This week we have three copies of Nick Barratt's new book Greater London to
give away.
To celebrate the release of the latest collections of London
records on the Deceased Online database, we have teamed up with the publisher
Random House for an exciting new competition.
This week we will be uploading over 100,000 burial records
for Manor Park Cemetery, dating from 1930 to the present day. We'll be adding
the final stages throughout February. In the Spring, we'll add the records of
Brompton Cemetery, West London - one of the "Magnificent Seven"
Victorian cemeteries that were built just outside the centre.
Nick Barratt's book, Greater London: The Story of the
Suburbs, looks further into the Magnificent Seven and at the growth of
London that led to them being built.
For Nick, though, London's most significant cemetery is Abney Park in Stoke Newington. He said, "Despite the architecture
displayed in the mausoleums of Kensal Green and Highgate, for example, I think
the most important was Abney Park in Hackney – simply because it conformed most
closely to the work of JC Loudon, the visionary champion of breathing spaces
for the Metropolis and a great fan of using cemeteries as public parks where
people could exercise and take the air; in his words, it was ‘one of the most
complete arboretums in the neighbourhood of London’."
The book is a fascinating read, and shows
how different parts of London became suburbs as the city grew over the years.
Nick has done a great job condensing centuries of history, 600 square miles,
and millions of people into just one book.
Nick told me, "The sheer size and scale of
the project was very daunting, and the temptation was to try to cover too much
– a complete history, borough by borough, would become repetitive and boring so
I plumped for a thematic approach.
Suddenly the whole evolution of London made sense, particularly when
viewed with the maps that showed the sudden expansion in the early to mid-19th
century – it’s amazing to think that the vast majority of today’s suburbs were
just open farmland so recently."
One interesting passage relates to St Pancras and Islington
Cemetery, whose records can be searched on the database:
The next change to Finchley's fortunes had to do with the
dead,
rather than the living. By the mid nineteenth century
London's ceme-
teries were bursting at the seams. Built to serve a much
smaller city,
they simply couldn't cope with the new demands placed on
them. The
city therefore turned to the countryside, and Finchley
came to house
not just one but two major cemeteries in 1854 on what
until 1816
had been common land: the St. Marylebone (now East
Finchley),
established at Newmarket Farm; and the St Pancras and
Islington on
Horseshoe Farm. The latter was one of the largest in
London, and the
first to be publicly owned. Over the next decades,
thousands of people
were buried there, and Finchley became familiar to
successions of
mourners visiting the cemetery chapels and the graves of
their departed
relatives.
The book also mentions a pressure group, active in 1845,
called the National Society for the Abolition of Burial in Towns. Groups like
this contributed to the closure of traditional urban graveyards and led the way
for the opening of larger cemeteries in (what were then considered) the
suburbs. Nick believes these groups were hugely influential in the history of Greater London's cemeteries: "They were key; the early
Victorian age was one of industrial progress, grand plans and large-scale
engineering projects, often with little thought to the consequences for the
urban poor who were swept away, or left in worse conditions than before. It was
also the era when pressure groups and social reformers saw the suffering and
championed a whole range of causes that ultimately created a better society,
whether it was the provision of free drinking water (we still see the
occasional drinking fountain in the suburbs) or in this case, the need to close
the appallingly overcrowded urban graveyards."
The Deceased Online database includes records of churchyards in Greater London, like Pinner where Horatia Nelson is buried. Not so long ago these were rural villages. Sadly, as Nick points out, not all survive:
"The further out you go, the more ‘village’ churchyards you
are likely to find, though many of these have now been cleared and replaced
with benches and small landscaped parks. However, you do still find the
occasional gem that reminds you of suburban London’s rural past. Old St
Andrew’s Church, Kingsbury, in the borough of Brent, is a perfect example – now
disused, the church itself has been awarded Grade I listed status whilst there
are 4 Grade 2 listed monuments in the small grounds."
For a chance to win a copy of the book, let us know the answers to four special questions linked to the Deceased Online database. We will reveal the next set of questions next week. We'll give you entry details next week but make a note of your answers and be ready.....
The first two questions are:
- Name the famous 19th/20th century novelist who helped clear and relocate burials from the old St Pancras Church graveyard to the new St Pancras and Islington Cemetery (records available on www.deceasedonline.com)? A famous tree still stands in the old graveyard which bears his name.
- Many of the victims of the worst-ever River Thames boating accident of 1878 are buried in several cemeteries whose records are to be found on Deceased Online. Can you name the pleasure boat which sank killing 640 people?
We'll be announcing the three winners at Who Do You Think
You Are? Live and on this blog, Facebook and Twitter later this month.
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