St George’s Gardens, Bloomsbury: A Hidden Historic Garden

Some of London’s loveliest green spaces are ex-churchyards and graveyards. Tucked away behind one of Bloomsbury’s terraces of grand Georgian houses you will find one such place: St George’s Gardens. 

All three of its entrances are down quiet side streets so it is not somewhere you would necessarily stumble upon. Read on for the history!

A New Burial Ground

St George’s Gardens, today with its meandering paths and scattered tombstones, was once a burial ground used by two churches.

A quick scan however does not reveal any churches nearby. In the early 1700s, as graveyards directly around churches had started to fill up in London, new burial grounds, distanced from the churches they were serving, started to be established.

St George’s Gardens was actually one of the first examples of this. The two churches were St George’s Bloomsbury, about a 15 minute walk away on Bloomsbury Way and the other is St George the Martyr on Queen’s Square (marked on the map at the beginning).

The site opened in 1714 in an area surrounded, at that time, by fields and was split down the middle between the two churches. Today a line of stones still marks that boundary. 

A map from 1746 below showing the graveyard, the split down the middle, as well as the foundling hospital to the south built in the 1740s.

As it was essentially in the middle of fields, a large wall had to be constructed around the outside to deter bodysnatchers who looked to steal bodies in the dead of night to sell to anatomists for anatomical study. 

From Graveyard To Garden

Like nearly all inner-city burial grounds, due to the sheer number of bodies, the graveyard had to be closed in 1855.

It was turned into a public park in 1884, as part of the movement led by activists such as Octavia Hill, who went on to co-found the National Trust, to create ‘open air sitting rooms’ for the people of London. 

Meandering paths wind through the garden with various little corners to explore. There are also lovely lawn areas with many surviving graves and monuments.

As many of the green pockets in Bloomsbury are private garden squares, St George’s Gardens are a fantastic asset for the people living, working or simply passing through the area. 

What To Look Out For

The First Burial

Make sure to find the gravestone of the first person to be buried here: Robert Nelson, who died in 1715.

He was a non-conformist religious writer and chose to be buried here to encourage others to do so. Initially, the people of London were not keen for relatives to be buried on the outskirts of the city, but as Nelson was an influential religious character, many were happy to follow his example.

In fact, the burial ground became known locally as ‘Nelson’s Burial Ground’.

A Cromwell Descendant

You will also find the grave of a lady called Anna Gibson (1659-1727). Prior to marrying her husband, the physician Thomas Gibson (1647-1722), her surname was ‘Cromwell’. She was the sixth daughter of Richard Cromwell and granddaughter to Oliver Cromwell, both Lord Protectors of England.

Thomas Gibson was the author of The Anatomy of Humane Bodies (1682), and physician-general to the army in 1718-19.

An Ancient Greek Muse

A sight that stands out in the garden is this terracotta statue.

Depicting Euterpe, one of the nine muses in Ancient Greek mythology, goddesses of music, the statue once sat, with statues of the eight others, on the front of the Apollo Inn on the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Torrington Place.

The Apollo Inn was demolished in 1961 for an extension of Heal’s department store. The owner of the shop, Anthony Heal, presented the statue to the borough and it was placed here.

An Elaborate Memorial

On the way out I spotted this beautiful gravestone to the Taylor family.

The above memorial can be found on the side of the old mortuary building, pictured below by Handel Street.

Thank you for reading, more of London’s hidden gardens and green spaces below…