A Deluge of Dead Guys; or, What Do You Do With A Disused Churchyard? Part Two: Postman's Park

I've talked before about how London has limited public space. This is one of the major problems about living on an island- there's only so much space you can take up, and when you have to factor in offices, living space, restaurants, stores, schools, and all the roads you need to make a city run... well, sometimes you have to make compromises. One of these compromises is often found in the old churchyards, especially of smaller parishes.

Today, we're going to look at Postman's Park.

 

 

Postman's Park is home to the Watt's Memorial for Self-Sacrifice and exactly one female duck. It comprises the churchyards from St. Leonard's, St. Botolph's, and Christchurch in Newgate Street's graveyard, and-

"Wait! Hold on a tic," you're saying. "You're contradicting yourself. You TOLD us graveyards weren't a thing until 1842. What gives?"

Well, Christchurch in Newgate Street was a bit of a technical issue. See, Newgate is home to hellhounds a former prison. And unlike in a Dickensian debtors' prison, Newgate was prison where a large percentage of the population was hanged. Now, in the eyes of the church, if you were hanged, it was because you were a sinner. And unlike today, you could repent, but it was still unlikely that God would accept your soul, because, let's face it. If you got caught doing one bad thing, you probably did lots of them. And you can't bury a long-term sinner in consecrated ground! The idea was that the bodies in the churchyards would be uncorrupted by the bodies of these long-term sinners. Prisons often had their own graveyards, where bodies were just thrown into pits or shallow graves. These were typically left unmarked; however, careful records were kept in the prison. Newgate had several graveyards attached to local churches. The priests of these churches would visit the prisoners before their executions, hear their confessions, and offer them communion one final time. It wasn't uncommon for these churches to donate a parcel of their churchyard to be used for criminals, conveniently located on the other side of the fence. This particular parcel abutted the graveyards of two churches, one of which no longer exists (St. Botolph's and Christchurch, Newgate are still around.)

Postman's Park is home to hundreds of burials. Would you like to know how many?
I'll tell you this: Postman's Park is elevated quite a bit above the current street level because there were so many bodies and so little space, often they'd just lay the bodies on the ground and pile dirt on them. And people wonder where these black dog legends come from...

Nowadays, though, you wouldn't know that. The churchyards sat reeking until 1858, when it was decided to turn them into a public park. They didn't want to get rid of all of the gravestones, though, so while they developed the park, they disinterred many of the upper level burials, shipped them out to various other cemeteries, and then moved the headstones to the walls to mark the boundary of the new park. Check it out:

The park didn't actually open until 1880, due to the difficulties of development. Imagining digging a pond for a fountain and turning up a femur every five minutes.

(Side note: The park also housed one female duck, who was quite upset that I was standing near her fountain.)

 

While this grave was very difficult to read, it was obviously judged too difficult to remove. It's important to notice that there are no ornate headstones here- there's hardly anything that isn't a flat stone or a ground slab, other than this...

And this. This stone has a marble vase on top that was clearly added long after the stone's erection- possibly to jazz it up.

 

 The difference of material and construction is obvious; it doesn't match. Normally, ornamental gravestones were constructed of the same thing, occasionally including an accent stone. The carving's weathering has some serious differential weathering, too- while you can't read the gravestone itself, take a look at the detail on the vase.

 

This is one that they are clearly maintaining; they've added a modern attachment to the vase and are somehow keeping it drained. 

 

Can you spot the hidden gravestones?

 

The park, as I said, also houses an interesting memorial to heroic self-sacrifice. This was put up in 1900 and is dedicated to average, everyday people who gave their lives for others. Many are teenagers.

 

However, none of them are buried in the park, obviously. I took the below picture to show you an example of the patterns of gravestones and to show you how they are used as decorative objects.

This one is particularly interesting in that it's a double gravestone for a man and a woman where the woman's first name is mentioned on the stone. She died in 1772, long before this sort of thing came into real fashion.

Mrs. Eleanor Lovell.

While this gravestone is rather forward-thinking and rather prominently displayed, I wondered if I could find any evidence of marginalization in this incredibly disturbed burial site. A quick peek 'round the corner kinda proved that I could. Here are some small, poor-quality stones that have evidence of engraving on them, being used to hold a ladder and garbage. Anonymous in death and unimportant in posterity, it is unlikely that these were the gravestones of any high-ranking member of society. Perhaps these were used for poor parishioners... or perhaps the children of poor parishioners.

In stark contrast, we have this memorial, found right outside the park, built into the wall.

I like this picture for several reasons. One, it shows you just how high off street level the ground of Postman's Park is- that bowl is at chest level. Two, that's a gravestone and formerly a working fountain. And not just any gravestone, oh no- this was specifically for a married woman (not for her husband, who presumably is elsewhere) who was very wealthy and apparently very involved with the local council. I'll tell you a bit more about who she is in a later post, when I explain why the tried-and-true technique of taking a rubbing is actually kind of worthless sometimes.

So that's it for Postman's Park! Pay attention for next time, when I talk about St. Olaf the Pirate King and terrible rubbings!