The utmost we need do, if we do not want our bodies to rest in the cemeteries, is to tell our friends that we wish them cremated, or buried in perishable coffins, or quietly laid in some far-off, rural spot. All else we may leave—it is in higher hands than ours; and already the Church on earth, imperfect, faulty, and divided though she be, has
“mystic, sweet communion
With those whose rest is won.”
A few words in closing about the future of the disused burial-grounds in London. I think they are tolerably safe now. I have attempted to show how many there still are, closed and idle, or being used for a totally wrong purpose, between Hampstead and Plumstead, Hammersmith and Bow; but they are surely, if but slowly, being reclaimed and changed, one by one, into places of rest and recreation for the living. The public mind has so far awaked to the necessity of securing all the breathing-spaces which may be had, that the smallest corner of land in which interments can have been said to have taken place now forms a subject of litigation if attempts are made to build upon it. Preservation is the first step upon the ladder, acquisition the next, while conversion crowns them all.
I can foresee no better fate for the disused graveyards than that they should become gardens or playgrounds. The churchyards must be gardens, as green and bright and neat as they can be made, for the older people; and the unconsecrated grounds, detached from places of worship, will serve as playgrounds, many of them having to be reclaimed from their present use as builders’ yards, cooperages, &c. Spa Fields, Clerkenwell, a burial-ground to the history of which I have already referred, is a typical London playground, in the very centre of the town, although surrounded by courts and streets with such rural names as Rosoman Street, Wood Street, Pear-tree Court and Vineyard Walk—grim reminders of what the district was like a hundred years or more ago. Exmouth Street, behind which this open space is situated, is worth a visit. I was there recently, one Monday afternoon. Trucks and stalls with wares of all kinds lined the narrow road, and there seemed scarcely a square yard without a person on it. One woman was selling old garments, of which she had only about six, and these were spread out on the road itself—in the mud. A little farther on I noticed a stall, where two women were making purchases of “freshly-boiled horse-flesh at 2d. a lb.” This was not cut up as for cat’s meat, but was in large, dark brown, shapeless-looking joints. In the middle of the street is the Church of the Holy Redeemer, a huge structure in imitation of an Italian church. It stands on the site of the Spa Fields Chapel, an old round building, removed a few years ago, belonging to the Lady Huntingdon Connexion, which had a stone obelisk in front of it to the memory of Lady Huntingdon, who lived in a neighbouring house. Behind the church is the open space, which is nearly two acres in extent. Originally taken for a tea-garden the speculation failed, and the ground was used as a burial-ground, slightly lower fees being charged than in the neighbouring churchyards. After being grossly overcrowded it was closed for interments in 1853. For several years the space has been used as a drill-ground by the 3rd Middlesex Artillery and the 39th Middlesex Rifles; and in 1885 the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association entered into negotiations with the owner, the Marquis of Northampton, and he generously handed it over at a nominal rental for the purposes of a children’s playground, and subsequently added to it half an acre of adjoining land. The association drained it and carted a large amount of soil and gravel into it, and put up some gymnastic apparatus in the additional piece, which was not a part of the burial-ground. The entrance is from Vineyard Walk, Farringdon Road. When I last visited the playground, although it was a chilly afternoon, a great many children were enjoying themselves, and some women were swinging their little ones. But after or between school-hours is the proper time to see it. Then it is crowded, and every swing, rope, pole, bar, ladder, and skipping-rope is in use, and children are running about all over the open part of the ground.
SPA FIELDS PLAYGROUND.
It is a strange-looking place. On the north-west side is the unfinished apse of the Church of the Holy Redeemer, and on the south side is the parish mortuary, the presence of which does not seem to have any sobering effect upon the children. I watched four boys on the giant’s stride, and when they had vacated it a little girl of about eight years, who had been sitting on a seat with a baby on her lap, and was knitting a long strip with odd bits of coloured wools, beckoned to another sad-looking little girl sitting on my seat, and off they went to take the boys’ places. The baby was deposited on yet another seat, and it wept copiously. But the children did not heed its cries; they had a silent and vigorous turn at the giant’s stride, each holding on to two ropes. They neither spoke nor smiled, and, when they had finished, the one returned to her baby and her knitting and the other clambered on to the back of the long-suffering and well-worn vaulting-horse. They are very strong, some of these poor children, and it is wonderful what they can do. The shabbiest often seem the most active. I noticed one little lad, whose clothes were literally dropping to pieces—shoes, stockings, knickerbockers, and blouse all in tatters—and he twisted himself about on the handle swings, putting his toes through the handles, and performing all sorts of gyrations which many a well-fed boy, clad in the best of flannels, would have given his all to be able to accomplish.
A playground such as Spa Fields is about as different from an ordinary village green, where country boys and girls romp and shout, as two things with the same purpose can well be. For the soft, green grass, you have gritty gravel; for the cackling geese who waddle into the pond, you have a few stray cats walking on the walls; for the picturesque cottages overgrown with roses and honeysuckle, you have the backs of little houses, monotonous in structure, in colour, and in dirt; and instead of resting “underneath the shadow vast of patriarchal tree,” you must be content with a wooden bench close to the wall, bearing on its back the name of the association which laid out the ground. But it is only necessary to have once seen the joy with which the children of our crowded cities hail the formation of such a playground, and the use to which they put it, to be convinced that the trouble of acquiring it, or the cost of laying it out, is amply repaid. They are so crowded at home, so crowded at school, so crowded in the roads, that it seems hard to lose one opportunity of securing a piece of ground, however small, where they can be free to stretch their arms, their legs, and their lungs, away from the dangers and the sad sights of the streets, under the charge of a kindly caretaker,
“And where beadles and policemen