Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park
East London was growing apace in the early 19th century - its sprawl, its trade, its population … and ultimately its dead. The docks spread east along the Thames, and new Londoners flooded into Limehouse, Poplar, Blackwall and the hamlets around. But crowded, insanitary housing brought its own problems, and the cholera epidemics of the 1830s and 1840s decimated the population.
The solution, in those days before cremation was legalised in England and Wales in 1920, was more graves. The 1832 Bill and then the 1841 Act of Parliament allowed for the creation of seven large privately owned cemeteries forming a ring around London. This ‘Magnificent Seven’ as they became known were at Kensal Green, West Norwood, Highgate, Abney Park, Nunhead, Brompton and (last of the lot) Tower Hamlets (it says much for the growth of London in the later Victorian era that these ’suburban’ cemeteries are now well within London’s boundaries). All the inner London churchyards, which had created such problems with disease, were now closed to new burials.
Such a large undertaking needed investment - and a return. The Act allowed for investors to earn a handsome interest on their stake. The capital of each cemetery company was limited to £20,000, divided into £10 shares, and the London businessmen of the day piled in to the new scheme. On the board of the City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery Company were John Hammack, the chairman, a surveyor and local timber merchant. There was John Pirie (later Sir John), a ship owner who was Lord Mayor of London in 1841. These were the men who had grown rich on East End trade - now they would profit as East Enders buried their dead.
27 acres (later to grow to 33) were set aside and the cemetery was consecrated by the Bishop of London on 4 September 1841, and the first burial was conducted that same day. Business was good for the rest of the year, and the cemetery only got busier - more than 500 burials in 1845, over 1000 in 1850. By 1889, some quarter of a million had been buried here, most in common or ‘pauper’s’ graves. For those who couldn’t afford a funeral, 25 shillings (£1.25) would buy you a share of a grave. The open maw would be gradually filled with bodies and then earthed over. Stories were told of graves 40ft deep and containing 30 corpses. Though there are famous names here, Will Crooks, Charlie Brown, Harry Ordell, Alec Hurley and Alfred Linell among them, the majority of the dead are unmarked and unremembered.
It wasn’t too long before the new model graveyard was getting out of hand. In 1896, a Mrs Holmes inspected the cemetery and reported “a regular ocean of tombstones, many of which are lying about apparently uncared for and unclaimed; in fact most of the graves, except those at the edges of the walks look utterly neglected”. Half a century later, that great chronicler of London architecture, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, described the cemetery as “astonishingly overcrowded and overgrown”. Five air raids during World War II did further damage, and vandalism did more.
In 1981, writer Hugh Meller described it as “one of the eeriest cemeteries in London. The undergrowth is like a jungle, and one can easily get lost by straying from the perimeter paths”. Meanwhile, the neglect had some unexpected benefits. No other London cemetery had been allowed to grow so wild for so long. More than 100 species of bird were spotted, and the site became a haven for foxes and other small mammals.
The Greater London Council had bought the cemetery in 1966 and burials ceased. Bomb-damaged buildings were demolished a couple of years later (these included the lodge, the Church of England chapel with its ‘nicely ornamented windows’, an octagonal Dissenters’ Chapel in the Byzantine style, and an Egyptian-style mortuary).
Local people faced a constant battle against neglect of the space, and in 1990 The Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park was set up. In 1993, the opening of the Soanes Centre gave a focus to this new plan - to make the park a wildlife study centre. Work of the Friends has continued apace. In March 2001, the Cemetery Park became Tower Hamlets’ first local nature reserve. In spring 2002, the Cantrell Road Maze was built by the Friends and local volunteers, and in winter that year the Spring Bulb Walk was planted along Ackroyd Drive and through the Cemetery. Those canny Victorian businessmen could never have predicted that in finding a solution to London’s burial problem (and making a few quid along the way), they were investing in a slice of ‘rus in urbe’ for Londoners of the future … though they probably would have approved.
Further reading
The Victorian Celebration of Death by James Stevens, ISBN 0750938730
London Cemeteries by Hugh Meller, ISBN 0859679977
Necropolis: London and Its Dead by Catharine Arnold, ISBN 0743268334
Boxout
The Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, whose patron is the celebrated TV ecologist, Professor David Bellamy, publishes a newsletter every two months, called Stone Age. Listing events and reports about activities in the park. They also organise environmental education workshops in the Soanes Centre classroom, just inside the main entrance on Southern Grove. You can become a member, take part in discussion forums or even look up your ancestors (though be aware that of the half million graves in the Tower Hamlets Cemetery fewer than 10,000 have been researched. Go to http://www.towerhamletscemetery.org for more details.