Manor Park Cemetery celebrates 150 years

 

Sebert Road entrance to the cemetery

150 years ago, in the summer of 1874, advertisements began to appear in London papers offering £1-00 shares in the Manor Park Cemetery Company. The company's aim, said the prospectus, was to open a new cemetery to cater to the “ever-increasing population” of London’s eastern and northern suburbs. The company had bought 115 acres of land east of Forest Gate station, of which 45 acres would be for the cemetery, and the rest sold off in building plots to part-finance the operation.

The cemetery and crematorium stand on a section of what was previously Hamfrith Farm, which can be traced back to the 1700s. In 1851, the farm was bought by Samuel Gurney, who, as we have shown in a previous post (see here), was busily acquiring land in Forest Gate at the time. This later laid the foundations for the establishment of the area as a Victorian suburb.

He paid £17,710 for the fam. Following Samuel’s death, in 1872, his grandson, John, sold the farm to the British Land Company, who, in turn, sold the site of the cemetery to the newly established Manor Park Cemetery company in 1874.

The cemetery, it was claimed, would offer many advantages. It was close to London (rather improbably, the company claimed their cemetery was two miles closer to the city than the City of London cemetery) and had good rail links. It was built on “stiff, dry gravel” ideal for multiple burials in common graves, and the opening hours meant that undertakers could reckon on fitting in 4-5 funerals a day.

The company aimed to appeal to respectable working-class east Londoners by offering family plots at one guinea (£1 5p). These “Guinea Graves” could also be exchanged for shares, enabling “the working and industrious classes” to have an affordable family plot rather than the indignity of being buried in a common grave. In 2006, the cemetery company was to devise an ingenious variation on this scheme, offering 1,000 used plots as “traditional style graves” complete with the original headstones (names scoured off) at £4,000 for a 50-year lease.

Not all local residents were happy about such arrangements, which would they felt drew the wrong sort of people to the proposed cemetery. One wrote to a local paper to claim that “It would attract a class of funerals here, the mourners belonging to which are so apt to solace themselves at the public-house, and wind up with a friendly ‘set to’.”

Grave of William Nesbitt, the first burial in the cemetery

Originally the cemetery company wanted to use all the land from Forest Gate station to Manor Park station for graves but the Local Board (the equivalent of the council) said "no" and the cemetery eventually occupied about half of this area. The rest was sold off for housing development. The company also wanted to make use of the adjacent railway to transport coffins (rather like the famous Necropolis Railway of south west London) but nothing came of this.

Another interesting fact is that the same family the Jeffreys have been involved since 1874 and still are part of the company. This is a private profit making business, unlike council owned cemeteries such as the one in Cemetery Road Forest Gate, owned and run by Newham.

Construction of the cemetery started over the winter of 1874-5 on a site at the eastern end of what became Sebert Road. In the first couple of years, the cemetery was simply a burial ground, with no facilities for funeral services until the chapel and entrance gates followed in 1877. By then, the first burials had taken place. The cemetery opened in March 1875, the first interment being a 19-year-old local resident, William Nesbitt.

Advert for the new cemetery on the day it opened 25 March 1875

The table of charges published when the cemetery opened gives a revealing glimpse into the Victorian way of death. There were five categories of payments for children who died under the age of 10, which in the local area accounted for much of the mortality rate.

From the beginning, funerals could be large affairs. It wasn’t unusual for hundreds to attend burials, with brass bands (sometimes more than one) playing suitably solemn music. In 1882, 50 cyclists from local clubs joined the funeral procession of a young rider who had, so it was reported, died of “over-training”. 

 

Auction plan of the area between Capel Road and Sebert Road divided into plots for sale in 1876. Areas in pink were already sold, those in blue were up for auction.

The cemetery company also significantly impacted the growth of a large part of Forest Gate north of the railway. Its sale of the surplus land as building plots led to the creation of the streets between Sebert and Capel Road in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The action plan shows the large estate of West Ham Hall, the area now covered by Godwin School, Woodgrange School, and the viaduct of the Gospel Oak-Barking Riverside line.

Manor Park does not have many notable graves, but probably the best known is that of Jack Cornwell, who received a posthumous VC for his actions at the Battle of Jutland, the great naval engagement between the Royal Navy and the German fleet in the North Sea in 1916. Born in Leyton, before the family moved to Manor Park, Jack was just 16 when he was killed in action aboard HMS Chester. (see here for film of the funeral procession and here for further details about Jack). There is a community centre named after him, which has just been refurbed, in Manor Park.

Funeral procession of Jack Cornwell in August 1916

A more recently constructed memorial is for the victims of the disaster at Bethnal Green underground station in March 1943. The firing of anti-aircraft batteries in nearby Victoria Park may have caused the panic on a staircase into the station, which resulted in 173 deaths, mainly women and children, probably the largest single loss of civilian life in the UK during the Second World War. 

The memorial to the victims of the Bethnal Green tube disaster buried in Manor Park Cemetery

The memorial to those buried in Manor Park has brought together individual gravestones under the shade of a tree. This attractive memorial is a few metres from the eastern gate of the cemetery in Whitta Road.

A map produced by the cemetery company shows these graves and others. To celebrate its 150th year, the company has put up two interpretation boards, together with accompanying leaflets, which give potted histories of some of the notable burials and a map showing their location. You can find fuller details of this on the cemetery's recently upgraded website: here

 

The boards can be found inside the main gates. Leaflets are in holders or available from the cemetery office

Markers points on the self-guided tour of the cemetery

    

1. John Travers Cornwell, (see above).

2. John Clinton, d 16 July 1894, aged 10, drowned, saving the life of another child.

3. Mary Orchard, d 1906, aged 76. Nanny to children of Queen Victoria (see here for further details).

4. William Chandler, d 1946, aged 66, founder of eponymous bookmakers, now called BetVictor. Also the creator of the former Walthamstow Greyhound Stadium.

5. William Tom Ecclestone, d 1915, aged 53, weighed 46 stone and was known as “the king’s second heaviest subject.”

6. Joyce and Ronald McQueen, parents of fashion designer Alexander McQueen.

7. Chapel buildings, constructed in 1877.

8. Susan Hibberd Flower Court. Area for leaving floral tributes after ceremonies.

9. Pavilion, built in 1968 for memorial plaques.

10. War memorial, (see here for further details).

11. William Nesbitt, first internment in the cemetery (see above).

12. Military war graves, Maintained by Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

13. Alexander Lambert, d 1892 aged 55. A pioneering professional industrial diver.

14. Bethnal Green Tube Disaster, (see above).

15. Sarah Dearman, (nee Chapman). Matchgirls’ Strike leader (see here and here for further details).

16. Annie Chapman, d 8 September 1888. Jack the Ripper’s second victim (see here for further details).

17. Civilian War Memorial. Elongated tomb containing remains of 57 victims of WW2 bombings.

18. Columbarium,  location for cremation ashes.

19. Steve Marsh. d April 2010, aged 51. “BMW Steve”, a car fanatic.

20. Francis Albermar McDougal, d 1907 a UK veteran of the US Civil War, among six other similar survivors in the cemetery.