St Andrew's Church - Church Walk, Enfield, London, UK - Churchyard Cemeteries on Waymarking.com

The London Gardens Online website tells us:

The church is surrounded by its large churchyard, which comprises a number of different, mostly railed areas, and paved walks that run between the church, the walled garden of the Vicarage and the ancient Grammar School. The churchyard was enlarged in 1778 when part of an adjoining field was purchased by Mr Clayton and consecrated by Bishop Lowth on 13 August, and it was again enlarged in 1846 with the purchase of additional land to the north. In 1858 the old portion of the churchyard was closed for burials except in family vaults and brick graves. Further burial land was required by 1871, as a result of which a Burial Board was set up and 9 acres of parish land were designated for a new cemetery, which was consecrated in July 1872 as Lavender Hill Cemetery (q.v.). The churchyard is densely planted with yew, Scots pine and other ornamental conifers and prominent horse chestnut.

There was an ancient yew in the churchyard, now lost, to the north of the church by the south chancel window, which in the C18th was clipped in the shape of an inverted cone. The practice of clipping churchyard yews into sometimes fantastical shapes appears to have followed from the growing fashion and popularity of topiary in the late C17th. A particularly good example in London is at St Mary's Church, East Bedfont (q.v.). However in the early C19th romantic notions of unfettered nature gained currency, as advocated by poets such as William Wordsworth in his poem 'Yew-Trees' of 1815, and J C Loudon praises the natural magnificence of ancient yew trees in his 'Arboretum et Fruiticetum Britannicum' of 1838. A print of 1813 of St Andrew's Churchyard shows the yew reverted to its natural state.

The churchyard has some good monuments from the C18th, including one by Nicholas Stone, and another to John White, Surveyor to the New River Company, and near the door to the Vicarage garden are noteworthy tombs of Lord and Lady Napier of Murchiston and of Revd Dr Cresswell. Victims of the plague were buried in the churchyard in the C16th and C17th although in the year of the Great Plague of 1665, only 55 burials were recorded. A small Gothic crenellated building to the north at the edge of the churchyard in Church Lane was erected by the Vestry in the early C19th to house the parish fire engine, but from 1882 it was used as a mortuary for over 50 years. It became a Chapel of Rest for a local undertaker, then offices but is now an extra meeting room for St Andrew's Church.

Name of church or churchyard: St Andrew Enfield Approximate Size: Large (100+)

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