What better way to start the week than with a talk entitled ‘Graveyards to die for.’
View down the Egyptian Avenue at Highgate Cemetery
London Guide Charlie Forman was the guest speaker at the Arts Society Kennet and Swindon at the Ellendune Community Centre, Wroughton on October 17. Charlie began by talking about burial practices in London at the beginning of the 19th century and the later movement to out-of -town cemeteries.
Until the rapid growth of mid 19th century London, burials were very much a local affair with the deceased interred in the parish churchyard where they once lived, remaining close to family. But as London expanded, churchyards quickly filled up and Charlie told of some truly gruesome and insanitary burial practises.
We learned about the enterprising and much feared grave robbers, ‘the resurrectionists,’ who stole the bodies of the recently dead to provide fresh cadavers for the anatomists. A change in the law in 1831 allowed anatomists access to unclaimed bodies from the Workhouses for medical research and therefore brought an end to the body snatchers’ trade.
For the cemetery lover there were plenty of photographs taken at some of London’s Magnificent Seven cemeteries including West Norwood, Highgate and Kensal Green. There were photos of catacombs and Egyptian mausoleums and the memorials of Princess Sophia and her brother Augustus, Duke of Sussex in Kensal Green. Charlie’s favourite cemetery (well, we all have one) is Kensal Green.
And I love coming away from a talk with a new discovery. At the end of his talk Charlie briefly mentioned Isabella Holmes. Having studied John Rocque’s 18th century maps of London and making a comparison with 1884 Ordinance maps, Mrs Holmes noticed that a great many of the cemeteries on the earlier maps no longer existed – so she set about conducting her own survey to find out what had happened to them all. Ten years later and the London County Council Parks Committee commissioned Mrs Holmes to continue her work and record the size, condition and ownership of London’s cemeteries.
Mrs Holmes walked the streets of London, consulting the Ordnance Survey maps and looking for burial grounds in use and those that had disappeared; knocking on doors and asking for permission to look out of windows.
She writes: “One day I climbed a high, rickety fence in a builder’s yard in Wandsworth in order to see over the wall into the Friends’ [Quakers] burial ground. No doubt the men in the place thought me mad, – anyhow they left me in peace.”
In 1894 Mrs Holmes discovered 362 burial grounds, 41 that were still in use and 90 that had become public gardens and playgrounds and submitted her report with colour coded maps to the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. In 1895 the work of the redoubtable Mrs Holmes was published by the Council and her book, The London Burial Grounds – Notes on Their History from the Earliest Times to the Present Day is available to read online.
I salute you Mrs Holmes. And Charlie’s talk was excellent as well.
Radnor Street Cemetery 