Derelict London & The Underground
My Mum is a Londoner, in it. It is rare to spend a long time looking through a website for more than an hour, without moving on…and two websites have me facinated by their content today.
Derelict London . com explores the state of some of London’s places, transport and cemerery’s left to fall to rack and ruin.
Here is an extract from the Cemetery pages:
Woodgrange Park Cemetery, Manor Park:
In 2000, there was a lively correspondence about Woodgrange Park Cemetery in Manor Park [East London]
and some of the headstones to be used on the Emmerdale Farm [ TV soap] set in Yorkshire,
prepararatory to the sale of part of of the cemetery for housing. The London Evening Standard carried a full
page report and pictures on the work of exhumation. The pictures are of a piles of discarded coffins and a large
JCB at work as men sift through the soil for bones. The Graves of East London civilians killed during the worst
raids in the Blitz are being bulldozed today to make way for flats. …the remains of about 15,000 people are being
dug up and bagged in plastic bin-liners. …..Screens were erected around the graves but residents of flats
overlooking the site said they have been shocked to see skeletons unearthed by mechanical diggers . . According
to Council records the graves date back to the 1890s but during the height of the Blitza a 20ft deep pit was dug to
take the thousands of casualties. Most of the graves were unmarked, but details of the dead were entered in a
burial register. Newham Council contacted 21 families and their relatives were exhumed and re-buried in part of
the cemetery still in use. The 27-acre cemetery is privately owned. The deal to sell part of the site for residential
development was done after Newham agreed planning permission for 120 two-bedroom flats.
Patricia Langley writes to Derelict London: “A friend of mine moved into one of the new flats that were built on
the site of the part-cleared cemetery. He told me that even though his vegetable garden was very fertile
(anything would grow in it) he always seemed to always have bad luck and depression, not like Chris at
all. He decided to move out when poltergeist-like activity began breaking out in his home, and his bab
was injured by a mug flying through the air and hitting him.”
And the other website you’ve got to take a look at is:
Underground History, this is a great website exploring London’s Underground Network.
Monica Mullett
As a Londoner now living in the USA and researching my family history, I am horrified to hear about the desecration of Woodgrange Park Cemetery. I have a relative Adrian Pierre JORDAN buried in a family grave around February/March 1920 in Woodgrange Park Cemetery but unsure exactly where the grave is or whether it is still intact. It would really hurt & horrify other older relatives of the deceased here and I wondered if there were any records to your knowledge, where I might find out exactly where Adrian was buried., and if possible to obtain a picture of the grave, if it is still standing.
I cannot believe that anyone could be so cruel and uncaring as to dig up the remains of precious people and put them in bin liners., let alone removing headstones for a T.V. series outside the Capitol. My heart goes out to other families whose relatives are being treated in this way and those tenants of the flats overlooking such abuse.
You have my permission to use this e.mail on your website, if only in total horror & protest.
Very sincerely,
Monica Mullett