londonburials.co.uk
Home page     Introduction    Books     Links   City    North London   South London

St Pauls, Covent Garden
Key:   current observations and notes     Holmes (1897)     other sources     maps


St. Paul’s Churchyard, Covent Garden.
 A pleasant if undistinguished open space. Burials of and memorials to many actors including Ellen Terry and Edith Evans. Buried here are the dramatist William Wycherley (d. 1716) composer Thomas Arne (d  1778)The carver Grinling Gibbons, (d.1721) Artist Thomas Girtin (1802) and the poet Samuel Butler (d 1688). 
1 acre. Given by the Earl of Bedford in 1631. It is closed and very neat, the tombstones forming a flat paved yard round the church, while the rest of the ground is turfed.  (Holmes)

ST. PAUL'S, COVENT GARDEN. - The burying ground adjoining the church, with difficulty admits an increase. On a recent occasion, the grave digger had to make several trials before he could find room for a new tenant, and he assured me that on several occasions, he had been driven from the attempt of digging a grave, and compelled to throw back the earth, owing to the dangerous effluvia he experienced from the soil. The vault underneath the church is also crowded.
(Walker 1839) 


Lost Grounds

Westminster Convent Burial-ground 
Covent Garden Market covers the site. Presumably lost post reformation.

Holmes mentions the Burial-ground by the Workhouse, St. Paul's, Covent Garden, giving the floral arcade as a possible location. The first parish workhouse was in Denmark Place, Exeter Street, but there is no indication of a burial ground there.  However, the later Workhouse for St Pauls, was extra-parochial, in Cleveland Street, St Pancras parish.It was opened c 1778.  In the 20th century this became part of the Middlesex hospital. . This did have a burial ground used as an additional ground for the parish, consecrated in 1790. This has not proved possible to locate on any map.