A rather unusual eulogy on a gravestone in Fulham

The churchyard at All Saints, Fulham deserves an entire blogpost to itself - it's the resting place of many Bishops of London, in their elaborate tombs, and also contains many crumbling and wonderfully morbid 18th Century headstones decorated with skulls and hourglasses.  It's also the location for the scene in the classic horror film The Omen, where Patrick Troughton's priest is impaled by a lightning rod during a storm.

The grave of Isabella and Joseph Murr

However, whilst exploring this wonderful and incredibly interesting graveyard I came across a headstone that I felt deserved a little blog post of its own.  In many ways it is quite unremarkable - a tall headstone from the early nineteenth century, inscribed with the name of Isabella Murr, a local woman who died in 1829.  Her grieving husband Joseph provided a eulogy that was inscribed on the stone.

Ye who possess the greatest charms of life

A tender friend - a kind indulgent wife

Oh learn their worth! In her beneath this stone

These pleasing attributes together shone

Was not true happiness with them combin'd?

Ask the spoiled being she has left behind

We do not know when the "spoiled being", Joseph Murr, died - the only words on the bottom half of the gravestone are as follows:

Presumably Joseph, or whoever chose this inscription, had a sense of humour.  It's a rare thing to find in a graveyard, but I am sure that in the 200 years since this stone was placed here, this inscription has raised a few laughs. 

The Hill of Bones: the story of Bunhill Fields

Originally a stretch of open land to the north of the City of London, Bunhill Fields got its name from its use as a burial ground during the Saxon period and a macabre event that took place in the mid-sixteenth century.  Cartloads of bones from the charnel house at St Paul's Cathedral were transported out of the city and dumped in such large quantities that they formed a hill of bones, with a thin layer of soil covering the mound.  This "Bone Hill" was large enough to accomodate three windmills on top, which were presumably installed to make the most of the elevated ground.

 

The charnel house at St Paul's had been used since the 13th Century to store old bones disturbed by later burials.  During this period the concept of purgatory had become an official part of Church doctrine and it became acceptable to disinter human remains when no flesh remained on the skeleton, as it was believed that the soul only remained with the body as long as there was flesh on the bones (cremation was not authorised for Christians at this time).  This had a useful practical application as old graves could be reused for new burials, freeing up space in churchyards. The dry bones removed from old graves were then stored in charnel houses and this practice continued in Britain until the Reformation.  After the Reformation, the use of charnel houses was seen as Popish so most of them were demolished and their contents removed, which helps to explain why the human remains were removed from St Paul's and taken to Bunhill Fields.

In 1665, a century or so after the Bone Hill was created, Bunhill Fields was given authorisation to be used as a plague pit.  Thousands were dying of plague in London and the rural location of Bunhill Fields, only a short distance north of the city, made it an idea location for mass burials.  However, it is unclear whether the site was ever used as a plague pit.  It is also unclear what became of the bones from the charnel house of St Paul's.  The land passed into private hands in the 1660s and burials began in what was referred to as "Tindal's Burial Ground" after Mr Tindal, who had taken over the lease of the land.  As the burial ground was not associated with an Anglican church, it became popular with Nonconformists - those Christians who did not belong to the Church of England.  A separate burial ground for Quakers was also opened close to Bunhill Fields in 1661 - sadly today very little of it remains due to severe bomb damage during the Second World War.

Throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries Bunhill Fields became the major burial ground for London's Nonconformists.  Robert Southey, a 19th century poet, described it as "the Campo Santo of the Dissenters" as so many influential Nonconformists and their families were laid to rest there.  Isaac Watts, a celebrated hymnwriter, is buried in Bunhill Fields, as is preacher and pamphleteer Richard Price, and Thomas Newcomen, a preacher and early developer of steam engines.  The mother of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, is also buried in Bunhill Fields, as is a grandson of Oliver Cromwell and the grandfather of JRR Tolkien.  The most prominent memorials today are of the famous literary figures of Daniel Defoe, John Bunyan and William Blake.

 

Daniel Defoe (yep, two blog posts in the same week featuring the same bloke) is most famous for writing the novels Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, but during a prolific career also produced a great deal of pamphlets and non-fiction as well as his famous, pioneering novels.  It is thought that when he died in 1731, Defoe was on the run from his creditors.  In 1870, the imposing obelisk memorial to Defoe (pictured above) was unveiled.  It was funded by an appeal in the weekly newspaper Christian World.

John Bunyan, author of the famous allegorical novel The Pilgrim's Progress, also has an impressive memorial at Bunhill Fields.  Bunyan was a popular preacher, and found himself imprisoned twice for illegally preaching in the years when it was still against the law to belong to a church other than the official Church of England.  The Pilgrim's Progress, which was probably written during his periods of imprisonment, was published in 1678 and has never been out of print since.  His impressive memorial, featuring a carved effigy of Bunyan and images representing scenes from The Pilgrim's Progress, dates from 1862.

William Blake was an artist and poet, who spent most of his life in London.  During his lifetime he was considered to be mad, but today he is regarded as one of Britain's greatest artists and poets, and his work continues to have a considerable influence on popular culture.  One of his most enduringly famous works is And did those feet in ancient time, which was adapted into the popular hymn "Jerusalem".  It is uncertain exactly where Blake's grave lies, as gravestones were moved around when the site was remodelled in the 1960s.  None were present when I visited Bunhill Fields to take photographs for this blog post, but Blake's grave is often adorned with trinkets and flowers left by his fans.

In 1853, Bunhill Fields was deemed to be full, having received around 120,000 burials since the 1660s.  Around this time, churchyards and older burial grounds were being closed and large, suburban cemeteries were being planned and laid out.  The last burial in Bunhill Fields took place in January 1854.

After the cemetery's closure, Bunhill Fields was designated as a public park and underwent some remodelling in the late 1860s.  Some memorials were removed and many were restored or relocated.  The main centre for Nonconformist burials shifted to Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington, one of the new cemeteries that made up London's "Magnificent Seven".  Charles Reed, a directer of Abney Park, was also involved with the preservation of Bunhill Fields and its conversaion to a public garden.

Bunhill Fields as we see it today is a postwar creation - heavy bombing during the Second World War prompted major landscaping work and the northern part of the burial ground was cleared of its memorials, leaving a large grassy area lined with benches, which is popular with workers on their lunchbreaks.  The areas containing tightly packed gravestones were fenced off to protect the monuments, and many new trees were planted.  Today, the City of London Corporation is making effors to improve the biodiversity of the area by encouraging wildlife and wild flowers to thrive in the burial ground.  The peace and the abundance of plant and animal life make a contrast with the office blocks and busy roads nearby.

In 2011, Bunhill Fields was designated as a Grade I listed cemetery, affording it special protection.  In addition to this, 75 individual monuments are also Grade II listed, and Bunyan and Defoe's memorials are Grade II* listed.  Due to the large number of Nonconformist burials on the site, most of the gravestones are fairly plain and austere, and many of them have become worn and illegible over the years.  The gravestones are huddled much closer together in Bunhill Fields which gives it a different feel to big Victorian cemeteries such as Abney Park or Kensal Rise, which were intended from the beginning to serve as parks as well as burial grounds.  Bunhill Fields is quite a unique spot - and it is quite mind-boggling to think that 120,000 people are buried on such a small site.

 

Bunhill Fields is located between City Road and Bunhill Row in London EC1 (the nearest tube stations are Moorgate and Old Street), and it is open all year round.  Information about guided tours and access to the fenced-off areas can be found at http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/green-spaces/city-gardens/visitor-information/Pages/Bunhill-Fields.aspx

"The largest and oldest museum in Reykjavik" - Hólavallagarður cemetery

A number of posts I've written for this blog so far have focused on graveyards, particularly the grand Victorian graveyards of London (at the time of writing, I have photographs of Highgate, Brompton and Kensal Green cemeteries waiting to have blog posts written around them).  However, the graveyard featured in this post lies 1,000 miles from London, on a quiet hillside in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland.

Hólavallagarður

Unlike Britain, Iceland has no long history of cities as we would recognise them.  Settled by the Vikings in the late 9th Century, Iceland has always had a small population (today it is around 300,000) and settlements tended to be small.  Reykjavik has long been settled - today, one can visit the remains of a 10th Century longhouse discovered during demolition works in the 20th Century - but it only began life as a town in the mid-18th Century.  The oldest buildings in the city are on Aðalstræti ("main street"), close to where the Viking longhouse is situated. 

It was close to Aðalstræti that Reykjavik's main graveyard was situated for around 800 years.  Now a slightly gloomy paved square surrounded by hotels, museums and coffee shops, this ancient burial ground was called Víkurgarður.  It is thought that a church was situated in this area since around the year 1000, when the Icelandic people converted to Christianity.

In 1838, however, the tiny burial ground at Víkurgarður was closed and a new, larger burial ground at nearby Suðurgata was consecrated, called Hólavallagarður. The Icelandic people had an interesting tradition around burial grounds - there was a folk belief that the first person to be buried in a graveyard would not rot, but would become the graveyard's "guardian", watching over the people subsequently buried there.  At Hólavallagarður this "guardian" is Guðrún Oddsdóttir, wife of a local magistrate.

The view from Hólavallagarður - the grey spire is that of Hallgrimskirkja

The name "Hólavallagarður" simply means "garden on a hill" - the photograph above shows the view over the city from the cemetery.  The first time I came across this cemetery was on my first full day in Reykjavik, whilst walking out of the city centre towards the National Museum of Iceland.  It was a damp, gloomy November day and there was no-one else around.  I visited again a few days later, after the snow had fallen, on an equally quiet and peaceful day (although it was a great deal colder!).

There are many trees in Hólavallagarður

My initial impression of Hólavallagarður was of a rather dark, heavily forested space.  The many trees in the graveyard, mostly birch and rowan, were planted in the early 20th Century.  They give the graveyard a natural - if slightly claustrophobic - feel, and I imagine that on a sunny day in spring or summer Hólavallagarður looks and smells completely alive despite the condition of its residents.  The trees also make Hólavallagarður rather distinctive, as trees are not a particularly commonn sight in Iceland, particularly outside of Reykjavik.  Iceland was once heavily forested, but deforestation and soil erosion caused by human activity after settlement in the 9th Century means that only a tiny percentage of the country is now forested.

Hólavallagarður's plots had all been bought by 1932, although many graves date from much later than this.  It struck me whilst exploring the cemetery how untouched by war and vandalism it is - in London's big cemeteries one sees signs everywhere of decay, vandalism, and the scars of Second World War air raids and ill thought out "modernisation" schemes by councils after the original cemetery companies sold up.  In contrast, Hólavallagarður was well-kept and clean.  The metal railings surrounding gravestones had not been stolen for scrap metal or for making weapons during wartime.  It looked as though it has never been neglected.  Dozens of redwings hopped and flew between the headstones and trees, shy birds that took off every time I pointed my camera in their direction.

Having spent a great deal of time exploring and photographing Victorian cemeteries and graves in London, I spotted some symbols and fashions similar to those popular in Victorian Britain.  The grave pictured below shows an upturned, extinguished torch, a common signifier of death in 19th Century funerary imagery.  This particular grave could also be a "broken column" grave, signifying that the man buried there was the head of the family.

The graves at Hólavallagarður are less grand, less ostenatious than some of those from the same period in Britain.  This may partly be down to the fact that until relatively recently, Iceland was a poor country, only gaining its high standard of living after indpendence from Denmark in 1944.  The modest, simple graves have a quiet dignity about them.  Some of them, such as the one pictured below, reflect the green, organic nature of their surroundings.

As well as being home to many trees, Hólavallagarður is full of mosses and lichens.  The air in Reykjavik is incredibly clean, providing ideal conditions for lichens to grow.  Many of the graves are "fenced off" by stone walls or metal railings, leaving narrow, winding walkways covered in leaves and moss.  Even before the snow came I had to watch my footing as I walked between graves, mindful of how slippery it was under foot.

The livid green of the moss and the brightly coloured lichens lifted some of the gloom from this otherwise very grey, wintery space.

Uphill from the cemetery's main entrance stands an elegant little structure, a beautiful red and white bell tower.

As well as the numerous living birds flitting around the cemetery, Hólavallagarður also has many birds on its memorials.  On gravestones, birds can be interpreted as symbols of peace, or (particularly if they are doves) messengers from God.

Hólavallagarður is unique among cemeteries of a similar age - unlike other large urban cemeteries in Europe it has been untouched by war, vandalism and neglect, giving it a feel of peace and continuity not found in other 19th Century cemeteries.  Art historian Björn Th. Björnsson has described it as "the largest and oldest museum in Reykjavik", a place where "a living exhibition and history opens itself to anyone who can read the hand of the sculptor and discern from symbols and types of font the thoughts and deeds of the dead."  Reykjavik is a wonderful place to visit, and Hólavallagarður is a lovely, peaceful spot to while away a couple of hours wandering around the old graves.

Skulls, astrologers and the sands of time: a Georgian graveyard in South West London

One of the best things about living in London is the great potential for discovering wonderful places completely by accident. In this instance, I was required to go to Mortlake to pick up a parcel from the sorting office that had been too big to fit through my letterbox.  Whilst walking up Mortlake High Street my eye was caught by some worn old gravestones peeping out through bushes and shrubs.

This graveyard belongs to the Anglican church of St Mary the Virgin, pictured below.

The St Mary's we see today was built in 1543, replacing an earlier church that had been situated nearby.  Only the tower survives from the 16th Century, and major alterations were made to the church in the 19th and 20th Centuries.  The church interior, pictured below, dates from the early 20th Century.

Some of these memorials look as though they were once situated inside the church, before it was renovated in the early 20th Century.

The churchyard, however, mostly contains gravestones from the Georgian period, from about 1715, with the most recent graves dating from the early Victorian period.  The Burials Act of 1851 closed London's ancient churchyards and from then onwards the residents of Mortlake had to be buried elsewhere.

A number of my previous blog posts have focused on 19th Century graveyards, and the funerary symbolism used in this period, much of which invoked Roman urns, clasped hands, broken pillars and extinguished torches.  Many of these symbols had their origins in the Classical period.  Earlier gravestones, however, use different images and probably the most distinctive of these is the skull, or death's head, an obvious signifier of death.  Some more examples of death head symbolism on gravestones can be found here.

The monument pictured above also depicts what appears to be a book, which may signify knowledge, or perhaps the Bible. 

Time waits for no man

The gravestone pictured above shows another symbol of mortality - the hourglass.

So why are the symbols on 18th Century graves so different to those on Victorian graves?  In the Victorian period death became a money-spinning industry, with grand memorials, specially laid out cemeteries and ostentatious funeral processions becoming popular amongst the moneyed.  Death was dressed up and became an event - look at the way that black mourning clothes and black-edged writing paper became important and very visual parts of mourning.  At the same time, the symbols used to represent death became more distant - no more scary signifiers of mortality such as skulls, bones or ominous signs of time passing.  This in part reflected differing fashions and tastes in the Victorian period, with grand Gothic and Classical images becoming common in the new burial grounds that opened after inner city churchyards were shut.

The poor, of course, continued to be buried in common graves with no memorial or perhaps a small, simple stone.  Dotted around old graveyards are little headstones adorned only with a set of initials and dates of birth and death.  The graves of non-conformist believers have also traditionally been more austere.

The earliest known tombstone in the graveyard at St Mary's is that of the astrologer John Partridge.  Partridge was born in East Sheen, not far from Mortlake, and after initially starting a career as a shoemaker he studied in Holland and became an astrologer, having learned Latin, Greek and Hebrew.  He wished to see the Arabic influences astrology - which had become widespread in Europe during the Renaissance - removed and sought a return to Ptolemy's principles of astrology.

Although Partridge wrote a number of books of his own, he is best known through the words of his enemies.  A committed Whig and sceptical of the Church, Partridge was known to predict the deaths of those whose opinions on religion and politics he disagreed with.  This made him unpopular, and his astrology was suspected of being quackery.  In 1708 this came to the attention of Jonathan Swift, the Irish cleric best known for writing Gulliver's Travels, and writing under the pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff Swift mockingly predicted that Partridge would die on 29th March 1708.  On this date, he wrote another letter claiming that Partridge had died.  Partridge, very much alive, angrily refuted the claims but continued to be ridiculed, with Swift commenting that "they were sure no man alive ever to writ such damned stuff as this."  Swift even penned a eulogy for Partridge:

Here five foot deep lyes on his back
A cobbler, starmonger, and quack…
Who to the stars in pure good-will,
Does to his best look upward still.
Weep all you customers that use
His pills, his almanacks or shoes.

Partridge died in 1714 or 1715, and little is known about his final years.  He is buried in the tomb pictured below, very close to the church building.

The picture below shows close-up of the cherubs on Partridge's tomb.  A skull is also visible at the bottom of the plaque - it is quite worn and covered in lichen, and its most distinctive features are the eye sockets and nasal cavity.  The large and relatively ornate nature of Partridge's tomb suggests that he either died quite wealthy, or had friends who were able to pay for a grand memorial.

St Mary's also has a connection with the more famous John Dee, the Elizabethan mathematician and magician who had a home in Mortlake close to St Mary's.  During Dee's time the boundaries between mathematics, science and magic were blurred, and - as this was the time before the frenzied witch hunts of the 17th Century - Dee enjoyed the patronage of a number of eminent Elizabethans, and even acted as advisor to Queen Elizabeth herself.   Dee travelled widely during his lifetime and kept his extensive library at his Mortlake home, a library which at the time was reckoned to be one of the greatest in the world.

John Dee

A history on the church's own website claims that Dee was buried in St Mary's after his death in 1608 or early 1609.  Dee died in poverty and relative obscurity, as James I's regime was unfriendly towards magic, and unfortunately no parish records of his death and burial survive, and there is no known gravestone.

If you look behind this tall monument, a low tomb to the right lies over a former Prime Minister.  (The reason why there isn't a proper picture of this tomb is because I read the little map in the churchyard wrong and took a picture of a different tomb close to that of the former PM.)  Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, was a Tory MP for Devizes and became Prime Minister in 1801 after William Pitt the Younger resigned.  By all accounts Addington was not an effective Prime Minister and he was ousted in 1804.  He did, however, live to the grand old age of 86, dying at the comfortable White Lodge in Richmond.

Probably the most distinctive feature of the churchyard is the picturesque archway in the middle.  This archway was originally part of the structure of the church, but was removed during rebuilding work in the 19th century and rebuilt in the churchyard, allegedly at the insistence of a parishoner.

Part of the churchyard is fenced off and designated as a "wild area", allowing plants and habitats for birds and insects to flourish. The whole churchyards is beautifully cared for by the Friends of Mortlake Churchyard, who have lovingly restored the graveyard after it became derelict.  More details about the Friends can be found under the "Churchyard" section of St Mary's website.

There is also a labyrinth on the side of the churchyard closes to Mortlake High Street.  The labyrinth, simply laid out with natural materials, is intended to be a space for quiet reflection.

The labyrinth consists of winding paths laid out around the gravestones

Finally, a little mystery.  I came across the following stone in the middle of the churchyard but couldn't find any information about it.  I have no idea of its date - it could possibly even be modern - but has anyone got any ideas of what it might symbolise?  My best guess is a green man, or perhaps a stone from the church building before it was restored.

Who am I?

A few more pictures...