London stank in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Thames, full of sewage, flowed past streets covered in human and animal filth, and smoke from chimneys made the air more putrid. A few Londoners began to be aware that there might be a link between disease, destitution and foul smells, one of which was the smell of death, almost unknown in Britain today. Such a smell inevitably led back to the Anglican burial places which were either crypts full of rotting coffins or graveyards, where bones were dug up after 20 or more years.
The cataclysmic Great Fire of 1666 had a profound impact on burial provision; in the City of London 86 churches were destroyed along with St Paul’s Cathedral. During the next 30 years Wren, and other architects designed and built St Paul’s Cathedral and 51 replacement churches, and most of these had vaults beneath them. During the next 150 years most of the churches in the City and Westminster had a crypt as spacious as the church above. The clergy, churchwardens and vestries (against the advice of their architects) decided to use these spaces to earn money by interring wealthy parishioners in them, instead of using the space for other purposes such as schools, storage, meeting rooms etc.
Until the 1830s most people in England were buried in their local church or churchyard – ‘God’s acre’. Each knew their place in death as in life, with the wealthy coffined in the vaults below the building and everyone else buried in the churchyard. Parochial records suggest that an average for intramural interments was between 5 and 8 per cent, and that burial fees represented a high proportion of parish income.
In the early 19th century growing concern about the capital’s poor sanitary conditions led to a ban on burials in inner London, so crypts and churchyards were closed. Since 1852 some of these, for various reasons, have been cleared and sold, the bones travelling to cemeteries outside London. Churches such as St Martin-in-the-Fields and St Mary-le-Bow have converted their crypts into restaurants, homeless centres etc. Other churches still have their coffins in situ. Should they now be moved?
Malcolm Johnson is the author of Crypts of London. With rare illustrations throughout, this fascinating study reveals the incredible history hidden beneath the churches of our capital