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| 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’.”
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| 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.
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| 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”.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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| 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.
