Cleveland St Workhouse

Four o'clock and I'm heading off on my second walkabout of the day which will take us to a completely different part of London. Fitzrovia is one of the most expensive parts of London but here in the shadow of the BT Tower, only a few steps from rows of elegant Georgian houses, is a building that was once the last refuge of the most desperate members of the local population: Cleveland St Workhouse.

Only three Georgian workhouses are still standing in London and this one is the best-preserved (though possibly not for much longer as the local council is considering demolishing it to build social housing - see below for details of the campaign to save it or visit their website). This workhouse played a key role in political reforms which revolutionised state care for the sick, and it is also thought to have been the inspiration behind the most famous workhouse in literature: the home of Oliver Twist.

The nearest station for visiting it is Goodge St but I got off one stop earlier at Tottenham Court Road so I could visit Dean St where Dr Joseph Rogers, the social reformer who was chief medical officer at this institution, had his home. It’s an easy walk in an almost straight line from here to Cleveland St, and I like to imagine that Dr Rogers might have walked the same route every morning.

Route from Tottenham Court Road 
station to 33 Dean St

On my way to Dean St I took a little detour into Soho Square Gardens which is an interesting place in its own right. First laid out in the 1680s, this was one of the most fashionable addresses in London in its heyday. In the 18^th century it was home both to Charles II’s illegitimate son the Duke of Monmouth and the ambassadors of Venice, France, Sweden, Spain, Naples and Russia. By the end of the 1700s Mayfair was becoming more fashionable and the gentry moved away and their place was taken by wealthy professionals such as doctors, lawyers and architects. Today the square is home to some big media companies including 20^th Century Fox and the British Board of Film Classification.

Église Protestante Francaise de Londres

In the centre of the square there is a park surrounded by trees - one of which has pinkish white blossom just starting to appear, not that it feels very springlike today! In the middle of the grass there are a couple of rather lost-looking palms and a charming black and white half-timbered cottage used by the gardeners. With its pointed little roof and wonky windows it looks like something out of Snow White. Just in front of the cottage is a white statue of Charles II - originally this was called 'King's Square'. There is a crack running around the outline of his face as if it had once fallen off and had to be stuck on again. He doesn't look impressed.

This is a great square to wander  in - the park is surrounded by some stunning buildings. On one side of the square, opposite Twentieth Century House (Fox’s London home), is the Église Protestante Francaise de Londres – a gorgeous dark red and grey brick building that looks more like the country house of a European aristocrat than a church with its pointed gables and white sash windows. 

There is another church round to the right, also built in red brick, with an imposing square tower and a white statue of its patron, St Patrick, built above the door. This is a Catholic church but it is built on the site of Carlisle House, which was home to Theresa Cornelys, an actress, adventurer, opera singer and lover of Casanova. She was born in Vienna in 1723 and moved to Carlisle House in 1760. Her home was renowned for wild parties, concerts and masquerades.

Plaque above the French Church's door 
(click to enlarge)

These two churches reveal just how multicultural London was in the 19th century. Both were built c.1891-3 and the French church reflects the fact that almost half of Soho's population were Huguenots. There is a plaque above the door commemorating a royal charter issued by Edward VI in 1550 which granted asylum to these French Protestants. St Patrick's church, a nearby information board says, served the large Irish and Italian communities who lived in this part of the city.

14 Soho Square

The other particularly interesting building on Soho Square is number 14. This old-fashioned house, with white lower stories and two floors built in red brick above, tall white windows and a flight of stairs leading below street level, has a blue plaque proclaiming that it was once home to Mary Seacole.
Seacole was a Jamaican nurse who is best known for her work treating the wounded during the Crimean War in 1854-6. During her lifetime she was honoured along with Florence Nightingale.

Leaving Soho Square behind I made my way to Dean St, almost missing number 32, lost in admiring the sign of a pub called the 'Crown and Two Chairmen' which depicts a queen being carried in a sedan chair. Dr Rogers' old home is located on the corner of the junction with Bateman St. These days it is an Italian restaurant called Il Siciliano with a blue awning and a green front door, next to an old-fashioned hairdressers called Gino with a handpainted sign. But above the restaurant nothing seems to have changed; the upper storeys are very 19th-century with tall white windows and red brick walls. A blue plaque announces that 'Dr Joseph Rogers, 1821-1889, Health Care Reformer, lived here'.

33 Dean St

Joseph Rogers was the chief medical officer at the workhouse that we are visiting today. He was also one of the most active and successful reformers of workhouse medicine, founding the Association of London Workhouse Infirmaries and working tirelessly to improve the terrible conditions he found at the Cleveland St institution. His efforts played an important role in forcing Parliament to implement nationwide reforms which radically changed the way state healthcare was provided.


When he arrived at Cleveland St in 1856, Dr Rogers was faced by 20 overcrowded wards filled with dead or dying paupers - in his report he says that 92% of the inmates were ill. In his memoirs, Reminiscences of a Workhouse Medical Officer (a unique historical source which you can read online here), he writes that the workhouse population 'never in my time fell below 500' and an inspection found 556 inmates forced to share 332 beds. Dr Rogers also complained that carpets were being beaten directly outside the men's ward, filling the air with dust, while the workhouse laundry was located in a cellar directly below the dining hall, filling the room with foul-smelling steam. Worse still, he had no professional nurses to help him; instead, the more able-bodied elderly female inmates had been recruited to manage the wards and he found that they were often drunk. Finally, Dr Rogers found that he was expected to pay for any medicines the inmates might need out of his own meagre salary.

Dr Joseph Rogers

Faced with such a hopeless case a lesser man might have given up. But Dr Rogers rose to the challenge. His first act was to relocate the laundry room to a new site in the workhouse yard. When the builders began to dig the foundations they came across an old pauper's burial ground. Shockingly, they had to keep digging down for twenty feet before they came to clear earth. Rogers also enlarged the accommodation provided for sick children, improved the diet given to single mothers and succeeded in ensuring the dismissal of George Catch, the workhouse master, who had been notorious for his bad treatment of the inmates and for obstructing any effort to improve the workhouse. 

33 Dean St to the workhouse

It is an easy ten-minute walk from Dr Rogers' home to Cleveland St and there are several 19th-century buildings along the route. It is a nice thought that the doctor may have seen some of the same sights on his daily commute. That said, I navigated by walking towards the BT Tower, which I'm not sure was a feature of the Georgian skyline...

Walking up Cleveland St past some green boards hiding a very large hole (some major excavation works going on here!) you pass a building on your right with a bright red door. This is a very special spot and I'll return to it shortly. The workhouse itself is a gloomy-looking building of dark brick opposite a pub called the King and Queen. 

Cleveland St Workhouse or, to give it its proper name, the Strand Union Workhouse on Cleveland St, was founded in 1775 when Fitzrovia was still mostly fields, to serve the parish of St Paul of Covent Garden. In 1836 it was taken over by the Strand Poor Law Union and in 1873 it became the infirmary for the Central London Sick Asylum District. From 1923-2005 it served as the outpatients' department for Middlesex Hospital, finally closing its doors after 230 years of continual medical care after the hospital it served was demolished. The old workhouse is currently empty.

Camden Council is currently considering demolishing the building to build new social housing. The Cleveland Street Workhouse campaign have created a petition to save the institution and you can sign it - and visit their website for more information on the building's history here. Many thanks to the campaigners for putting together their wonderful presspack - most of the photos of the workhouse buildings used in this post come from them.

The building on Cleveland St has changed its form very little from the original H-shaped structure shown in the earliest plans of the institution. This map (with grateful thanks to workhouses.org.uk) clearly shows how similar the layout in 1870 is to its current appearance, and also helpfully labels the function of each of the buildings.

You can see that by here it is called the Strand Union workhouse (as it had been since 1836) but this earlier plan from 1827, when it was still known as the Covent Garden workhouse, shows that the basic H-shape was original.

Today the workhouse is a forbidding sight. It's getting dark now and the sky is taking on a bruised look. Silhouetted against this it is easy to understand the dread that Georgian and Victorian Londoners felt for this institution. Four-storeys high, surrounded by tall walls and made of dark brick it is not a welcoming building. Modern hoardings  have been erected to block the two huge gates but you can still see the metal lettering spelling 'in' and 'out' on each side and the pavement running from the gates to the road is cobbled. I wonder how many thousands of desperate people have walked over these stones and through these gates.

Workhouses were built in every parish under the old Poor Law as a refuge for the destitute. The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act insisted that these institutions should be as unpleasant as possible in order to dissuade the able-bodied poor from relying on state support rather than working. Those who were able to cope outside the workhouse would do so, while only those who were desperate enough to enter the institution would receive state help.

Interior of Cleveland St Workhouse

Rear view of Cleveland St workhouse

• Food was basic and monotonous, revolving mostly around bread and cheese and a kind of watery porridge called gruel.
• Men, women and children from the same family were split up upon arrival and housed in separate wards with only limited access to each other.
• Inmates had to wear uniforms of rough blue-and-white striped wool. They slept in communal dormitories and had supervised baths once a week.
• All able-bodied inmates were expected to work to earn their keep, and this work was dull and exhausting. Women tended to be given domestic tasks such as helping in the workhouse laundry or kitchen, or cleaning. Men were required to perform manual tasks such as breaking stones for road surfacing, crushing bones for fertiliser (though this was banned following the 1845 Andover Scandal when starving inmates were caught eating the scraps of putrid meat they found clinging to the bones), chopping wood or - in more rural parishes - grinding corn. Both sexes could be ordered to 'pick oakum' - that is, to unravel old tarred ropes which would then be sold to shipbuilders.
• By the end of the 19th century the emphasis was on giving inmates 'useful' (that is, profitable) tasks such as sewing, spinning and weaving, shoemaking, tailoring and bricklaying. 
• Inmates worked every day except for Sundays, Good Friday and Christmas Day, when all duties except for cooking and essential cleaning were excused.

I should point out that workhouses were not prisons; inmates were free to come and go as they pleased, for example if work became available locally. However, many paupers spent their lives yoyo-ing back and forth between the workhouse and the outside world. In 1901 a woman is recorded as having been admitted to the City of London workhouse 163 times, while a 40-year-old man had been registered at the Poplar workhouse a staggering 593 times.

Other unfortunates spent much of their lives institutionalised. Many of the people who entered a workhouse did so because they were unable to support themselves at all through work, either because they were elderly, mentally ill, disabled or chronically sick. In 1861 a Parliamentary report found that 20% of inmates nationwide had been in the workhouse for over 5 years while 15 individuals had been there for over 60 years.

An inspection which was published in the medical journal The Lancet highlights how awful conditions in the Cleveland Street workhouse had been. The horrified inspectors write that the 'overcrowding... has been at all times dangerous'. Their report paints a dismal picture of wards full of chronically sick or disabled patients; the vast majority of inmates seem to have been desperately ill. They write that 'deeply saddening is the great mass of indoor pauperism weighted with the additional burden of sickness, too often hopeless as to prospects of cure' and record that 200 inmates were sick and 260 infirm or insane, while less than an eighth were able-bodied.

As part of Middlesex Hospital

Like Dr Rogers, they too condemned the lack of professional nurses, writing that of the elderly pauper women recruited to do the job 'very few can be considered fitted for their work as far regards knowledge and many are incompetent from age or physical feebleness'. The report also says that 'the wards are low-pitched and gloomy... dreadfully hot in summer weather [with] radically defective ventilation. The beds are thin, lumpy and wretched and there are no lavatories or bathrooms attached to the wards'.

In the 1930s

Rather alarmingly the inspectors conclude that 'a greater disproportion between requirements and resources it would be difficult to imagine', yet they conclude that the conditions here are better than in some of the institutions they have seen. I hardly dare to think what other workhouses must have been like.

Dr Rogers is singled out for praise in the report: "It has never in the whole course of our inquiries fallen to our lot to observe a more pointed instance of hard and bitter service by a faithful officer, requited by scanty pay, and persistent opposition on the part of the higher authorities to his conscientious recommendations and exhortations to improvement in the construction, management, and arrangements of the house.

Today

"Besides the large number of patients whom he has to attend to, the medical officer has to dispense the medicines, and he must utterly break down in his duties were it not that he employs his own paid assistant to help him for some hours daily in the performance of the guardians' work. The result of this self-sacrificing conduct is, that although there are necessarily some defects in the medical management of this huge hospital, a nearer approach is made to theoretical perfection in this respect than could possibly have been expected.

"We have already noticed in our general report the useful innovation which Dr. Rogers has induced the guardians to carry out, in the shape of a special dietary for the infirm, itself an enormous boon to a large class of sufferers." 

In the shadow of the BT tower

His salary is condemned as 'ridiculous' and the board of guardians in charge of the workhouse come under scathing attack for being 'utterly unconscious or wilfully neglectful of their duties as administrators of a great pauper hospital' and 'exact[ing] a fabulous and impossible task from their miserably underpaid surgeon'.

This report caused public outcry and was one of the major factors contributing to a parliamentary enquiry which ultimately led to the 1867 Metropolitan Poor Act. Under this a Metropolitan Asylum Board was set up, which regulated healthcare for the poor and established its own institutions to treat smallpox, TB and venereal diseases. This Act also oversaw the building of new hospitals and the introduction of professional nurses to all state institutions, and these reforms eventually led to the abolition of the Poor Law and - in 1929 - of the workhouse system itself. The NHS was established in 1948. 

You can read much more about the history of workhouses at an amazingly comprehensive website called workhouses.org.uk - this was an invaluable source in putting together this post.

Before we leave Cleveland St, there is one more interesting building we should visit. Nine doors down, at number 22, a rather famous author spent two periods of his life. This building, known then as 10 Norfolk St, was the first London residence of Charles Dickens, who lived here from the age of 3-5, after his family moved from Portsea, near Portsmouth in 1815, and again between 1829-31 when he was in his late teens. 

The second time Dickens lived on Cleveland St, during such a formative period of his life, must have had an impact on the young man's awakening social conscience. Dickens would have seen staff and inmates going in and out of the workhouse every day. It is thought that this might have been the building which inspired the workhouse in his most famous novel, Oliver Twist.

"Please, Sir... I want some more!"

Dickens' powerful empathy for the poor is not surprising considering how close he came to being institutionalised himself. The Dickens family were terribly poor, moving house constantly as Charles' father tried to find work and avoid creditors. In the first 21 years of his life Charles Dickens lived at 17 different addresses. His father was ultimately imprisoned in Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark and 11-year-old Charles was forced into child labour, sent to work in a blacking factory. This factory was within the Covent Garden parish and it is quite likely that some of his young colleagues had been apprenticed out from the Cleveland Street workhouse. 

After this, Dickens must have felt under constant threat of being sent to the workhouse - and in his Cleveland Street home he lived almost literally in its shadow. Small wonder his novels show such strong sympathy for the poorest members of society - Oliver Twist's fate could so easily have been his own.

Scholars debate whether this was indeed the workhouse that inspired Dickens' book but it seems an obvious candidate. The author certainly showed an interest in the institution in his later life; in the 1860s he corresponded with Dr Joseph Rogers, lending his support to the doctor's campaign to improve conditions there. In 1866 he wrote: 

"My knowledge of the general condition of the Sick Poor in workhouses is not of yesterday, nor are my efforts in my vocation to call merciful attention to it. Few anomalies in England are so horrible to me as the unchecked existence of many shameful sick wards for paupers, side by side with a constantly recurring expansion of conventional wonder that the poor should creep into corners to die, rather than fester and rot in such infamous places."

Number 22 Cleveland Street stands on the corner of the junction with Tottenham Street. It looks like the lower floor was recently used as a cafe but the shop is now empty with newspapers and whitewash plastered over the windows. It looks very sad and neglected. There is no blue plaque to say that this was the first London home of Charles Dickens - if you didn't know the significance of this building you could walk by without giving it a second glance.

But some signs of its 19th-century life can be seen; a lot of the original architectural features have survived, such as the projecting shop window and the semi-circular window above the front door. The upper storeys are also very typical with their dark brick and sash windows.

Having just given an impromptu history lecture to a group of men outside the King and Queen pub - who wanted to know why I was standing in front of a derelict building scribbling into a notebook - I think it is time to leave Cleveland Street. These men didn't know the significance of the old workhouse or the story of number 22 either - this really does seem to be one of Fitzrovia's best-kept secrets.

The Troubadour

It was with some relief that I made my way back along Old Brompton Road and wandered into one of my favourite coffeehouses in the whole city - the Troubadour is only a couple of minutes away if you turn right out of the entrance to Brompton cemetery and keep walking until you cross over Finborough Rd.

The Troubadour has a lovely old-fashioned look to it with its big shop window and painted pub-style sign. The front door is beautifully carved and painted with colourful panels depicting angels and musicians.

Outside there are a couple of cafe tables with red-and-white checked cloths though no one is sitting at them today - the way the roses tucked into wine bottles as centrepieces are drooping, full of rain, might be a clue as to why. 

Inside is a whole different story; the Troubadour is always busy, full of wonderful savoury smells and the sound of people talking and laughing. The decor is simple but eclectic. The furnishings are mismatched, mostly dark brown, black or white, with the odd splash of colour such as the rows of red, yellow and green coffee pots on three shelves in the front window.

I found my way to a high-backed booth with two odd chairs and a small table. In the front part of the cafe you are surrounded by dark wood and plain white walls hung with a range of rustic tools, while literally dozens of musical instruments are suspended from the rafters. There are violins, cymbals, lutes, banjos, bugles, drums and a small tuba - it's an amazing collection.

You are never lost for something to look at while waiting for someone to take your order - the Troubadour is packed with interesting objects. A glass case on the wall near to me holds all sorts of knick-knacks from model animals and toy soldiers to playing cards and two leering Mr Punch puppets. The rafters near the bar - which is traditional dark wood decorated with vintage advertising posters - are crammed with teapots, clay jugs, a wooden figure of a man in a tall headdress, a spinning wheel and even a rusty bicycle, while a cracked, handwritten sign declares that 'organs and street cries are prohibited'.

A rainbow of mugs is suspended over the bar, while further back the rafters are strung with kettles and other ephemera. This coffee shop has an eclectic, bohemian charm which is unsurprising given its colourful history.

It's lovely to be out of the rain. I've just slurred my order for coffee through numb lips - the waitress probably thought I was drunk - and while I wait for it to arrive I'm going to write a little bit about the story of this place. Founded in 1954, the Troubadour was a key part of the music scene in the 1960s. It was the first place Bob Dylan performed in London (in 1962) and has also hosted legends such as Paul Simon, Sammy Davis Jr, Elvis Costello and Jimi Hendrix.

Staying faithful to this artistic heritage, the coffeehouse has a cellar room which holds live folk and blues gigs as well as poetry readings. The Troubadour boasts another claim to fame as the birthplace of Private Eye - the satirical magazine was first produced and distributed here. It was also an early venue for meetings of the Ban the Bomb movement.

Sitting at my table, listening to the incredibly varied music they play over the speakers (in the last few minutes  I have heard both No Doubt's Don't Speak and Buddy Holly singing Words of Love, but they have played everything from Edith Piaf to Dusty Springfield, pop from the '60s to the '90s, French ballads and Spanish guitar), it is easy to understand why this cafe was a hangout for so many artistic and rebellious individuals. There is an easy-going atmosphere in the Troubadour, very continental and laid-back with its low lighting and wooden floors.

One of the staff has just put a tall red candle in a greenish brass holder on my table with my coffee. All around me people are tucking into late lunches and I'm trying hard not to covet their meals, which smell amazing. It's only half 3 and I can't really justify ordering something to eat but I can vouch from experience that the food here is fantastic. When I was doing a freelance research job on Ancient Rome I brought my books here. It's a great place to work and stays open until 11 - a real luxury for freelancers who find it hard to focus at home and can't stay in the library past 5. While I was reading I had an absolutely beautiful bowl of French onion soup, full of flavour with soft strips of onion, huge croutons and a generous amount of cheese. If it was a couple of hours later in the day I would be ordering another bowl without hesitating!

I really can't recommend this place highly enough - it's always top of my list for somewhere to go when I need to work and procrastination strikes. I'll stay here till I thaw out and then I'm off to Soho for my second walkabout of the day.

Brompton Cemetery

Well, I’m off on my first official walkabout and it’s raining. Chucking it down, in fact – just my luck! I’m hoping this will result in some atmospherically gloomy shots of the cemetery rather than every photo turning out too dark – we’ll see.

Click on photos to enlarge them

Today I’m going to Brompton Cemetery – sounds like a morbid choice, but this is one of my favourite places in the whole of London. It’s a huge (39 acres) Victorian cemetery with some truly amazing monuments – I like to bring my charcoals here and it’s a dream come true for an artist or photographer. No drawings today, though – far too wet. 

Back in the 19^th century inner-city burial grounds were becoming dangerously overcrowded so seven new cemeteries were built in a ring around what was then the edge of London. These were known as the ‘Magnificent Seven’. One of these was Highgate Cemetery and another was the one I’m visiting today. Brompton Cemetery opened in 1840 and originally served West London and Westminster.

The main entrance to Brompton Cemetery is on Old Brompton Road – best tube station is Earls Court. You can also enter from the South, getting the District line to West Brompton, but I think the impact is greater when you go through the big main gates and see that great central avenue stretching away towards the great grey dome of the chapel.

Off we go, then. Leave Earls Court by the Warwick Road exit, hang a left and then it’s a straight line to Old Brompton Road. The cemetery wall is dark brick and mossy, arched like a viaduct to form windows barred with black iron railings and through these you can see a great grey-green sea of gravestones. Follow this for a minute or two and you’ll come to a huge square gatehouse made of golden stone.

Insert cliché here...

I last visited this cemetery in early January and it was *freezing*. It might be wet today but at least it’s warmer. Last time I came here to sketch and I had to keep breaking off to do laps of the graveyard with my hands shoved deep in my pockets, waiting for my fingers to thaw out so I could wield a charcoal stick with any degree of control. What a difference 6 weeks makes – the trees are still wintry and bare but the first spring flowers are starting to appear – there are bluebells, daffodils and snowdrops scattered among the graves, almost startlingly bright against the weathered shades of black and grey. This is probably my cue to say something clichéd about the beauty of new life springing up in the midst of death...  maybe not.

Emmeline Pankhurst's grave

Brompton Cemetery is organised like a great open-air cathedral. You have the wide central avenue running all the way down to the domed chapel (based on the basilica of St Peter’s in Rome, apparently) and another one running east-west, plus lots of other little side paths. The main avenue is flanked by tall, bare trees with gnarled, lumpy trunks and blunt-ended, chopped branches poking at a miserable grey sky. As I write, a weak sun is fighting its way through the clouds but it is still drizzling steadily. 

When I last came here the paths were bordered by neatly-swept heaps of dead leaves but these are all gone now. Among the trees the paths are lined by straight rows of square grave plots, covered in grass and enclosed by a low kerb or pillars linked by chains. Behind these a great expanse of stones stretches away on either side. One of the monuments on the left-hand side of the avenue is particularly noteworthy – a tall red Celtic cross engraved with a woman marks the grave of Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the suffragettes.

There is an amazing range of monuments here, all crammed in together and overgrown. Celtic crosses stand beside orthodox ones, angel statues (which this Dr Who fan found thrillingly creepy!) and cherubs weep and there are also obelisks, broken columns and sarcophagi standing on slabs of dark red marble. Best of all are the fantastic family mausolea which with their sloped roofs, pointed windows, arched doorways and crosses on top could be mistaken for small chapels.

Family Mausolea

This cemetery is huge. Barely a third of the way in and the traffic noises fade away to a distant murmur and you are left with just the sound of the wind and birdsong. It’s very odd to find somewhere so still in London, you find your ears straining against the stillness. The best thing about the persistent rain is that I’ve pretty much got the cemetery to myself today, other than the odd cyclist or dogwalker (and the squirrels, the rooks and the pigeons). Last time I came here Chelsea were playing at home and as Stamford Bridge is right beside the cemetery there were hordes of blue-shirted fans swarming along the central avenue. Much more atmospheric today – top tip: check it’s not a match day when planning your walkabout.

I’ve come here today to take photographs and there are so many great subjects here. Although the graves along the paths are organised in regimented rows, the further back you go the more crowded and higgledy-piggledy they become. Some are even oriented at 90 degrees to the others so that they face south, as if to use up every inch of available space. Far back from the main avenue many of the monuments are overgrown and broken, covered with ivy.

I’d like to add that I’ve just missed out by a fraction of a second on a great shot of a rook perched on a gravestone – very Edgar Allen Poe. Or possibly a bit too self-consciously ‘look at me, I’m so Gothic’ – probably for the best that it flew just as I pressed the shutter, on reflection...

I love Victorian gravestones – they are so ostentatious and showy, they are brilliant to draw. And they always have a terribly stoic little inscription, ‘thy will be done’, ‘show me how to go’, or the quintessentially stiff-upper-lip words on poor Mary Ann Hobbes’ stone, which praised her for having ‘patiently endured protracted and intensely acute suffering’. Better still for the student of history, these gravestones often tell you so much more than just the deceased’s name and date of birth and death. These monuments often record their occupation – and, bizarrely, all their past addresses – and sometimes you get an intriguing insight into the lives of the characters who lived in West London 200 years ago.

There was a London doctor (d.1870) who went out to Mexico (what must his life have been like?), Alexander Robert Campbell Johnson (d.1888) ‘served many years in China under HM Foreign and Colonial Offices [and] died at San Rafael Ranch, Los Angeles’ and Thomas Chenery (d.1884) was Professor of Arabic at Oxford and a member of the Old Testament Revision Society. 

Joseph Bonomi, archaeologist

Joseph Bonomi led an even more interesting life – his epitaph describes him as a ‘sculptor, traveller and archaeologist’ and his gravestone has some beautiful engravings in an Ancient Egyptian style. Yet the same stone also hints at a terrible family tragedy – the names of four children are also listed, aged 5, 4, 2 and 8 months, all of which died within the same week. What disaster befell this adventurer’s household?  If nothing else these monuments make you acutely aware of how precarious life was during Victorian times; I came across another stone where one Joseph Crookes outlived his wife, three sons, two daughters and ‘six children who died in infancy’. It’s horrifying really.

But some individuals you stumble across are memorable for more positive reasons. Chevalier Frederick Hafner, ‘Director of Continental Journeys to the Late King Edward VII when Prince of Wales’ has an amazing array of honours and titles to his name, all proudly spelt out on his gravestone.  Knight of this, knight of that... while Joseph Julius Kanne’s stone bears an inscription stating that it was erected by Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales to commemorate 40 years of work by ‘one of Her Majesty’s most devoted servants’. William Howe Hennis’ stone records that he fought at Waterloo in 1815. He survived the battle and lived to 76. I also came across the grave of Tom Foy (d.1917), a Yorkshire music hall comedian.

Devoted Servant Joseph Kanne

Up at the south end of the cemetery you come to two raised colonnades, cloistered walkways built of yellow brick and golden stone, which stand over the catacombs. By now the rain was getting pretty insistent so I stopped to shelter among the columns as my notebook was getting soggy and the raindrops on my glasses were making it hard to see (I eagerly await the day someone invents windscreen wipers for specs!). Here from my vantage point I could look out over the cemetery. As you look towards the chapel with its domed grey roof, the colonnades sweep round like two wings, enclosing a circular space where the graves are more crammed together than

 ever in a mash of grey, black and white with the odd splash of dark red marble. Follow the colonnades round and you pass wall vaults covered with black plaques, most of which are broken and faded beyond legibility.

Against the southernmost edge of the graveyard is Stamford Bridge football ground, silent today. Last time I was here you could hear fans chanting and singing, a great roar of human life breaking into the stillness. Today there is nothing but the hiss of the rain. Even the birds have fallen silent.

Reginald Alexander John Warneford

On the way back from the chapel I came across an unusual gravestone depicting a small plane and a sinking airship, dedicated to one Reginald Warneford who was ‘accidentally killed’ in 1915. I had assumed that this meant some kind of airship accident, but I googled the man’s name when I got home and – as is so often the way – the truth turned out to be far more interesting. Warneford was a First World War pilot, part of what was then the Royal Navy Air Service (which combined with the Army’s Royal Flying Corps in 1918 to form the RAF) who had a short life but was awarded both the Victoria Cross and the French Legion d’Honneur. 

On June 7^th Warneford downed a German zeppelin over Belgium singlehanded – the scene depicted on his gravestone. The airship exploded, overturning his plane and stopping the engine so that he was forced to make an emergency landing behind enemy lines. But within 35 minutes Warneford had repaired his plane and flew back to base. It was this action that saw him decorated by Britain and France – but just 10 days later he was killed in a flying accident while ferrying an aircraft between bases. He was only 23 – the same age as me.

This is by no means the only military gravestone in the cemetery – I’ve already mentioned William Howe Hennis the Waterloo veteran and there is a big memorial to the Chelsea pensioners at the north end of the graveyard. There is also a separate war cemetery, full of rows of those familiar white rectangles, slightly curved at the top, marked with a regimental badge and a cross, like a miniature version of the famous burial grounds in France. I assume these stones commemorate local men who are buried elsewhere as the majority of them date from 1915 and as far as I’m aware there wasn’t a movement to repatriate large numbers of those killed in WW1. Those killed in the ‘South African War 1893-1902’ and the Second World War are also included amongst the graves.

An amazing range of regiments appear among the inscriptions; the Welsh, Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire, North Staffordshire and Middlesex regiments are just a few that I counted. Then there were members of the Rifle Brigade, the Royal Fusiliers, Grenadier Guards, Irish Guards and Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), not to mention members of the RAF, Veterinary Corps and Medical Corps. There is also a single soldier from the Czech army, whose gravestone, shaped like a triangle with a squared-off top, stands just outside the black railings on the other side of the path. 

In the middle of the military section is a huge cross on a grey platform, gleaming bright white and higher than most other monuments in the cemetery. Pyramids of black cannonballs stand on each corner of the block and the end of a cannon butts up against each side. What strikes you about this part of the cemetery is that it is so well cared for. All of the stones are clean and white, the grass is neatly trimmed – it is a stark contrast from the tangled brambles, fallen or broken monuments and sheets of ivy that I saw among the Victorian graves.

Amazing enormous mausoleum - Bram Stoker
take note; very much a des-res for an upwardly-mobile vampire!

By now it had pretty much stopped raining and in a tree near the military cemetery I saw four or five birds that were very different to the fat pigeons and noisy rooks that I had seen all over the graveyard; high in the branches, almost cartoonishly bright against the grey-white sky, were some green parakeets, eating seedpods – it was this loud crackling that had drawn my attention upwards. They look deceptively exotic with their bright green feathers, yellowish tails, red beaks and a pink stripe around their necks like a collar, but they are actually fairly common in London – I often see them in the trees as I walk to my nearest tube station. 

If you walk along the edge of the war cemetery and past the Chelsea Pensioners’ memorial you are almost back at the square gatehouse, leading back into the noise and rush of Old Brompton Street. Before ending this posting I’d like to share today’s winner for the Best Name on a Gravestone competition – it was a close run thing and honourable mention goes to my runner-up, Moncrieff McKenna (d.1951) but first prize has to go to a gravestone I found round the back of the left colonnade: one Acton Smee Ayrton, MP for Tower Hamlets (d.1886). The same stone also lists his nephew Holroyd Chaplin (d.1917) and Holroyd’s son Nugent (d.1918). Amazing.

Hello and Welcome!

Welcome one and all to 'London Walkabouts', a blog documenting some of London's hidden historical treasures. Thanks for stopping by.

My name's Carly, I'm a freelance journalist and historical researcher based in West London. You can download my CV HERE 

I've been exploring various bits of London every weekend since I moved here in March 2010 and I've stumbled upon some fantastic places. There is so much more to this city than wandering between Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London and I hope to share some of the best spots I have found in the coming posts.