St John the Baptist Graveyard - Cloak Lane, London, UK
N 51° 30.693 W 000° 05.474
30U E 701834 N 5710725
The memorial is made from stone and is set into the front of a building on the north side of Cloak Lane, a street that runs west from Cannon Street railway station.
Waymark Code: WMJ64G
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 09/30/2013
Views: 3
The memorial is inscribed:
Sacred
to the memory of the
Dead
Interred in the ancient church & churchyard
of St John the Baptist
upon Walbrook
during four centuries
The formation of the District Railway
having necessitated the destruction of
the greater part of the
Churchyard
All the human remains contained therein
were carefully collected and reinterred in a
Vault
beneath this monument
AD 1884
At the base of the monument is a further inscription naming the rector and
two churchwardens.
The
Tired of London - Tired of Life website tells us:
One of the unlucky churches of the Great Fire, St John
the Baptist upon Walbrook stood next to a stream, not far from what is now
Cannon Street Station, from the 12th until the 17th century.
One of 86 churches to be destroyed by the Great Fire of London, St John's
was passed over for rebuilding under Sir Christopher Wren's grand plan, and
was never to be reconstructed. The church was dealt a further blow when the
building of the District Line meant that the remaining churchyard had to be
dug up in 1884, and now all that remains of the church and those buried
there is a vault and memorial on Cloak Lane.