The Sleeping Lion And More Secrets Of Abney Park Cemetery

You may have worked out by now that I am a big fan of cemeteries. They are amazingly peaceful places for a wander but also are packed full of history and stories.

Abney Park in Stoke Newington is one of London’s ‘Magnificent Seven’ garden cemeteries. They were private cemeteries set up in mid 19th century to alleviate pressure on inner city burial grounds that were becoming overcrowded.

Abney Park was set up in 1840 on the land once occupied by Abney Manor. As well as being the burial place for nearly 200,000 bodies, it is also a local nature reserve, quietly buzzing with woodland life.

Like all the Magnificent Seven it provides a tranquil and green escape from city life and is very interesting. I will take you through some of the fascinating characters buried/honoured here as well as the story behind why you’ll find a lion calmly sleeping inside the cemetery.

Abney Park: Sir Isaac Watts

Born in 1674, Watts was a non-conformist Christian minister and prolific hymn writer. He is actually buried in the non-conformist burial ground of Bunhill Fields. You can read a bit more about them here. He attended the dissenting academy in Stoke Newington in 1690 and lived with the Abney household for 36 years until his death in 1748.

A statue of him was erected in Abney Park, funded by public subscription, in 1845. It was designed by Edward Hodges Bailey, who also sculpted a certain famous statue of Horatio Nelson. One part of the statue is, however, very new: Isaac’s right hand. A number of years ago his right hand was stolen. After a fundraising campaign to restore the statue, in the Spring of 2020, Abney Park Cemetery funded a new hand for him based on original designs.

Abney Park: Architecture

The association with Isaac Watts meant that the cemetery became the foremost burial ground for dissenters in London. It was in fact Europe’s first non-denominational cemetery. The cemetery was open to all, regardless of religious conviction.

The chapel at its centre was therefore Europe’s, and potentially the world’s, first non-denominational cemetery chapel. It was designed by William Hosking and built by John Jay, who is also buried in Abney. It saw the early pioneering use of dissenting gothic building styles.

Today it is a rather eerie but beautiful shell. It closed to the public due to vandalism and fire in 2012. The Abney Park Cemetery Trust is currently trying to raise funds to restore it and open it again to the public. Make sure you check out the Egyptian revival entrance pillars as well, also created by William Hosking.

Abney Park: Joanna Vassa

Due to the cemetery’s associations with dissenters, it also has strong links to Quakers and therefore the 19th Century abolitionist movement. Joanna Vassa was the daughter of a man who has a claim for being Britain’s first black activist.

Olaudah Equiano alias Gustavus Vassa was born in the Kingdom of Benin in modern day Nigeria. He was enslaved as a child, taken to the Caribbean and eventually sold to Robert King, a Quaker merchant, who allowed him to make his own money and buy back his freedom. By 1766 he was able to do so and eventually settled in London. In the 1780s he became heavily involved in the abolitionist movement, working closely with Granville Sharp.

He married Susannah Cullen and had two daughters- Anna Marie and Joanna. Joanna married congregational minister Henry Bromley and died in Hackney in 1857. Her grave was restored in 2007 on the anniversary of her death. It is sadly not known where Gustavus Vassa is buried.

Abney Park: The Sleeping Lion Grave And Frank Bostok

If you are wandering around Abney you may be confronted by a large sleeping lion. Don’t panic; it’s made of marble and very firmly attached to the grave of Frank and Susannah Bostock.

Frank Bostock was a famous Victorian showman, known as the ‘Animal King’ for his travelling menagerie of exotic animals. Born in 1866, he came from the Wombwell and Bostock dynasty of animal trainers and showmen. The dynasty was started by Frank’s grandfather, Essex-born George Wombwell. Wombwell founded ‘Wombwell’s Travelling Menagerie’ in 1810 that toured Britain. He is also known to have bred the first lion in captivity in the country. Like Bostock he is buried under a statue of his lion, Nero in Highgate Cemetery.

Frank, following in his grandfather’s footsteps, toured all over Europe and America and was wildly successful. He introduced the ‘Big Cage’ and many exotic animals to Britain and was also apparently the person who found out that lions are scared of the underside of chairs.

The Great Lion Escape

Before a show in Birmingham in 1889, one of Frank’s lions escaped. It somehow got into the sewer system and roars could be heard through the man-holes (I’m not joking). Frank had to think quickly. To stop people from panicking he revealed another one of his lions in a cage, pretending that he had captured the escaped beast and that everyone was now safe. His supposed heroism drew in big crowds for the show that evening.

It was only after the show that he revealed to the police that the lion was still at large and accompanied them down into the sewers. Bostok ended up coming face to face with the lion and to protect himself put boots on his hands and a kettle on his head. The kettle fell off his head, startling the lion, who ran in the opposite direction into the lasso of a waiting police officer. You can read the whole crazy story here.

Frank died in 1912, at which point he had over 1000 animals in his shows. His funeral and burial in Abney were a large showy affair with the floral tributes alone taking up five carriages.

Abney Park: William Booth

William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, is perhaps the most famous person buried at Abney Park. He is buried with his wife Catherine and his children. They were both Methodist preachers and set up a Methodist Reform Church in 1865 in Mile End, called the East London Christian Mission. This became known as the Salvation Army in 1878. Today it has a worldwide membership of over 1.7 million and is present in 131 countries.

Abney Park: Other notable burials:

James Braidwood (1800-1861)- superintendent of the London Fire Engine Establishment from 1832-1861. He set up one of the world’s first municipal fire brigades in Edinburgh and sadly died in the Tooley Street fire of 1861 when he was crushed by a falling wall.

Betsi Cadwaladr (1789-1860)- the ‘forgotten Florence Nightingale’. She joined the military nursing service at 60 when reading of horrific conditions of the soldiers fighting in the Crimea.

William Tyler (1877-1909)- the first police officer to be shot killed on duty. He was killed whilst pursuing two anarchists who had tried to rob a wages clerk. It was known as the Tottenham outrage and you can read about it here.

If you would like to know more about visiting this wonderful cemetery and how you can support them, have a look at their website.

More London history inspiration here: