Lost Graves

      ...the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. 

So ends George Eliot's Middlemarch, one of the greatest of English novels. Eliot, whose real name was Mary Anne Evans, has a grave in Highgate's east cemetery that is well visited. Nearby lies a man she loved, Herbert Spencer, who coined the term "survival of the fittest", and who melded Darwinism with capitalism in an influential lecture tour of the USA. Coincidentally, lying almost opposite Spencer (politically and geographically) rests Karl Marx, probably London's most popular grave pilgrimage.

Having had a look around London's most famous cemeteries to see who is buried where, it's striking to realise how many grave locations have been forgotten. The only thing worse that an unvisited tomb is a lost one. Members of the nobility were usually buried on church land adjoining their estates and could afford elaborate tombs, but mere mortals' post-death fate was more precarious. The poor and outcast could be dumped into mass unmarked graves.

There are a number of reasons:

1. London is always short of space, and cemeteries can get converted to parks, gardens or handed over to property developers. City churches had their burial grounds paved over. Sometimes the bodies were reburied, often not. Graves that were leased, and had expired, could be dug open again and other bodies buried on top of the exiting coffins.

2. The building of the railways from the 1830s led to several cemeteries being closed or reduced in size. The widening of roads to accommodate motorised vehicles also reduced the size of existing burial grounds.

3. Britain's damp weather erodes tombstones. An half-inch deep engraved stone can't be expected to last much more than 150 years. Most older than 200 years become illegible if not re-engraved. Lichen and moss don't help either, especially if it's a flat tombstone. Graves can also subside underground with time. Tombstones can topple over. Outside of Westminster Abbey and the city churches, hardly any graves remain before the 18th century.

4. Amalgamation of parishes. As Britain becomes more secular, many churches (especially Victorian ones without Grade I or II heritage listings), are sold off to property developers.

5. Cremation. Around the turn of the 20th century, cremation became a common burial practice, especially for agnostics and atheists, and many requested that their ashes be scattered at sea or over beloved rural country. Alan Turing, Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell and HG Wells are examples.

6. Lost at sea. Often explorers died at sea and British practice was to bury them at sea (the exemption is Admiral Nelson). Examples of explorers who were either lost or buried at sea include Captain James Cook, Francis Drake, George Bass, John Cabot, and John Franklin.

Sometimes the location of a burial is known due to church records, but nothing remains to mark the spot. Either the descendants of the deceased or a learned society dedicated to preserving the memory is required to purchase a new tombstone. An example is William Hazlitt's grave at St Anne's in Soho.

Here's a list of a few lost graves...

St James Gardens beside Euston Station
where  Matthew Flinders was buried

1. Matthew Flinders... explorer who circumnavigated Australia in the early 19th century (then known as New Holland), gave Australia its name, and wrote up his epic voyage. He died in 1814 (like fellow explorer George Vancouver, he was just 40 when he died) and was buried at St James Churchyard, now next to Euston Station, but the ground was reduced in size and converted to a garden. There is nothing to see there related to Flinders. Perhaps on the bicentennial of his death in 2014 a memorial will be erected.

2. William Dampier... the first Englishman to visit Australia in 1688, the first to circumnavigate the world three times, and inextricably linked with Alexander Selkirk who became Defoe's inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, the first English novel. Like Flinders, he wrote a book on his voyages, and passed away into obscurity, dying in 1715. His grave's location has been unknown for centuries, and could even be outside London.

3. John Polidori... the Edinburgh-educated doctor that accompanied Byron to Switzerland. He was there at the famous June 1816 night by Lake Geneva, and expanded a fragment of a vampire story that Byron began into the best-selling gothic short story The Vampyre. He was the first to merge the eastern European myth of the undead with an aristocrat, which was later taken up by Bram Stoker in Dracula. Polidori committed suicide in 1821, aged 25 (most of the romantics died young), and was buried in St Pancras Old Church, just north of the British Library. The grave is now lost, most probably due to the narrowing of the burial ground  when the railway was constructed. Thomas Hardy was involved in repositioning a lot of the graves.

The Hardy Tree, where many graves at St Pancras Old Church
 were moved to make way for the railway

4. Robert Boyle... chemist, experimenter (with Robert Hooke) on the properties of gas using the air-pump. Once one of the wealthiest men in England, we know he was buried at St Martins in the Fields (next to Trafalgar Square) in 1692. The crypt is now a cafeteria, and the exact grave location has been lost. Interestingly his famous collaborator, Robert Hooke, has also had his grave lost. Originally he was buried at St Helens Bishopgate (next to the Gherkin in the City). However all the graves were dug up and reburied out at the City of London cemetery in the north-east of London. There is a memorial to St Helens Bishopsgate, but not to Robert Hooke. Westminster Abbey and St Pauls have only recently installed memorials to Hooke.

5. Daniel Solander... was the main (Linnaen-trained) naturalist on Captain Cook's famous Endeavour (1768-71) voyage, being employed by Joseph Banks. He was organising the collections in Soho Square when he suddenly died of a stroke in 1782, aged 49.

6. Joseph Banks... longest ever serving President of the Royal Society. He ran a virtual government ministry of science out of his home in Soho Square. He died in 1820 and did not want his tomb to be visited, requesting a private burial. in St Leonard's Church, Heston (near Heathrow airport). The exact location of the grave is unknown. There is now a memorial plaque on the inside church wall, but the church is rarely open to visitors.

The far eastern end of Westminster Abbey

7. Oliver Cromwell... was buried at the very end of the Henry VII Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey but Charles II had the corpse dug up in 1661, hanged and his head displayed on a pole for almost 25 years. His head is reputed to be in Cambridge. The whereabouts of the body is unknown.

Other once-famous people who have had the exact locations of their graves lost: Emma Hamilton, William Hamilton, Arthur Philip, Archibald Menzies, Thomas Newcomen, Samuel Wallis, and William Blake

The rectangle is purported to be the location of the grave of William Blake at Bunhill Fields, close to Daniel Defoe's grave

The faded, fallen tombstone of naturalist Archibald Menzies at Kensal Green

The St Helens Bishopsgate memorial in the City of London cemetery where Robert Hooke's body was placed in the 19th century