City of London Cemetery, East London

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About City of London Cemetery, East London

Pictures of the City of London Cemetery in Aldersbrook Road, between Wanstead. Little Ilford and Manor Park, East London. It is in the London Borough of Newham.

HISTORY:

The site had been a late medieval manor, Aldersbrook, dating from around 1512 but it was never anything on the scale of its near-neighbour, Wanstead House, which eventually grew to be the second greatest house in England after Blenheim. Aldersbrook is noted on Norden's map of Essex in 1594 and had been occupied by the Heron family whose son Giles later married the daughter of the ill-fated Sir Thomas More. This is rather ironic as the grander Wanstead House, next door, was given to Richard Rich by King Henry VIII for Rich's part in obtaining the execution of Sir Thomas. A later occupant of Aldersbrook was the Earl of Pembroke.

In 1693 Aldersbrook was bought by the Lethieuilliers. Their son Smart succeeded to the estate in 1737 and appears to have initiated a planting and landscaping scheme. A map of 1750 shows planted avenues of trees and the medieval pond (now Catacomb Valley) turned into an ornamental lake. Bishop Pococke remarked that the family had 'made a very pretty improvement there'. Plans of 1748 show a terrace on the north side of the building and a canal to the south. In the cemetery guidebook David Lambert suggests it was: "A sophisticated rococco garden befitting a gentleman's retreat on the edge of the metropolis".

The site was always overshadowed by Wanstead House and, in 1786, it was sold to Sir James Tylney Long of Wanstead House who had the Aldersbrook building pulled down and the site largely cleared to expand his own estates. The Ordnance Survey of 1799 suggests that the site of the canal survived but the avenue of trees had been cleared. A farmhouse and the pond also survived. Despite being great, Wanstead House did not survive long however. After the death of Sir James his daughter Catherine inherited and in 1812 she married William Pole Wellesley, nephew of the Duke of Wellington. While most histories say he squandered her wealth there is some suggestion that she was equally feckless. The money was all gone by 1824 and she died in 1825. To settle the huge debts Wanstead House itself was demolished and sold off piecemeal with some archtectural salvage today surviving at 'Wanstead House' in Cambridge.

Wellesley retained Aldersbrook but was noted as an unpopular landlord for closing roads and enclosing former common land. As early as 1817 the Government had considered taking over 9000 acres of Epping Forest to obtain timber for the Royal Navy. In 1851 Wellesley ordered his tenant farmer to enclose 34 acres of open land on Aldersbrook Road - evidently with an eye to selling it later. In 1853 the Corporation of the City of London's surveyor William Haywood visited the area searching for a cemetery site.

Victorian burials in London had been carried out in the old medieval churchyards and church crypts but these were dangerously overcrowded and insanitary. At some churchyards, such as St.Anne's at Soho and St.Bart's, the ground level inside the churchyard rose so much due to burials that the soil today reaches the top of the graveyard wall. At Spitalfields there were so many fresh burials in the crypt under the church that the smell of decomposition was rising into the main body of the church and causing members of the congregation to pass out during services. Some out-of-London cemeteries already existed and Sir Christopher Wren had suggested the expedient as early as just after the Great Fire in 1666 but nothing had been done.

An additional problem in London was that localised parish pumps pulled up ground water and if this was contaminated by adjacent burials diseases such as cholera and typhoid would spread. In his guide book to the cemetery David Lambert writes that in some parts of the City graves were re-used within six months of the previous burial, bodies were barely covered with soil allowing them to be dug up by dogs. The move out from London had started with the purchase of land at Kensal Green to build a commercial cemetery and this was followed by Norwood (1837), Highgate (1839), Nunhead and Brompton (both 1840). As private companies these were aimed at the middle and upper class so there was still no provision for paupers and the poor who made up the majority of the London population.

Abney Park (also 1840) was intended as a non-conformist cemetery for all classes while the Tower Hamlets Cemetery catered for the East End but there was still nothing for the City's large population. Petitions to close the old churchyards were common but when the 1852 Burial Act made the City's Commissioners of Sewers a burial authority the City was forced to act. William Haywood recommended the purchase of 200 acres of land at Aldersbrook and this went through in 1854.

Haywood's initial plan saw 90 of the 200 acres laid out as cemetery with the rest of the land held in reserve for later developments. The site was cleared, the old lake was drained and two chapels were built, one Anglican and one non-conformist. The catacombs were built into the eastern side of the former lake and the area was landscaped and planted with trees and shrubs. The main gates and site offices were also built, all in the Gothic revival style. Initial public take-up was slow but by the peak years of the 1870s nearly 10,000 funerals per year were held at the City of London Cemetery.

William Haywood maintained his interest in the site and his cremated remains were buried in a special memorial next to the main drive in 1894.

An important part of the redevelopment of the City of London - and the arrival of taller buildings - meant that many of the City's numerous medieval churchyards had to be cleared. The cemetery now has large memorials marking many of these mass clearances of churchyards and their burials.

Some 38 City churchyards removed to Aldersbrook include:

St Andrew's and St Sepulchre's, Holborn,
St Dionis Back Church,
All Hallows, Bread Street,
St Helen's, Bishopsgate,
St James', Dukes Place, Aldgate,
St John the Evangelist, Watling Street,
St Martin-Pomery,
St Martin's, Outwich,
St Mary, Mounthaw,
St Mary, Somerset,
St Olave-Jewery.


Other mass re-interments also include:
City plague pits,
The Royal Orphanage at Wanstead,
The Hospital for Poor French Protestants, Bath Street,
Christ's Hospital, Newgate Street,
Newgate Prison.

This practice continues to the 21st century with further burials from the Holborn site being brought here and reburied in 2002.