JEWISH CEMETERY, MILE END.
The burial-ground of the Greeks in London is an enclosure in Norwood Cemetery, where some elaborate monuments may be seen. The Mohammedans can practise their rites at Woking.
There is no special place at the present time, I believe, where Danes and Swedes are buried, but their churches, with surrounding graveyards, were situated close together, in Wellclose and Prince’s Square, E. The church in Prince’s Square is still the Swedish church of London (Eleanora), and there is a notice at the corner of a turning on the south side of Cable Street, St. George’s in the East,—“Till Svenska Kyrkan.” Here, in a vault, are the remains of Emmanuel Swedenborg himself, while the garden contains many tombstones, especially an inner enclosure which was filled first. But the building now situated in Wellclose Square is no longer the Danish or Mariner’s Church, the site is occupied by schools and mission buildings in connection with St. Paul’s, Dock Street, the present seaman’s church. Nor are there any tombstones in the garden, although it is certain that many Danes and many sailors were buried under the church, and in a surrounding graveyard, which was probably an inner enclosure like that in Prince’s Square. Mention of it is made by Northook in 1773, and by Malcolm in 1803; and there is a picture of the church in Maitland’s “History of London.” The following account from the “Beauties of London and Middlesex (1815)” is also of interest:—“At the extremity of this parish is Wellclose Square, which has also borne the name of Marine Square, from the number of sea officers who used to reside in it. It is a pretty little neat square; but its principal ornament is the Danish church in the centre, in the midst of its churchyard, planted with trees.... This structure was erected in 1696, at the expense of Christian V., King of Denmark, as appears by the inscription: ‘Templem Dano Norwegicum intercessione et munificentia serenissimi Danorum Regis Christiani Quinti erectum MDCXCVI.’ Gaius Gabriel Cibber was the architect, who erected a monument within this church to the memory of his wife Jane, daughter of William Colley, Esq., and mother of Colley Cibber, the famous dramatist. The architect himself is also buried here.” The Flemish burial-ground was in the district of St. Olave’s, Southwark. It adjoined a chapel in Carter Lane, and before its demolition was used as an additional graveyard by the parishes of St. Olave and St. John, especially the former. When the railway to Greenwich was made this ground disappeared, and part of its site forms the approach to London Bridge Station.
A South View of QUEEN ELIZABETH’S FREE GRAMMAR SCHOOL in Tooley
Street in the Parish of St. Olave, Southwark, with a Plan of the
adjacent Neighbourhood
THE FLEMISH BURIAL-GROUND, CARTER LANE, ABOUT 1817.
In Milman’s Row, Chelsea, there is a quaint and curious burial-ground belonging to the Moravians. The adjoining buildings have passed out of their hands, their present chapel being in Fetter Lane, E.C. In 1750 Count Zinzendorf purchased two acres of land (a part of the garden and stables of Beaufort House) of Sir Hans Sloane, about one acre of which was set aside for burials, and divided into four parts—the first for male infants and single brothers, the second for female infants and single sisters, the third for married brothers and widowers, and the fourth for married sisters and widows. The stones are flat on the grass and very small, not more than about 11 or 15 inches by 10 or 12 inches in size, and the ground was closed for interments about the year 1888.
There is no purely Dutch place of interment in London now. Besides the Dutch Church in Austin Friars (the survival of the priory of the Augustine Friars), which has lost its churchyard, they used to have a few chapels which seemed to change hands, sometimes belonging to Dutch and at other times to German congregations. Such was Zoar chapel, in Great Alie Street, Whitechapel, which is now a Baptist conventicle. It had a fair-sized burial-ground behind it at the beginning of the century, the site of which is covered by houses and a forge. One day recently I knocked at the door of this chapel, hoping to be allowed to look round it, in order to make sure that no part of the yard was left. The woman who opened it, when I politely asked if I might go in, said “No!” and slammed the door again at once. One meets with varied receptions in different places, Two German churches, with graveyards attached, were also in this neighbourhood—the Lutheran (St. George’s), in Little Alie Street, and the Protestant Reformed Church, in Hooper Square. The latter has entirely disappeared, the railway covering its site. The former church still exists, with the little yard behind it, separated by a wall from the adjoining schoolyard, but the entrance from Little Alie Street has been bricked up.
The precinct of the Savoy had a distinctly foreign flavour about it, but the Savoy Chapel itself is now the only remnant left of the large group of buildings which were used at different times as palace, hospital, barracks, and prison, and finally demolished in 1877. The churchyard is probably even older than the church. It is now a neat little garden, in the possession of Her Majesty the Queen, as Duchess of Lancaster, and laid out, chiefly at her cost, for the use of the public. This is the burial-ground described by Dickens, in All the Year Round, with some of his tenderest touches, and of which he says: “I think that on summer nights the dew falls here—the only dew that is shed in all London, beyond the tears of the homeless.” But the Savoy used to contain one, if not two, German chapels, besides a French Jesuit chapel and a meeting-place for Persian worship. The German church (wrongly called Dutch on Rocque’s plan) had a burial-ground on its west side, which is marked on the ordnance maps, except the very latest, as it survived until 1876, when the human remains were removed to a cemetery at Colney Hatch. Now its site is covered by part of the new block of buildings which include the Savoy Chambers and the Medical Examination Hall. The Rev. W. Loftie’s book, “Memorials of the Savoy,” gives a full and interesting history of the Precinct, and is, as is usual with his works, compiled with care and truthfulness; but beyond simply mentioning the existence of the German burial-ground he has nothing to tell of it. We should have liked to know what the gravestones were like, and whether any persons of distinction were interred there.
We now turn to the French in London, and these have to be divided into the Roman Catholics and the Huguenots. No doubt Frenchmen and Frenchwomen have been laid to rest in the burial-grounds attached to all the Roman Catholic churches, and especially in All Souls Cemetery, behind the chapel of St. Mary, in Cadogan Place, Chelsea, which chapel was built by M. Voyaux de Franous, a French Émigré clergyman, and consecrated in 1811. Large numbers were also interred at St. Pancras, the eastern end of the old churchyard receiving, in consequence, the name of “Catholic Pancras.” But this is the part which has been so much disturbed and appropriated by the Midland Railway Company, and what remains of it is some dreary, dark slips under the railway arches, and groups and hillocks of tombstones which were moved into the western part of the ground, where, amongst other illustrious graves, are those of Dr. Walker, of dictionary fame, Mary Woolstoncraft Godwin, and William Woollett, the engraver.
