Funeral Service Times August 2017 April 2019 | Page 26

26 CEMETERIES AROUND THE WORLD
Cemeteries
around the world
Casey Cooper-Fiske explores another one of London’s ‘Magnificent Seven’ cemeteries.
This month he takes a look at the first to gain the title - Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park
T
ower Hamlets Cemetery Park is
located between Bow and Mile
End in the London Borough of
Tower Hamlets in East London.
The cemetery is open to mourners 24
hours a day, and first opened in 1841, before
closing for burials in 1966, since which
other land has been added to the park,
including ‘Scrapyard Meadow’, a former
housing estate. It is regarded as one of the
‘Magnificent Seven’, alongside Highgate,
Nunhead, West Norwood, Kensal Green,
Brompton, Abney Park. It was originally
APRIL 2019
named The City of London and Tower
Hamlets Cemetery but was called Bow
Cemetery by locals. The cemetery’s main
entrance is located on Southern Grove, with
small gated entrances on Hamlet Way and
Cantrell Road.
Prior to the Victorian era, all of
London's dead were buried in small urban
churchyards, which were so overcrowded
and so close to where people lived, worked,
and worshipped that they were causing
disease and groundwater contamination.
An Act of Parliament was passed which
allowed joint-stock companies to purchase
land and set up large cemeteries outside the
boundaries of the City of London. All of the
‘Magnificent Seven’ were laid out at around
the same time (1832–41), when they became
the first cemeteries of their kind, alleviating
the disease and contamination caused by
their predecessors.
The City of London and Tower Hamlets
Cemetery Company was made up of 11
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 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
London on Saturday 4 September 1841 prior
to being opened for burials. The cemetery
was consecrated in the morning, and the
first burial took place in the afternoon.
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
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