London’s Pocket Parks: St Martin’s Gardens, NW1

This quiet haven of peace can be found just a few minutes’ walk from the crowded Camden town centre and has been here since it was created just over 200 years ago as an overflow burial site for St Martin in the Fields church.

The burial ground was effectively created in 1802 when an Act of Parliament granted permission for land in Camden to be set aside for a cemetery to be used by St Martin in the Fields, which, being right next to Trafalgar Square, lacked space for its congregation.

The burial ground was consecrated in 1805.

A few years later, the Camden Chapel was built opposite the burial ground, but not part of it, which opened in 1824. The chapel was notable for its use of classical Greek architecture as inspiration. Subsequently, the building became known as St. Stephen’s Church and, later, as All Saints’. After WWII, it was also used as an Orthodox chapel. The Greek Orthodox community later bought the chapel, and it’s now a Cathedral.

Back to the pocket park, which, as a burial ground, provided a surprisingly turbulent life after death for its residents.

A slice of land on the western side of the cemetery was sold in 1817 to create space for almshouses, which opened in 1818 as the St Martin’s Almshouses, and are still there today, and still providing accommodation to “poor elderly spinsters, widows or divorced women of good character”. However, they now allow men or couples — under certain circumstances.

In 1853, the church applied for permission to build homes on a large plot of land on the southwest corner that had been reserved for the Camden Town Cemetery, but this was to prove far more controversial than expected.

It didn’t help that the church argued that burials were to be stopped in the cemetery because it was full but also at the same time, that there was all this unused land that could be sold off for housing. This was to be proven to be wrong, as the land sold by the church had been used for burials, and the church needed to move bodies that had already been buried there. When work started a few years later, it provoked protests against the removals.

Allegations that the bodies were desecrated filled the newspapers with claims that the sale of the land had been “perpetrated by fraud and misrepresentation”.

Eventually, though, the land was cleared, and today, the houses that line St Martin’s Close are the ones built on the former cemetery. I wonder if the owners know.

Finally, in 1889, the remainder of the burial ground was opened as a public garden, with the ceremony performed by Hannah Rothchild, Countess of Rosebery, one of the richest women in England at the time.

The once formal burial ground layout was replaced with a softer design with wider paths in a less regimented layout. A drinking fountain was added at one corner, and some of the larger graves were retained as landmarks for the park.

The gardens were restored in 2005-6, and reopened on 10th June 2006 by the current Countess of Rosebury.

The layout hasn’t changed much, though, and there’s a helpful sign near the entrances that shows the significance of the remaining memorials—such as the Celtic Cross erected in the memory of the artist Charles Dibdin or Sir John Barrow’s tomb.