GRAVEYARDS

See Also: BELIEF GROUPS & CULTS Druids, Cremation; CATS Selima; CEMETERIES; CHURCH OF ENGLAND CHURCHES; GARDENS & PLANTS The Garden Museum; GHOSTS Sheet Ghosts; LOCAL GOVERNMENT Vestries, The Bills of Mortality; PARKS Local Parks, St George's Gardens; PIRACY The Jolly Roger, From The Grave; RAILWAY STATIONS Waterloo Station, Necropolis; THE TOWER OF LONDON The Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula; PARKS Green Park; WESTMINSTER ABBEY Memorials and Graves of Notables; MENU

The Courtyard Courtiers

In the 17^thC and 18^thC Somerset House was the official residence of the queens of England. In the former century three of them were foreign-born Catholics. To serve their religious needs there was a Roman Catholic chapel in the complex. A number of Catholic people who were associated with their households were entombed in it.

King George III ascended the throne in 1760. Soon afterwards he married Charlotte of Mecklenburg. They proved to have a close domestic marriage. As a result, Somerset House was largely unused. In the 1780s it was rebuilt in order to provide office accommodation for a variety of government departments. During this process the corpses were removed from the chapel and reburied elsewhere. The gravestones were incorporated into the brickwork of a number of rooms that exist below the complex's central courtyard. Collectively, they are known as the Deadhouse.

Location: Strand, WC2R 0RN & WC2R 1LA (orange, purple)

See Also: ROYAL RESIDENCES Somerset House.

Website: www.somersethouse.org.uk

Old St Pancras Church Graveyard

The construction of St Pancras Railway Station necessitated the clearing away of Old St Pancras Church graveyard. The project was supervised by a young architect, the future novelist Thomas Hardy, who at the time was an assistant in Arthur Blomfield's (d.1899) architectural practice.

Location: Pancras Road, NW1 1UL (purple, grey)

St Pancras Railway Station, Euston Road, NW1 1UL (blue, turquoise)

Website: www.posp.co.uk/photographic-churchyard-tour

Resurrectionists

See Also: HOSPITALS; PHYSIOLOGY

The Fortune of War

Resurrectionists used a room in The Fortune of War pub to display their wares to surgeons who worked and taught in St Bartholomew's Hospital. The pub was demolished in 1910.

Location: The Golden Boy, Pye Corner, Smithfield, EC1A 9DD (orange, purple)

William Dan Jenkins

In 1782, following the Gordon Riots of 1780, the Church of St Christopher-le-Stocks in Threadneedle Street was demolished in order to make the Bank of England less vulnerable to attack. The Bank's Dividend Warrant Office was built over what had been the site of the church.

In 1798 special permission was given to bury the late William Dan Jenkins in St Christopher's now disused graveyard, which within the walls of the Bank. This was because Jenkins had been 6ft. 7in.-tall and it was common knowledge that some surgeons were willing to pay a premium to have the opportunity to dissect his corpse and that it was therefore at a particular risk of being stolen from any public grave in which it might be placed.

Location: Threadneedle Street, EC2R 8AR (orange, brown)

See Also: THE BANK OF ENGLAND The Bank of England Building

Laurence Sterne

The burial ground St George's Fields, Bayswater, belonged to the parish of St George s, Hanover Square. It opened in 1764. Near the middle of the west wall was the grave of the novelist Laurence Sterne. His body was exhumed and sold to the Professor of Anatomy at University of Cambridge, who recognised the corpse and had it returned.

In 1969 Sterne's body was moved to Coxwold in the North Riding. For much of his adult life he had been the Vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest and had written most of his novel Tristram Shandy (1759) while living in Coxwold parsonage. The building is now known as Shandy Hall.

Location: St George s Fields, 14-16 Hyde Park Place, Bayswater Road, W2 2YE (orange, red)

St Alban the Martyr Holborn

St Albans Holborn's churchyard is in Surrey. It is linked to Brookwood Cemetery, which a commercial business. The relationship was initiated in 1866.

Website: www.stalbansholborn.co.uk/burial-society www.brookwoodcemetery.com/plots-and-section

St Alban, Wood Street

When members of the Barber-Surgeons Company had finished dissecting an executed felon's corpse, the remains were buried in the churchyard of St Alban, Wood Street.

Location: Wood Street, EC2V 7AN (blue, yellow)

See Also: EXECUTIONS Post-Execution; PHYSICIANS The Royal College of Surgeons of England

St Nicholas Shambles

In 1546 King Henry VIII gave St Nicholas Shambles Church to the Corporation of the City of London. The parish was merged with St Ewin to create Christ Church Newgate Street. St Nicholas was demolished the following year.

In the late 1970s the site was excavated prior to the construction of what became BT Centre.

Location: 81 Newgate Street, EC1A 7AJ (red, blue)

Whitfield Gardens

The Methodist preacher George Whitefield (1714-1770) established a church on the western side of Tottenham Court Road. He decided to establish a burial ground by it and asked the Bishop of London to consecrate the site. The prelate refused. Whitefield had friends among the City of London clergy. They allowed him to take cartloads of soil from their graveyards. This was spread over the designated area.

The burial ground was closed in 1853. Three years later the corpses that had been buried in it were removed. In 1895 the space was reopened as a public garden.

London Chinese Lutheran Church

Location: 79a Tottenham Court Road, W1T 4TD (blue, purple)

Website: https://amchurch.co.uk

David Backhouse 2024