THE LONDON GARDENERor The Gardener's Intelligencer Volno.5 For the years 1999-2000 facilities through disuse, accompanied by the as long ago as 1951; fenced maneges have been loss of stabling arising from mechanisation. created in the Royal Parks and on Tooting Nevertheless, a revival came in the inter-war Common,greatly aiding the trainingofriders, period, based on the entry into the sport of especially important in fostering riding as a moderately prosperous office workersliving in major activity for disabled people. the ever-expanding suburbs. New indoorrid- Some of the traditional, long-established ing schools were constructed in areas such as riding schools near the major riding areas have Clapham and Hampstead,and the lapsed rid- survived. Elsewhere, where such schools have ing facilities on Blackheath were revived. The been lost through wartime constraints or expansion of the suburban riding community building development, the emergence of com- benefitted from the proximity of the outer munity-based stables and ‘city farms’ has pro- Royal Parks — Richmond Park in particular vided the wherewithal for riding to continue, became an extremely popular venue, necessi- as has been the case at Hampstead Heath and tating the adoption of landscape management WormwoodScrubs. measures — and from the programmeof con- The prospectus of the Clapham Park servation of Commonslong since promoted by Riding Schools c.1938 informed its prospective the City of London, which in 1878 had taken clients that: powers to acquire lands within twenty-five advanced pupils wishing to enjoy out-doorriding may miles of its boundaries. The City’s ownership make up parties for hacking on Tooting Bec Common, of Epping Forest and of the (then) ‘Kent and a fine open space of 150 acres, offering a specially-pre- Surrey Commons’ under individual Acts had pared riding track shaded byfine old elms and chestnut conserved widetracts of woodland, heathland trees. and downlandideal for riding and enshrining The elms have long since fallen victim to many ancient trackways in what was to Dutch Elm disease and the great gales of the becomethe inner margins of the Green Belt. 1980s accounted for many of the other trees The Green Belt (London and Home Counties) which demarcated this particular ride. A& of 1938 in turn enabled Home Counties However, the London’ Borough of authorities to purchase widetracts of land with Wandsworth, by including the replanting of the aid of financial contributions from the the riding avenue in its arboricultural London County Council. The advent of programme, is preserving one of the most World War 11 delayed the realisation of the evocative elements of the Common’ recreational potential of this land, but the his- recreational landscapefor future generationsto toric landscapes of sites such as Oaks Park in enjoy, both as a tree-lined vista and a place to Sutton and Trent Park in Enfield proved suit- take the air on horseback. able to accommodate newrecreational riding circuits in due course, whilst others, such as BRINGING OUT THE DEap High Elms, contained tracks ranking as statu- By Sally Williams tory bridleways. Further loss of stabling, to urban renewal E the early afternoon of 237d March 1995, rather than lack of demand for riding, has the funeral cortege of Ronnie Kray - for- been the most serious factor undermining the mer Colonel of the East End underworld use of London’s historic horse rides since - began its stately progress from W. English & World War u. The situation, however, has Son’s funeral parlour in Bethnal Green Road hopeful aspects, especially the enterprise of to St Matthew's Church, Bethnal Green, riders pursuing self-help solutions, as in the (fig. 34) the procession passingclose tothesite renovation of Hyde Park’s ridingfacilities, and of the Kray Twins’ former childhood home in the willingness of relevant authorities to accept Vallance Road, Whitechapel, on its way. that maneges for the training of horse and The church was packed with mourners, rider are a valuable recreational activity. Public including ‘former villains such as Frankie ‘riding rings’ were pioneered in response to Fraser, a member of the South London popular demand on Wimbledon Common; Richardson gang, Freddie Forman and ex- the former London County Council provided Kray Firm member Tony Lambrianou’, who, small jumps on Hampstead Heath Extension with brothers Reggie and Charlie, came to pay 50 BRINGING OUT THE DEAD 34. Ronnie Kray’s funeral (1995) (PHOTOGRAPH BY Pru CLEMENTS) 35. ‘St Matthew Bethnal Green’ by G. Shepherd & etched by W. Angus for The Architectural Series ofLondon Churches (1818) (Courtesy Tower Hamets LocaHistory Lisrary) 36. All Saints’ Churchyard, Chingford shown in Arthur Hughes Homefrom Sea (1862) (CourTEsy OF THE ASHMOLEAN Museum, Oxrorp) 51 THE LONDON GARDENERor The Gardener’s Intelligencer Volno.5 For the years 1999-2000 37. Detail ofA Map ofthe County ofEssex by Chapman and André showing Merry Hill, Chingford (1777) (By KIND PERMISSION OF PHILLIMORE & Co. LTD, SHOPwYKE Manor Barn, CHICHESTER) 38. Chingford Mount Cemetery (Marcu 2000) (PHOTOGRAPH BY SALLY WILLIAMs) 39. Wanstead Friends Burial Ground (Marcu 2000) (PHOTOGRAPH BY SALLY WILLIAMS) 52 BRINGING OUT THE DEAD their last respects. The service began with a its incumbentclergy. However, the matter was recording of Frank Sinatra’s My Way — one of only held in abeyance, and in 1742 Bethnal the deceased’s favourite tunes — and was con- Green Parish wascreated by Act ofParliament cluded with Whitney Houston’s I Will Always and a local rate imposed for the building of the Love You. The coffin, ‘of dark oak with gold new church of St Matthew, which was handles’, was then conveyed to a ‘Victorian designed by George Dance the Elder and con- glass-sided hearse, drawn by six black-plumed secrated in 1746. The early congregation would horses’ and, accompanied by twenty-seven have included a good proportion of the Daimlers, travelled through Bethnal Green Huguenot weavers and textile workers who and Bow to Chingford Mount Cemetery some had settled in the area after fleeing anti- ten miles away. Seven thousandstrong ‘lined Protestant France in thelatter part of the sev- the street and rooftops to catch a glimpse of enteenth century. the impressive funeral cortege’.’ St Matthew’s Churchyard appears to have Londoners, and perhaps particularly East been a place of more than burial from the out- Enders, are proudoftheir longstanding tradi- set, and its history providesan insight into past tions, not least their celebration of death — a social mores of a distin@tly macabre nature. celebration which is conventional, if somewhat Dog- and bullock-baiting, attended by large garishly sentimental. Ronnie Kray, like many crowds, took place on land adjacent to the before him,aspiredto ‘a traditional East End churchyard in the mid-eighteenth century, funeral’. His elder brother Charlie remarked onceleading to an interruption in the Sunday that ‘Ron had alwayssaid he wanted the hors- Service caused by thearrival of a fleeing ani- es and plumes. We wanted him to have the mal seeking refuge, following a chase through best’. Now, somefive years later, Charlie has the churchyard. Like others at that time, the made the same journey. churchyard was subject to the attentions of Londoners have always shifted from place body snatchers, a situation which led to the to place — living in one place, perhaps dying in erection of a Watch House in 1754, a building another, buried in anotherstill, sometimes re- which waslater expanded to housethe parish interred in yet another. The sheer density of fire engine and which remainsin one corner of population in the metropolis has meantthat it the site today. According to the Vestry is overlaid — or underlaid — with a vast necrop- Minutes of 1792, the watchman was to be olis. These burial grounds, cemeteries and issued with ‘blunderbuss and rattle’, and a churchyards inevitably contain layers of reward of two guineas was offered to anyone London’s history, threaded with conne¢tions apprehending a body snatcher. Underworld and narratives. connections accrued to the parish church well St Matthew’s Church used to be surround- before the era of the Kray Twins: in the early ed by its own graveyard (fig. 35) but since the nineteenth century, churchwardenandlicens- end of the nineteenth century this has been a ing magistrate Joseph Merceron was impris- public garden. Discussions about the need for oned for - among other crimes - running a a separate parish of Bethnal Green began in protection racket, operating a string of broth- the 1690s and St Matthew’s Church is a els, and appropriating parish poor funds. Nicholas Hawksmoor-might-have-been, as Notwithstanding his term in prison, Merceron his designs were prepared for a new church to later returned to his formeroffices andlived to be built through the auspices of the Fifty New an old age. The Merceron tomb can be seen Churches Commissioners. Apparently the in the churchyard still, and the name also fact that Hawksmoor’s Basilica after the appears as a local street. Iniquitous associa- Primitive Christians was not built at that time tions aside, the church has other more worthy was greeted with relief by some in the area. connections. John Wesley is known to have The Rector of Stepney was fearful of lost preached at St Matthew’s in November 1775, incomefrom tithes if Bethnal Green became a delivering, in his own words,‘a charity sermon separate parish, and local people were anxious for the widowsand orphansofthesoldiers that about the expense of a large, new church and were killed in America’. Septimus Hansard, 1. East London Advertiser, 30 March 1995. Rector between 1864 and 1895, was known for his socialist ideals and his curate Stewart 53 THE LONDON GARDENERor The Gardener's Intelligencer Volno.5 For the years 1999-2000 Headlam (at St Matthew’s from 1873 to 1878) the northern border of the cemetery on the founded an early socialist group, the Guild of 1897 edition.