“Some young children sported among the tombs, and hid from each other, with laughing faces. They had an infant with them, and had laid it down asleep upon a child’s grave, in a little bed of leaves.... Nell drew near and asked them whose grave it was. The child answered that that was not its name; it was a garden—his brother’s. It was greener, he said, than all the other gardens, and the birds loved it better because he had been used to feed them.”—From the “Old Curiosity Shop,” Dickens.

The late Sir Edwin Chadwick, in the Report which he drew up in 1843 (ten years before the burial-grounds were closed), wrote the following significant words:—“The only observation I at present submit upon the space of ground now occupied (as burial-grounds) is that it would serve hereafter advantageously to be kept open as public ground.” Happily he lived long enough to see some of these very graveyards upon which he had reported converted into open gardens. Their conversion and their preservation have gone hand in hand. Partly to facilitate their being acquired as open spaces an Act was framed, by the passing of which it became illegal to build on any ground that had been set aside for interments. And there could be no better way of securing the preservation of a burial-ground from encroachment or misuse, than by laying it out and handing it over to a public body to be maintained for the benefit of the public under the Open Spaces Act. Once given to the people, the people are not likely to give up an inch of it again without a struggle.

By the year 1877 seven disused burial-grounds in London had been converted into public gardens; those of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, St. George’s in the East, and the Wesleyan graveyard adjoining (forming one ground), the additional ground for St. Martin’s in the Fields in Drury Lane, St. John’s, Waterloo Bridge Road, and St. Pancras’ old churchyard, with the adjoining graveyard belonging to St. Giles’ in the Fields (forming one ground). These may be called the five pioneer gardens. But St. Botolph’s was closed again for several years, and St. Martin’s for a short time, and St. Pancras’ and St. Giles’ had to have much more done to them before they became attractive open spaces, so that the one which really stands out as the recreation ground that has had the longest existence is St. George’s, for this has been in constant use for twenty years. The Rev. Harry Jones, in his books, “East and West London,” and “Fifty Years,” describes the difficulties he went through to get the vestry to agree to the scheme, and to secure a faculty for laying out the ground. He and his co-workers were in the Consistory Court for two days, but they succeeded in the end, the wall between the churchyard and the Nonconformist burial-ground was done away with, and a most valuable new thoroughfare was opened out from Cable Street to St. George’s Street (Ratcliff Highway). Thus a precedent was created, and the way was made easier for others, including the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, to lay out their churchyards. Since that time, 1875, the part adjoining the church has also been opened, the whole ground being about three acres in area, and it is always bright and neat and full of people enjoying the seats, the grass, the flowers, and the air.

Mr. Loftie has written: “Of St. George’s in the East there is not much to be said.” He refers to the church, but even this, one of Hawksmoor’s chief works, is rather too lightly disposed of. Of the parish there is indeed much to tell. No other church in London can boast of nineteenth-century riots continued Sunday after Sunday for eighteen months, necessitating the presence of police in the sacred building. No other parish ever contained a Danish and a Swedish church, with the bones of Emmanuel Swedenborg. St. George’s is in touch with all corners of the globe, for the London Docks contain countless stores of treasures from the east and the west, the north and the south. Here several of the chief of those commonly known as the “broad churchmen” of the day have served as curates; and here the famous life of Father Lowder was lived for twenty-four years, while the famous church of St. Peter’s, London Docks, arose in the southern part of the parish,—Father Lowder, of whom the Rev. Harry Jones, in a memorial sermon, has said: “He was simply fearless.... He ever meant what he said, and said what he meant.... The mention of him meets the most sacred moods of the soul.” And the pioneer garden is still unique in being an amalgamation of a churchyard and a dissenting burial-ground. How different it is from what it was once like may be gathered from the following description in Household Words of November 16, 1850: “The graveyard was dank and clayey, and air blew coldly through the masts and rigging of the shipping moored in the Thames and the Docks.” The curate comes to the parish, the curate who eventually built Christ Church, Watney Street, dispirited and discouraged. He had fancied it was to St. George’s, Hanover Square, he was going! And “the occasional funeral duty of the country was changed for the constant day by day, week by week, repetitions of a gorged London graveyard,” to which “the close courts and poverty-stricken streets of his parish sent every year many hundred tenants.” Then the churchyard, like all the others in London, was closed, and became the usual useless cat-walk, with high walls around, and blackening tombstones, until the day when those negotiations began which resulted in the present charming garden. And this is a story which has now been repeated in every division of London.

In the year 1882 the Earl of Meath (then Lord Brabazon) started the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. It began on this wise. The Kyrle Society and the National Health Society had each an Open Spaces sub-committee, Miss Octavia Hill, of the Kyrle Society, having always been a prominent supporter of the movement for promoting open spaces, “outdoor sitting-rooms” she called them, in poor districts. But the funds of these committees were very small, and the work they could accomplish, except in the matter of influencing public opinion, very limited. They made grants of seats to a few churchyards which were being laid out, and joined in deputations to public bodies respecting open spaces, &c. Lord and Lady Brabazon had laid out the churchyards of St. John, Hoxton, and St. Mary, Haggerston, and had taken much interest in the formation of other grounds, such as the Brewers’ Garden at Stepney, which mainly owed its existence to the Rev. Sydney Vatcher, present vicar of St. Philip’s; and Lord Brabazon felt that there was room and need for a separate association for preserving, acquiring, and laying out open spaces, and for promoting similar objects. He therefore invited representatives of the Kyrle and National Health Societies, and others interested in the matter, to meet him and to discuss the advisability of sinking their own committees in a new and separate body, or rather of amalgamating their efforts in the same direction. The National Health Society only too gladly acquiesced, and from that time forward passed on all work connected with open spaces to the new body, Mr. Ernest Hart, Chairman of their Council, becoming the first vice-chairman of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. There are now eighteen. But Miss Octavia Hill held back. And this is the reason why there is still an Open Spaces branch of the Kyrle Society, and why on the title-page of the annual reports of the Gardens Association the words “In connection with the National Health Society,” are always inserted. The following graveyards have been laid out as gardens by the Kyrle Society in London—St. Peter’s, Bethnal Green, E., St. George’s, Bloomsbury, W. C. (the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association giving £100 towards the laying out of each of these), St. George the Martyr, Bloomsbury, W.C., and the burial-ground of St. Nicholas’, Deptford, in Wellington Street, S.E.—four very useful grounds.

The new association was formed in November, 1882, and soon flourished amazingly. By the end of 1895 it had carried through upwards of 320 successful undertakings, had 60 other works on hand, and had made offers and attempts, without success, respecting about 200 schemes. But the indirect work of the Association has also been most valuable; the tone of public opinion on the subject of open spaces has entirely changed during the past twelve years, and this is due, in great measure, to the untiring exertions of the Earl of Meath and his co-workers. New Acts of Parliament, including the Disused Burial-grounds Act, have been passed, useful clauses have been inserted in the Open Spaces Acts, and several Bills threatening open spaces have been opposed and extinguished. The Association has worked with the Commons Preservation and Kyrle Societies to forward many most important schemes; it has secured, after much labour, the opening on Saturdays of upwards of 200 Board School playgrounds, and its influence upon the work of the public bodies has been wonderful. It is, for instance, scarcely too much to say that a week seldom goes by without some communication passing between the Association and the London County Council.

But my subject is graveyards only, and the following is a list of those that have been laid out as recreation grounds and opened by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association since the Spring of 1885:—

The other grounds laid out by the Association have been squares, vacant sites, and churchyards not used for interments. In addition to these, grants have been given, amounting to many hundred pounds, towards the laying out of some fourteen graveyards, and seats, &c., for another twenty-eight, besides which the Association has secured the opening of many more and has saved others from being built upon.

One year the income of the Association amounted to over £11,000. This was due to a shower of wealth from the Mansion House Fund for the Employment of the Unemployed. The Earl of Meath, at the Mansion House Committee, boldly promised, with a smiling face and a sinking heart, that if a grant were made to it the Association would find labour at once and use up the money in wages. I remember being sent for to Lancaster Gate in this emergency. It was no easy matter then and there to provide the work, and the money could not be spent on materials. But within a few weeks hundreds of men were employed, and their food arranged for into the bargain. This process was repeated the following winter (1887-8), but since then the Mansion House Funds have been smaller and their distribution far more careful, while the Association has had to depend for its income upon the subscriptions and donations of its members and friends.

There are now within the metropolitan area ninety burial-grounds actually dedicated to the public as recreation grounds, and being maintained as such under the Open Spaces Act of 1881, or by trustees, or under agreement with the vicar, &c., including four that are Board School playgrounds. To those who remember these places before they were converted the transformation is wonderful. One Sunday in the year 1878, the Rev. H. R. Haweis told his congregation at St. James’s, Westmoreland Street, that in a hasty walk through their own parish burial-ground in Paddington Street, Marylebone, he had met “orange-peel, rotten eggs, cast-off hair-plaits, oyster-shells, crockery, newspapers with bread and meat, dead cats and five live ones,” and that on the grave of one Elizabeth Smith, “in the very centre of the churchyard,” he found “twelve old kettles, two coal-scuttles, three old hats, and an umbrella.” Some of the congregation doubted it, but they went to look, and found it true. This particular ground was laid out as a garden by the St. Marylebone Vestry in 1886, the Association providing £200 and the wages of the labourers. I remember, in a paper I wrote some ten years ago, describing a similar ground (and there were, and still are, many such in London)—I think it was St. James’s, Clerkenwell. This is also now a neat garden, towards the laying out of which, in 1890, the Association gave £50 and several seats.

I have already referred, in previous chapters, to some of the more interesting of the graveyards which have been laid out as open spaces. There is a very charming little garden in Benjamin Street, near Farringdon Road, which belongs to the parish of St. John’s, Clerkenwell. It was consecrated in 1755 by the Bishop of Lincoln, acting for the Bishop of London, having been conveyed to trustees as an extra parochial burial-ground, the site being a gift to the parish by the will of Simon Michell, who died in 1750. After being closed for burials it fell into the hands of a member of the Clerkenwell Vestry, and was covered with workshops and rubbish until the then Rector, the Rev. W. Dawson, instituted proceedings against him, secured the land, laid it out by public subscription (in 1881), and maintained it at his private expense. It is now in the hands of trustees, and the Holborn District Board of Works and the Clerkenwell Vestry contribute towards its upkeep. Several other gardens in London have had a somewhat similarly checkered history. The burial-ground in Hackney Road belonging to Shoreditch has a quaint old building in it, once the parish watch-house, and used as a temporary hospital at the time of the cholera visitation. A new-gateway has lately been made at St. James’s, Ratcliff, leading into the churchyard garden, erected as a memorial to the late vicar, the Rev. R. K. Arbuthnot, who spent very many years in the parish and died in harness. A special service was held on November 30, 1895, when the choir walked in procession through the grounds, the ceremony ending by the singing of the Rev. H. R. Haweis’s hymn, “The Homeland.” The gate was dedicated by the Rural Dean, Prebendary Turner, present Rector of St. George’s in the East, and opened by Sir Walter Besant. Greenwich and Woolwich Churchyards, which were laid out by the Association, the cost of the latter being borne by Mr. Passmore Edwards, are both fine gardens, Woolwich is especially attractive, as it stands high above the river, with an extensive view. H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge opened Greenwich Churchyard, and H.R.H. the Duchess of Fife opened that of Woolwich. St. James’s Churchyard, Bermondsey, was extensively used for airing clothes before the Association laid it out.

In this matter of the conversion of churchyards into public gardens there has, indeed, been a wonderful change in public opinion. It used to be necessary to visit the clergy and to ask them to allow the grounds to be laid out, with the result, usually, that the request or offer was declined. But a new race of clergy seems to be springing up, and such men as the present Rectors of Woolwich, Walworth, and Bethnal Green no sooner came into possession of their livings than they wrote to the Association, begging that their churchyards might be taken in hand. The new Rector of Bethnal Green, already well known as the “head” of Oxford House, not only asked the Association to lay out his churchyard but also made a Christmas present of it to the Vestry, and ere long it will be a most useful open space. And this has happened in very many places, most of the parish churchyards being new public gardens, except Camberwell, Rotherhithe, Battersea, Clapham, Wandsworth, Kensington, Wapping, Homerton, and a few others; but there are still several district churchyards which it would be very advantageous to lay out.

To return to some of the quainter spots. In the burial-ground of St. George the Martyr, Bloomsbury, there stands a private gentleman’s dissecting-room. Hackney Churchyard includes the ground surrounding the tower of the older church (St. Augustine’s), while Bermondsey Churchyard includes the cemetery of the Abbey. The little playground in Russell Court, Drury Lane, which was a graveyard attached to the parish of St. Mary le Strand, is immortalised as “Tom all alones” in Dickens’ “Bleak House.” This was “that there berryin’ ground,” where, said poor Jo, “‘they laid him as was werry good to me’”—the place “with houses looking on on every side, save where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate....

“‘He was put there,’ says Jo, holding to the bar and looking in.

“‘Where? Oh, what a scene of horror!’

“‘There,’ says Jo, pointing, ‘over yinder—among them piles of bones, and close to that there kitchen winder! ... Look at the rat! Hi! Look! There he goes! Ho! into the ground.’”

When the Association got hold of it, it was little else than a heap of decaying rubbish thrown from the surrounding houses, and the carcases of eighteen cats were removed at once. It is now an asphalted recreation ground, and is often crowded with children using the swings and the seats. But it has lately lost its characteristic appearance, the surrounding houses have been pulled down, and it is at present “opened out.” The “kitchen winder” no longer leads into a kitchen, though the iron gate is still in its original state, with the worn step upon which Lady Deadlock’s life was brought to a close.

It must not be supposed that there has been no opposition to the conversion of graveyards into public gardens. Many owners have refused to allow it, and from time to time (though the times are now getting very few and far between) letters have been written to the newspapers pointing out the danger of admitting the public into them. But the burial-grounds are there—in the midst of crowded streets—whether we like them or no, and they become far more wholesome when fresh soil is imported, good gravel paths made, and the ground drained, and when grass, flowers, trees, and shrubs take the place of the rotting rubbish. A certain gentleman, somewhat well known, wrote on several occasions to the Times, arguing against the laying out of churchyards, and saying that a “blue haze” hung about a square in New York which once was a burial-ground. But no blue haze hangs about our gardens in London, children are born and bred by the hundred in those very kitchens whose “winders” look upon them, and they are of the utmost value as open spaces in all parts of the town.

On the other hand, every consideration should be shown for those whose objections to the transformation have been on sentimental grounds. In Appendix D will be seen the steps to be taken for laying out and throwing open to the public a disused churchyard or burial-ground, and from this those who are not already aware of it may notice two points—first, that any person interested in any particular tombstone has the right and the power to prevent such tombstone from being moved; second, that the inscriptions on the stones, and their exact positions in a ground to be laid out, are preserved in perpetuity in the office of the Registrar of the Diocese; whereas the actual inscriptions themselves on the tombstones, whether a ground is closed, or open, are daily becoming more defaced, and when it is closed there is no such record of them and no guarantee that they may not be broken, shifted, or stolen. Nor must it be imagined that the tombstones in all graveyard gardens have necessarily to be moved. It is only where they are standing so thickly that the ground cannot be laid out otherwise. In some places, such as Spa Fields, not a single gravestone existed when it came into the hands of the Association; in others, such as St. Mary le Strand, there were only a few and these already on the walls; while in others, again, such as Holy Trinity, Rotherhithe, there were so few that it was not necessary to get a faculty to remove them, but they were left in situ. There is rather an amusing tombstone at All Saints’, Poplar. It stands tall and solitary in the middle of a path, which could not be diverted because of other stones; and when the path was made this particular monument was left in the very centre. I think the best way of disposing of tombstones is by putting them against the walls, even if it necessitates two or three rows. They are very dismal standing in groups, as at St. James’s, Hampstead Road, and the wall of headstones at St. Luke’s, Chelsea, is by no means attractive. Nor are the “dome” and “trophy” at St. Pancras, to which I have already referred. In St. John’s Garden, Horseferry Road, they are cemented into an even row against the wall, and look as if they would last for ever.

I would not say that a converted graveyard is a better garden than a converted square, but yet there is something more interesting about it—it is so very human; and where there are monuments to notable persons (which naturally are undisturbed) they form something with an historical flavour about it which is attractive to look at. At Paddington Churchyard, for instance, there is the grave of Mrs. Siddons, in front of which it is said that Miss Mary Anderson, during her first tour in England, was often seen to stand.

“Isn’t it foine!” said a ragged little urchin to me on the day when that particular ground was thrown open to the public. He was simply bursting with delight at having a garden to go into. I answered that I thought it was. This reminds me of another little denizen of the slums, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He was inside—I had just left the ground after the opening ceremony. He peeped through the railings, overflowing with smiles; “You can come in, Miss,” he said. I was not a Miss, but I thanked him for the information.

Apart from the question of the moving of tombstones, there are many people who think it irreverent for a ground once used for burial ever to be used for recreation; they do not like the idea of people walking about over the graves. This feeling is worthy of all respect. It is found largely developed among the Jews, and has prevented them, hitherto, from allowing any of their graveyards to be laid out as public gardens. There are other people—and I am thankful that I do not come across them—who would like our churches turned into theatres and our churchyards into “Tivolis.” They do far more harm to the cause of open spaces than do those who are slow to adapt themselves to modern ideas. But as far as my experience goes, I have found that the people who chiefly object to the conversion of burial-grounds into gardens are those who stay at home. They have in their mind’s eye a picture of a well-kept cemetery, where burials take place every day, or of a sweet village churchyard, where the grass is soft and green and the graves are peaceful and undisturbed. One of the last things that I should ever wish to see is a village churchyard turned into the village recreation ground; and it was sad to find as I did a short time ago, that a certain rural churchyard in West Middlesex was being used as a drying-ground for clean clothes. But the London disused graveyards are so different, that I believe it is only necessary to take these objectors (though they will never come) into a neglected ground, to point out to them the sinking graves, to help them to pick their way so that they may avoid the dirty rubbish lying about, and the pitfalls into which they may stumble, in order to convince them that the ground, if turned into a public garden, would be treated with more reverence and in a more seemly manner. Then show them a graveyard garden; let them sit there for a bit to watch the people who come in and out, the men who have a brief rest in the middle of the day, the women who can snatch a few moments from their crowded and noisy homes, the big children with the “prams,” and the little children they have in charge—and the change in the minds of the objectors will be complete.

The laying out of the churchyards is being carried out in many large towns besides London, though the initiative came from the metropolis. Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Glasgow, and other places are adopting the plan, and in Norwich there is a young and flourishing Open Space Society which has already done much in this direction. As the City of Norwich contains about fifty churches, nearly all of which have churchyards, the Society has its work cut out for it, in this one way alone, for a good many years.

My impression is that amongst the London burial-grounds which are still closed and useless, there are fewer very untidy ones than there used to be. The agitation that has led to the laying out of 80 or 90 as public recreation grounds has also had a beneficial effect upon those which are not yet laid out. If this is the case it is very satisfactory, and it is an indirect result of the labours of the members of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, and of others who have interested themselves in the matter, which should be a cause for thankfulness and encouragement.