THE 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 — in particular vided the wherewithal for riding to continue, became an extremely popular venue, necessi- as has been the case at 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 in1878 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 and of the (then) ‘ 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 havelong since fallen victim to many ancient trackways in what was to Dutch Elm disease and the great gales of the becomethe inner marginsof 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 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 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 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, , 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 popular demand on ; 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

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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. Cemetery (Marcu 2000) (PHOTOGRAPH BY SALLY WILLIAMs)

39. Wanstead Friends Burial Ground (Marcu 2000) (PHOTOGRAPH BY SALLY WILLIAMS)

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their last respects. The service began with a its incumbentclergy. However, the matter was recording of ’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 - running a a separate parish of Bethnal Green began in , 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. 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. Other roads and pathways tra- St Matthew,in 1877. versing the cemetery trace earlier marked In 1896 the churchyard was turned into a paths through the grounds,and areas of water public garden and is now maintained by the which appear on the 1870 map canstill be London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is found today. (fig. 38) quite pleasantly laid out with grass, rose gar- Like Cemetery, Chingford dens and other formal beds, paths andseating, Mount Cemetery was set up to ‘provide and with few signs of the burials that took Christian burials for all’. Not only did place here aside from the two railed tombs individual interments take place here, but the near the church. Bombedin 1940, the present cemetery was therecipient of the contents of building largely dates from 1961; the exterior two redundantburial grounds from otherparts shell was restored according to Dance’s origi- of London. The first consignmentarrived in nal designs while the interior is modern. 1898 when ‘200 lead coffins, numerous wood Chingford Mount Cemetery, the destina- coffins and one iron coffin’ were conveyed tion of the Kray funeral procession, is located from the non-conformist burial ground on in a quite different environment from Bethnal land adjacent to Whitefield’s Tabernacle in Green’s inner city. Opposite one entrance to Tottenham Court Road. This burial ground the cemetery at the crest of Old Church Road was contemporary with the church which had is Chingford’s old parish church of All Saints been erected in 1756 by George Whitefield - a with its picturesque small churchyard. This famousevangelist in his day and a peer ofJohn church became decorously ivy-clad in the sec- and Charles Wesley.” It is not known why that ond half of the nineteenth century and, while burial ground wasclosedin 1853, but the trans- too dilapidated for church usage, it became the fer was necessitated when the owner of the inspiration of such Pre-Raphaelite artists as land commenced building works, causing des- Arthur Hughes, whose Home from Sea (1862) ecration of the graves and the unearthing of depicts “The Green Church’ beyond the tear- coffins. ful sailor. (fig. 36) You couldstill be in the heart In 1933 the second consignment of mortal of a countryparish here were it not for the dis- remains was transferred to Chingford Mount tant sight of Canary Wharf and the constant Cemetery, this time the source being the bur- hum of traffic. Across the road, Chingford ial ground of Ram’s Chapel in , East Mount Cemeteryis a large undulatingsite of London. The chapel had been built by banker nearly r7ha. whichstands on the location of an Stephen Ram in 1723 when he was unable to estate known as Caroline Mount or the Mount secure an exclusive pew for his family in Caroline Estate after the wife of the Admiral Hackney Parish Church; although Ram’s who lived here. The non-conformist Abney Chapel had flourished for manyyears, by 1933 Park Cemetery Company purchased the it had fallen into disuse. Mount Caroline Estate in 1884 when their Among those buried at Chingford Mount cemetery in Hackney was becoming over- are the sculptor John Bacon (d.1799) whose crowded. Chapman and André’s 4 Map ofthe Chatham Memorial can be found in County ofEssex of 1777 is marked ‘Merry Hill’ ; his memorials in St here and shows a house with gardens across Paul’s include that of Samuel Johnson. from the parish church.(fig. 37) The old house Benjamin Pollock (d.1937), the toy theatre was demolished to make way for the new maker who set up Pollock’s Toy Shop in cemetery but it had been oneof the oldest and , is also buried here; coincidentally, largest in the parish, with ‘a nice garden at the Pollock’s Toy Museum can today be found on back’. Where it stood became the location of Whitfield Street, very near the site of one of the cemetery’s two red-brick entrance Whitefield’s Tabernacle. lodges. When the cemetery waslaid out, ele- In 1975 new owners of Chingford Mount ments of the formerestate lands were retained; Cemetery wished to build housing on part of

the avenue of trees marked behind the house 2. Although Whitefield died and was buried in America,his wife on the First Edition Ordnance Survey map of Elizabeth was buried in the Tabernacle ground in 1768 and her grave is now in Chingford Mount Cemetery. 1870 follows the sameline as the top road on

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the unused land but this proposal was opposed The Quaker Burial Ground at Wanstead, and the cemetery subsequently became where Elizabeth Fry’s headstone was trans- neglected, its two red-brick lodges gutted and ferred in the mid-1980s, has quite another the ragstone chapel burnt down, destroying ambience — it is a delightfully tranquil discov- mostofits records. The cemetery was acquired ery just beyond the majortraffic interchange of in 1976 by the London Borough of Waltham The Green Man Roundabout, which some- Forest and it is now designateda site of local how ceasedto be audible such wasthe effect of nature conservation importance, having many this place. The Wanstead Society of Friends fine trees among the graves and tombs. The leased land from Epping Forestin 1871 in order gates and red-brick and stone piers on the to establish a Meeting House and Burial western main entrance on Old Church Road Ground here. It was formerly the site of survive from the nineteenth-century layout, Becontree Archery, a nineteenth-century with a new lodge building. archery ground where Charles Dickens is While Chingford Mountreceived the full reputed to have given readings. Becontree complement of bodily remains and funerary Archery Lodge was demolished in 1967 and monuments, other London burial grounds replaced with the new Wanstead Quaker only received consignments of the latter. In Meeting House, itself now being refurbished. this way two Quaker burial grounds — one in The first burials behind the Meeting House Barking andthe other in Wanstead — are asso- took place in 1881. Entering this area through ciated with the famous prison reformer an unobtrusive side gateway, you are presented Elizabeth Fry. The Barking Meeting of the with a meadow-like central green with the Society of Friends was formedin thelate 1650s simple, uniform headstones arranged in three and the burial ground there was established in or four neat rows eachside. (fig. 39) Bordered 1672. Fry had close connectionsin this area of by old red-brick walls, the Burial Ground is London,in the 1820s spending holidays with woodedatits far end and hasfine mature trees her family in two cottages at Dagenham including oak, horse chestnut, and ash with Breach. She died in 1845 and was buried at the holly and rhododendron shrubs among the Quaker Burial Ground in Barking. In 1980 the greenery surrounding the central open space. ground became a small public garden under _ Given Fry’s connection with Dagenham, the auspices of the London Borough of she may well have visited St Peter’s and St Barking and Dagenham,and all headstones Paul’s, the old parish church of Dagenham and monuments were removed; that of Village. The structure dates back to the early Elizabeth Fry was taken to Wanstead Friends thirteenth century althoughall that remains of Burial Ground. The only evidence that the the mediaeval building are the chancel andfif- Barking garden was once a burial groundis its teenth-century north chapel. Inside the old name plaque which remains next to the church is an altar tomb to Sir Thomas iron gate on North Street, and inside the gar- Urswyck (d.1479) who was instrumental in den a Council board proclaims ‘QuAKER Edwardtv’s accession to the throne. After the Buriat GarpDEN - A GarDEN OF PEACE AND collapse of the church tower in 1800 which also REST, PLEASE RESPECT THIS HISTORIC SITE. destroyed the nave and southaisle, the church No Batt Games’. Sadly, what I visited was a was largely rebuilt in 1800-05 by the architect bleak little patch of mown grass, surrounded William Mason in Strawberry Hill Gothic by a motley run of nineteenth and twentieth- style, including a spire which was then century railings, a partially collapsed brick wall removed in 1921. The church and nearbyvic- and some hedging, through gaps in which the arage, built in 1665 with a large garden, togeth- garden was quite accessible at all times, and er with the fifteenth-century Cross Keys showed signs of vandalism. Notwithstanding are all that remain of Dagenham Village, its state of neglect, any peaceful meditations which was one of the earliest Saxon settle- would be shattered by the busy A124 Barking ments in Essex. Northern Relief Road nearby. Across North Dagenham Parish Churchyard wasstill in Street from the earstwhile burial ground, the use as a graveyard into the 1950s, and, despite former Society of Friends Meeting House is now being entirely surrounded by twentieth- now a Sikh Temple. century housing, with pylons, railway lines,

55 THE LONDON GARDENERor The Gardener’s Intelligencer Volno.5 For the years 1999-2000 and major roadsclose by,it is a peaceful place honoured him with their companyto dinner, and in the managed by the London Wildlife Trust where evening there was a numerousassemblyofhisfriends to a Great Spotted Woodpecker or small tor- a concert. This was the first entertainment since the toiseshell butterfly may be seen amongthe ivy house was finished, which is uniquein its character. and grasses of the graveyard. MrGroves has the merit, and great it is, of planning and designing the whole of it. Messrs Crace, whose * KOK abilities have been so successful at Brighton, completed Sally Williamsis currently working as researcher on the decorative part, and MrFiles of Lamb’s Conduit- the review of the London Historic Parks and Gardens street, has displayed his taste in the furniture. Trust’s Inventory of Public Parks, Gardens, Squares, The Princearrived at about seven o’clock, accompa- Cemeteries and Churchyards ofLocal Historic Interest. nied by Earl Moira, Major Bioomrietp, Mr SHERIDAN, &c and the Dukes of Kent and Tue Féte ofABRAHAM GOLDSMID: CampRIDGE arrived in their barouches immediately A Recency GARDEN TRAGEDY after. They were introduced into the saloon, and about by Katie Fretwell’ eight o'clock they sat down to a most sumptuous dinner in the eating room. On the removal of the cloth the n the first decade of the nineteenth companyretired to the saloon. There was a most superb century the small but elaborate Regency des[s]ert and viandsset out. estate of Morden Lodge, a site now part of On Mr A Gotpsm1giving the health of the PRINCE, the National Trust’s Morden Hall property in herose, and in a very animated speech of a quarter of an South London,briefly gained first fame and hour concluded by giving the Messrs Goldsmid, with then notoriety due to two extraordinary three times three, which Mr B Go.tpsmip answered in events: a festivity and then a tragedy. Although a short and neat speech, expressing how muchtheyfelt the house has since been rebuilt and the the honour done them. After the des[slert there was a grounds have been considerably altered, Concert, in which BraHam,Signora Storace, Mr W contemporary newspaper accounts of these Porter &c assisted. The band was led by Artwoop, incidents tell us much about the architecture, assisted by Satomons. Matuews,the Comedian,gave furnishings and garden layout of Morden his imitations of the different Actors &c. The gardens Lodge,as well as about its unfortunate propri- were illuminated by 3000 or 4000 lamps, which had a etor, his social circle and his businessaffairs. very elegant effect on the water. There was a pleasure The story opens on the evening of 227d boat illuminated, with the Prince’s feathers &c and had August 1806, when Mr Abraham Goldsmid, a a very singular and beautiful effect. The grounds were well-known and successful City financier, completely lighted, with various devices. The whole of threw a magnificent house-warming celebra- the illuminations &c were by Messrs Parker & Perry. tion.” (fig. 40) Morden Lodge, his exquisite Among the company present, besides those already Grecian-style villa in Mordenvillage, south of mentioned, were London, wasjust finished. Newspapers, both Lord BERKELEY Mr & Mrs B Gopsmip local and national, ran breathlessly enthusias- Sir Robert BuRNET Mr & Mrs A GoLpsmip tic reviews of the event. Under the headline Colonel Mc Manon) Mr & Mrs N Satomon ‘Féte of Abraham Goldsmid Esq.’, Bills & about 300 fashionables.* Weekly Messenger reported that: The Courier described ‘Mr Goldsmid’s Friday Mr Goldsmid was honoured at his newly- Superb Féte’ in lavish detail: erected Villa at Morden, with the presence of his Royal A more picturesque and romantic place in point of Highness the Prince of Wales, his Royal Brothers, the rural scenery cannot be imagined. Before the house is a Lord Chancellor of England, and a select assembly of beautiful lawn,diversified with orange and lemontrees, the first persons of distinétion. This illustrious party aloes, and the various exotics of the most luxuriant

1. This article is based on original research by E. N. Montague, 3. The architect was John Thomas Groves(c.1765-1811), for a time Judith Goodman and William Rudd. Additional research was car- Clerk of Works at Whitehall, Westminster; he was also responsible ried out by Katie Fretwell. for the design of some elegant late Georgian houses. Records show 2. Jewish financier, Abraham Goldsmid (c.1756-1810) arrived in that Groves owned Morden Grove from c.1780 to 1789, erecting a England from Amsterdam with his family as a child. Around 1777 new house on thesite in c.1782. The Crace dynasty of interior deco- he and his brother Benjamin set up togetheras bill brokers; their rators flourished from c.1750 to 1899. Frederick Crace was among the wealth rapidly increased after 1792 through their dealings with the mostfashionable interior decorators of the day, from about 1802 British Government. Benjamin, wholived at Elm Grove, responsible for transforming the Brighton Pavilionin the oriental Roehampton,waslike Abraham a generous benefactor, founding the style for the Prince Regent. Royal Naval Asylum. He committed suicidein 1808.

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