Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park is a local nature reserve and historic cemetery[2] in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets within the East End of London. It is regarded as one of the seven great cemeteries of the Victorian era, the "Magnificent Seven", instigated because the normal (until that time) church burial plots had become overcrowded. Since the 1990s it has been managed by the Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, a registered charity, with the purpose of protecting, preserving and promoting this important space for conservation, heritage and community.
The cemetery opened in 1841 and closed for burials in 1966. Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park today encompasses the original historic cemetery, bounded by historic walls, and additional pockets of land including "Scrapyard Meadow" and the Ackroyd Drive Greenlink. The overall site is today a Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature and Conservation and an award-winning local nature reserve, including recognitions from Green Flag, London in Bloom and Tower Hamlets in Bloom.
It was originally named The City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery but was called Bow Cemetery by locals for its Bow, London, locality. The cemetery pre-dates the creation of the modern Borough of Tower Hamlets in 1965, and instead takes its name from the original, older and somewhat larger, Tower Hamlets (or Tower division) – from which the modern borough also takes its name. The historic parish boundary which defines the Mile End and Bromley-by-Bow areas runs north to south through the park, with Mile End to the west and Bromley-by-Bow to the east.
Location
The Main Gate of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park (a.k.a. Cemetery Park) is at its northwest corner, at the intersection of Southern Grove road (which runs along the west of Cemetery Park) and the Hamlets Way pedestrian path (which runs along the north of the park). There are also smaller pedestrian gates along Hamlets Way and at the two ends of Cantrell Road – a pedestrian and service road within Cemetery Park – where it meets with Bow Common Lane at the southwest corner of the park and with Knapp Road at the south center border of the park. The nearest tube stations are Mile End and Bow Road.
The site has been managed by the Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, since becoming a UK registered charity in 1990.[3] The Friends are headquartered at the Cemetery Park Lodge and also conduct a range of activities from the Soanes Centre. The Soanes Centre is the home of Setpoint London East, a outdoor educational charity that serves over 8,000 East London schoolchildren annually, and Kin Structures, a CIC that was invited by Setpoint London East in 2023 to partner with them.[4][5] Both the Soanes Centre and Cemetery Park Lodge are located in the northwest corner of Cemetery Park, just inside the main entrance.
History
Before the Victorian era, all of London's dead were buried in small urban churchyards, which became so overcrowded and so close to where people lived, worked, and worshipped that they were causing disease and ground water contamination.
The City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery Company was made up of eleven wealthy directors whose occupations reflected the industries of the day: corn merchant, merchant ship broker and ship owner, timber merchant, and Lord Mayor of the City of London. The company bought 27 acres (109,265 m2) of land and the cemetery was divided into a consecrated part for Anglican burials and an unconsecrated part for all other denominations.
Tower Hamlets Cemetery was formally consecrated by the Bishop of LondonCharles James Blomfield on Saturday 4 September 1841 prior to being opened for burials. The cemetery was consecrated in the morning; the first burial took place in the afternoon.[6]
Walking in the Park
Tower Hamlets Cemetery was very popular with people from the East End and by 1889 247,000 bodies had been interred; the cemetery remained open for another 77 years. In the first two years 60% of the burials were in public graves and by 1851 this had increased to 80%. Public graves were the property of the company and were used to bury those whose families could not afford to buy a plot. Several persons, entirely unrelated to each other, could be buried in the same grave within the space of a few weeks. Allegedly some graves were dug 40 feet deep and contained up to 30 bodies.
The cemetery itself did not remain in a tidy and elegant state for long. Only 55 years after it was opened it was reported to be in a neglected state. During the Second World War the cemetery was bombed five times during raids on the City of London; both cemetery chapels were damaged[7] and shrapnel damage can be seen on the graves by the Soanes Centre in the north-west corner of the park. Burials continued taking place until 1966, when the Greater London Council (G.L.C.) bought the company for £100,000 under the G.L.C.(General Powers) Act and the ground was closed for burials. The intention was to create an open space for the public and relevant parts of the cemetery were freed from the effects of consecration. In October 1967, a further £125,000 was spent clearing the chapels and 0.68 acres (2,752 m2) of graves. Strong local opposition and problems of funding stopped the clearance.
Today
Tower Hamlets London Borough Council took over the ownership of the park in 1986. The Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park is an independent charity established in 1990, to preserve, protect and celebrate the site's important role in conservation, heritage and community. The charity's main objective is to encourage greater use of this inner urban green space as a sanctuary for people and a place of biodiversity. The Friends manage the park under a service-level agreement with the Borough.[8]
The Cemetery Park was declared a Local Nature Reserve in May 2000, along with adjacent open land on Cantrell Road ("Scrapyard Meadow") and Ackroyd Drive ("Ackroyd Drive Greenlink").[9][10] It has also been designated as a Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation and a Conservation area. Two sections of the high brick walls which surround Cemetery Park (the west wall, including its gates and gate piers.[11] and the east wall[12]) are on the Historic England national register of listed buildings, as are seven individual monuments; all nine listings are Grade II.[13] Though filled with gravestones and funerary monuments, the cemetery has been allowed to revert to resemble a natural woodland, with many wildflowers, birds, and insect species found in the park. There are several trails and walks created by the Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park.[14]
The park is open 24 hours per day, although the Main Gate on Southern Grove is locked at dusk. Smaller foot gates around the park remain open for access.
Major John BuckleyVC: soldier and one of the first recipients of the Victoria Cross, for his bravery in the Indian Rebellion of 1857; living in relative "poverty and obscurity" at the time of his death, he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave, located in 2012 through research by a Friend of the Cemetery Park,[16] and marked with a headstone in a 2014 ceremony[17]
Zilpha Elaw, African-American preacher and spiritual autobiographer[18]
Henry Norris: civil engineer who began his career with repairs to the then Eddystone Lighthouse and later on supervised the construction of the first lighthouse in the world to be designed and built for an electric light powered by alternating current
Hannah Maria Purcell: widow of William Purcell, carpenter of HMS Bounty
John "White Hat" Willis: son of John "Jock" Willis (known as Old Stormy Willis), founder of Jock Willis Shipping Line (a company that owned, among others, the Cutty Sark)
Llewellyn family grave, including Ellen Llewellyn and Dr Rees Ralph Llewellyn
Tomb of Sarah Morris (unknown date) and George Morris (died 1843)[20]
Tomb of Samuel Weddell (died 1845); monument includes inscription noting that Weddell had left UK£100 (equivalent to $12,500 in 2023) "to the company called the City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery", to be invested and used for perpetual upkeep of the monument[21]
Tomb (of unknown individual, died c. 1850) to east of Tomb of John Smith[23]
Tomb of Ellen Llewellyn (died 1854),[24] including Dr Rees Ralph Llewellyn, who performed the autopsy on Mary Ann Nichols, considered the first victim of Jack the Ripper
Tomb of Joseph Westwood (died 1883); noted in the Historic England listing as the cemetery's "most imposing monument",[26] the burial site includes his son, Joseph Westwood Jr, both of whom were involved in shipbuilding and engineering[27][28]
The Blitz Memorial, a memorial to those who died in The Blitz, made of bricks from damaged properties
The War Memorial, located near the entrance on Southern Grove
War graves
The War Memorial
There are 279 Commonwealth service personnel of both World Wars buried here, the names of all being listed on bronze panels on a screen wall memorial in the Mile End section of the park near the entrance on Southern Grove, as are those of four Dutch merchant seamen. Nine British merchant seamen are buried here who were killed when their ship, SS Bennevis, was hit by a high explosive bomb on 7 September 1940, while berthed in the West India Docks, during an air raid in World War II.[7][30]
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