St James Gardens were used as a burial ground between 1790 and 1853.
St James was opened in 1788 as the new burial ground for St James’ Piccadilly. It was once rectangular in shape but the building of Euston station, covered the east end of the graveyard.
Edward Walford writing in
Old and New London in the late nineteenth century said: “St. James’s Church, formerly a chapel of ease to the mother church of St. James’s, Piccadilly. It is a large brick building, and has a large, dreary, and ill-kept burial ground attached to it. Here lie George Morland, the painter, who died in 1804; John Hoppner, the portrait-painter, who died in 1810; Admiral Lord Gardner, the hero of Port l’Orient, and the friend of Howe, Bridport and Nelson; and without a memorial, Lord George Gordon, the mad leader of the Anti-Catholic Riots in 1780, who died a prisoner in Newgate in 1793.”
It was closed for burials in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1887 the majority of the monuments and tombstones were removed and St James opened as a public garden. The open space between the park and Hampstead Road was occupied by the London Temperance Hospital.
The land of St James Gardens was earmarked for the expansion of Euston Station accommodating the HS2 high speed rail line. The gardens closed to the public to allow the exhumation of some 6000 bodies buried across the gardens.
The Underground Map project is creating street histories for the areas of London and surrounding counties lying within the M25.
The aim of the project is to find the location every street in London, whether past or present, and tell its story. This project aims to be a service to historians, genealogists and those with an interest in urban design.
The website features a series of maps from the 1750s until the 1950s. You can see how London grows over the decades. |
St James Gardens were used as a burial ground between 1790 and 1853. 
