounds. I had, therefore, to seek my information in other ways.

The only body of Nonconformists that has kept a careful account of its graveyards is the Society of Friends. They also treated their grounds and the remains in them with greater respect (except in one notable case to which I shall refer), and they kept them neat and clean, and do so still. Walker recognised this fact as long ago as 1847. A statement respecting their graveyards was made by representatives of the Society to the committee which sat in 1843, showing that they still had considerable room in these grounds, and that they were careful not to allow less than 7 feet or 8 feet of earth above each coffin. The Friends attend to all matters connected with their meeting-houses and burial-grounds at their six weeks’ meeting, and each of these grounds has been a Quakers’ graveyard from the beginning, not changing hands, first belonging to one community and then another, as has been the case with so many of the chapel graveyards. The members of the Society have also exercised a most praiseworthy self-control by not wearing mourning, by avoiding useless expense at funerals, and ostentatious tombstones, memorials, or epitaphs. Until about fifty years ago no tombstones were used at all, as at Long Lane, S.E.; then they used small flat ones, as at Hammersmith and Peckham; and finally they adopted small upright ones, all the same shape, about a quarter of the size of the ordinary headstones in cemeteries. These may be seen at Ratcliff and Stoke Newington, the graveyard at the latter place, which surrounds the Park Street meeting-house, being still in use. I wish that every one who intends to erect a tombstone—and this is a note for Jews as well as Christians—would, before doing so, pay a visit to a Quakers’ burial-ground, and ponder on the matter there. An interesting article on the Society of Friends has appeared in the Times of January 8, 1896, in which the following words are quoted, “The Quakers—the man and the Society—must move or perish.” But I trust they may not move forward with the times in adopting more elaborate burial customs.

Four of the Quakers’ graveyards have entirely disappeared. The burial-ground for the Friends of Westminster was in Long Acre, by Castle Street. It passed out of their hands in 1757, and was built upon. In rebuilding houses on the same spot, about four years ago, many human remains were disturbed. These were claimed by the Society, which was allowed to collect them and bury them at Isleworth. There was a little meeting-house with a burial-ground attached in Wapping Street, which seems to have been used until about 1779, but was then demolished, the worshippers moving to the meeting in Brook Street, Ratcliff. The other two burial-grounds which the Friends have lost were in Worcester Street and Ewer Street, Southwark. The latter, although it adjoined their Old Park Meeting (which the King took as a guard house), may never have been used by them. At any rate in 1839 it was in private hands, and eventually disappeared under the railway. The former, which dated from 1666, was very full, so that in 1733 the surface was raised above the original level. This was demolished when Southwark Street was made (1860); and the London Bridge and Charing Cross Railway also runs over its site. The Friends then moved the remains and a number of coffins to their ground in Long Lane, Bermondsey.^[4]

The Quakers of the Bull-and-Mouth and Peel Divisions used a large ground near Bunhill Fields, between Checquer Alley and Coleman (now Roscoe) Street. It was acquired in 1661, and many times added to, and was used extensively by them at the time of the Great Plague, when they had their own special dead-cart. George Fox’s body was carried here in 1690, an orderly procession, numbering 4,000 persons, following to the grave. In 1840 a school was built in it, and the rest of the tale it grieves me to tell. A part of the burial-ground exists now, not half an acre in area. It is neatly laid out as a sort of private garden. Five thousand bodies were dug up in the other part and buried, with carbolic acid, in a corner of the existing piece, and the site from which they were removed is now covered with a Board School, a coffee palace, houses, and shops, including the Bunhill Fields Memorial Buildings, erected in 1881.^[5]

The remainder of the Friends’ burial-grounds are intact. The one in Baker’s Row, Whitechapel (acquired in 1687 and used by the Devonshire House Division), is now a recreation ground; and the one in Long Lane, Bermondsey, which was bought in 1697 for £120, has lately been laid out for the use of the public. In addition to these there are, in London itself, five little grounds adjoining meeting-houses in High Street, Deptford, in Brook Street, Ratcliff, in High Street, Wandsworth (given by Joan Stringer in 1697), by the Creek, Hammersmith, and in Hanover Street, Peckham Rye. The Society acquired the Ratcliff ground in 1666 or 1667, the land being originally copyhold, but enfranchised in 1734 for £21. All these grounds are neatly kept; the one in Peckham, which dates from 1821, is beautiful, and illustrates what can be done with a disused and closed graveyard, not even visible from the road, when it is treated with proper care and respect. Many of the burial-grounds just outside London have been sold with the meeting-houses.

There are not many Roman Catholic burial-grounds in London apart from those attached to conventual establishments. St. Mary’s Church, Moorfields, has a very small churchyard and had two additional grounds, one in Bethnal Green which has disappeared, and one in Wades Place, Poplar, now used as a school playground. This is the case also with a Roman Catholic burial-ground in Duncan Terrace, Islington, which has been asphalted for the use of the boys’ school, some tombstones and a figure of the Virgin Mary being in an enclosure on the north side. There is a very large ground dedicated to All Souls, by St. Mary’s Church, Cadogan Terrace, Chelsea, and a small one by the church in Parker’s Row, Dockhead, S.E., the garden here, which is now a recreation ground for the schools or the sisters, having also been used for burials. There is one in Woolwich, lately encroached upon through the enlargement of the school, where three lonely-looking graves are in a railed-in enclosure in the middle of a tar-paved yard; and there is also the ground behind St. Thomas’s, Fulham, which is still in use.

But the burial-grounds adjoining Baptist, Wesleyan, Independent, and other Chapels, what shall be said of them? They have suffered terribly in the slaughter, and although many still exist, a very large number have entirely disappeared. Only three are open as public gardens—the Wesleyan ground in Cable Street, St. George’s in the East, which was added to St. George’s churchyard garden in 1875; the ground behind the Independent Chapel by St. Thomas’ Square, Hackney; and the burial-ground adjoining Whitfield’s Tabernacle, Tottenham Court Road, the subject of much litigation, which was opened in February, 1895, by the London County Council. The original chapel on this site was founded by George Whitefield in 1756, amongst his supporters being the Countess of Huntingdon, David Garrick, and Benjamin Franklin. One other graveyard was laid out as a garden, that adjoining Trinity Chapel, East India Dock Road, but it is now closed, no one at present undertaking its maintenance.

For the rest of the grounds, not only Methodist but also Congregationalist and above all Baptist, we must employ the “diligent search in dirty corners,” but all the seeking in the world will not restore those that are gone—sold and built upon. The fates of some of them are recorded in Appendix B. The parishes south of the river seem to have been great strongholds of dissent. Woolwich, Deptford, Walworth, and Wandsworth are still full of chapels, many of which have burial-grounds attached. North of the Thames perhaps Hackney is richest in chapels and chapel graveyards, including the Unitarian in Chatham Place. Whitechapel also had a great many. But in the Borough and other parts of Southwark the little meeting-houses swarmed at one time, some of which, with their little burial-grounds, still exist. A few of the chapels now belong to the Salvation Army; one in York Street, Walworth, has lately been acquired as the Robert Browning Hall, and its burial-ground is to be a public garden; others in Peckham, Woolwich, and Hammersmith have been converted into schools (the two last named being board schools), their graveyards being the playgrounds; and many more have fallen from their first estate.

It might be instructive to those who are not well acquainted with South London to take a walk, in imagination, through Long Lane. It begins at St. George the Martyr, Borough, of “Little Dorrit” fame, where the churchyard is a public garden. Close by this, also on the north side of the lane, there used to be a Baptist Chapel in Sheer’s Alley, with a burial-ground. Wilmott’s Buildings occupy the site. Very little beyond is Collier’s Rents. Here is a chapel which used to belong to the Baptists, but is now in the hands of the Congregational Union. Its dreary little graveyard is on the north side, behind a high wall. A little further on, and opposite, is Southwark Chapel (Wesleyan), built in 1808. It also has a graveyard, where the chief ornament is a hen-coop amongst the tumbling tombstones. A short turning to the north, Nelson Street, takes us to the disused burial-ground of Guy’s Hospital; and before we come to the end of the lane there are three more grounds to be seen, that belonging to the Society of Friends, already mentioned in this Chapter, and one that adjoins it and is owned by the trustees of a neighbouring Baptist Chapel, which is very small and has a minister’s vault in the middle. This ground originally belonged to the Independents of Beck Street, and its appellation when closed was the Neckinger Road Chapel burial-ground. Lastly we come to St. Mary Magdalene’s, the parish church of Bermondsey, with a charming churchyard garden which includes a portion of the cemetery of Bermondsey Abbey. And yet Long Lane is only about half a mile in length!

It is a little curious to notice that in the next parish, Rotherhithe, there are no less than five churchyards, but not a single burial-ground belonging to the Dissenters.

When visiting the burial-grounds for the London County Council, I was much struck with three that seemed particularly neglected and untidy. These were the Baptist ground in Mare Street, Hackney, which was being used for the storage of old wood, furniture, and flower-pots; the ground behind the pretentious Congregational Chapel on Stockwell Green, where all kinds of dirty rubbish, paper, iron-building materials, the broken top of a lamp-post, &c., were lying about amongst the sinking graves; and a little ground in Church Street, Deptford, behind a chapel which belongs to a General Baptist (Unitarian) connection, whose creed I do not pretend to understand, but whose railings were so broken that a far larger visitor than I could have followed me through the gaps to behold broken tombstones, collections of unsavoury rubbish, and another specimen of the worn-out top of a lamp-post. There were many other very untidy grounds, such as those by the Wesleyan Chapel in Liverpool Road, King’s Cross, and the Congregational Chapel in Esher Street, Lambeth; but I think the three I have mentioned above would have been—in the Spring of 1895, at any rate—awarded the first, second, and third prizes in a competition for neglect; and in January, 1896, I find these grounds are in much the same condition as they were then.

It is pleasant to turn to some of the chapel grounds which are well kept. The one which adjoins the Congregational Church in High Street, Deptford, is generally neat; so is the graveyard of the City Road Chapel, at any rate at its western end, where John Wesley’s monument stands; and the same may be said of the portions that are left of the grounds adjoining Union Chapel, Streatham Hill, and the New West End Baptist Chapel in King Street, Hammersmith.

There was a large burial-ground behind a chapel in Cannon Street Road, E. The building passed into the hands of the Rector of St. George’s in the East, but was afterwards pulled down, and one of Raine’s Foundation Schools was subsequently erected on its site. The burial-ground, in which many Lascars^[6] were interred, is now in three parts. One is a small playground for the school, the largest part is Messrs. Seaward Brothers’ yard for their carts, and the third piece is a cooper’s yard belonging to Messrs. Hasted and Sons. A similar kind of chapel in Penrose Street, Walworth, known for a time as St. John’s Episcopal Chapel, is now the studio of a scenic artist, while the large burial-ground in the rear is the depÔt of the Newington Vestry, and is full of carts, manure, gravel, dust, stones, &c.

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.

It is the question of their maintenance, when they are once laid out, that has hitherto caused so much difficulty, and this not only with the Dissenters’ grounds, but also with the churchyards. Where the Vestry or District Board of Works will undertake to maintain a ground under the Open Spaces Acts it is simple enough, and in many cases this has been done most effectually. But some of these bodies will not accept the responsibility. The Corporation keeps up St. Paul’s Churchyard and Bunhill Fields, and the London County Council maintains Whitfield’s Tabernacle ground and ten graveyards which were laid out by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. It was with great difficulty and after a hard fight that the Earl of Meath managed to induce the Council to take over some of these grounds (and this only year by year), together with several squares and playgrounds, the maintenance of which was too heavy a burden upon the funds of a voluntary society. Of late years the Association has not laid out any burial-ground until its future maintenance is legally secured. A short time ago, soon after the publication of the return prepared by me for the Council, the Parks and Open Spaces Committee recommended that a conference should be held to consider some general scheme for the treatment of the burial-grounds which are still closed, their acquisition for the use of the public, and their maintenance, it being felt somewhat unjust that while some of the Metropolitan vestries and boards (such as St. Pancras and Hackney) were annually expending considerable sums in the upkeep of graveyard gardens, others (such as Rotherhithe and Limehouse) declined to do so. But the recommendation, when it came before the general meeting of the Council, was withdrawn for the time being, and the whole question remains in statu quo ante.