Lost Burial Ground

 

The Lost Burial Ground of Hughes Fields, Deptford

By olddeptfordhistory.com

Deptford has always been a place where London’s past meets the present. Dockyards, merchants, sailors, revolutionaries — their stories lie in the streets and buildings around us. But there’s one story almost invisible today: the burial ground that once lay beneath or beside Hughes Fields.

This is the tale of a field, a forgotten graveyard, and a changing city.

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📍 A Field with a Name and a Past

Hughes Fields (sometimes written “Hughs Field”) lay on the western edge of old Deptford, between Watergate Street, Benbow Street, and Evelyn Street. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this was open land — fields on the fringe of a growing riverside village. By the end of the 19th century, it became the Hughes Fields Estate, built to house working-class Londoners.

Long before that transformation, the land had another identity:
locals referred to a burial ground within or adjacent to Hughes Fields — a piece of parish ground that quietly disappeared from maps as development advanced.

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🗺️ A Glimpse on the Old Maps

Stanford’s Library Map of London, 1862.

The Stanford 1862 map shows the Hughes Fields area as open ground directly bordering the parish burial zones of St Nicholas and St Paul’s Church. While the burial strip itself isn’t labelled (typical for overflow plots), its location within parish boundary lines and its proximity to the crowded churchyards suggests the land was used for burials before redevelopment.

Ordnance Survey, 1890s. By the late Victorian period, this part of Deptford had changed dramatically. New housing covered the field, and the burial ground strip referred to in local accounts was no longer marked. This was common: small burial extensions were often absorbed into building plots, unrecorded except in parish registers or local memory.

Hughes Field 1895

⛪ St Nicholas & St Paul’s: The Overflowing Churchyards

Deptford’s population grew rapidly in the 18th and 19th centuries. Its two main Anglican parishes — St Nicholas (medieval) and St Paul’s (Georgian) — had busy churchyards that soon filled.

When burial space ran short, the parish acquired new land:

• St Paul’s expanded into what became Deptford Cemetery (now known as Brockley Cemetery) in 1858.

• Before that, smaller strips of ground were used for extra burials, likely including the Hughes Fields plot.

Nonconformist chapels in Deptford High Street also maintained small burial yards, adding to the patchwork of sacred ground in the area.

1850

⚰️ The “Strip of Burial Ground”

Local oral history and older written guides refer to “a strip of burial ground parallel to the new streets through Hughes Field.”

This suggests:

• It was probably an overflow plot associated with the parish church.

• It may also have included pauper graves or burials of those without family plots — common in Victorian London.

• The site was likely unfenced or minimally marked, unlike larger cemeteries.

When the Hughes Fields Estate was developed in the late 19th century, the burial strip was absorbed into the urban fabric. Many such plots across London were either cleared or simply built over, leaving no headstones and little trace above ground.

Additional ground, Wellington Street

This was consecrated and a wall built in 1765 (there is a commemorative tablet in the wall of Charlotte Turner gardens which incorporates the old ground). The ground was extended to the N in 1897 and widened to the West in the 20th c It is now a level park, north of MacMillan St.

¾ acre. This ground, belonging to the parish of St. Nicholas, was laid out in 1884 by the Kyrle Society, and is very well kept up by the Greenwich District Board of Works, who have lately acquired a piece of adjoining land to be added to the recreation ground. (Holmes)

🏡 What Lies Beneath

Today, Hughes Fields Estate is a residential area. The quiet lawns and walkways give no hint of what once lay here. But archaeological sensitivity remains:

• St Nicholas and St Paul’s churchyards are protected heritage sites.

• The wider area is listed by Lewisham Council as having archaeological potential.

• Any major groundworks would require watching briefs, in case human remains or burial structures are encountered.

For many, this is a poignant reminder: Deptford’s layers run deep. Beneath our feet are centuries of lives lived, and lives remembered.

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🕯️ Remembering the Unmarked Dead

The burial ground of Hughes Fields may be unmarked, but its story is part of Deptford’s fabric:

• It reflects a time of rapid urban growth, public health pressures, and parish expansion.

• It speaks to the lives of ordinary people — sailors, dockers, and families — whose graves may no longer be visible.

• It reminds us how urban development can bury not only ground, but memory.

As local historians, our task is to keep that memory alive.

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🧭 Visiting the Area Today

• Hughes Fields Estate lies between Benbow Street, Evelyn Street, and Watergate Street.

• St Nicholas Church and St Paul’s Church are a short walk away and open to visitors at certain times.

• Brockley Cemetery (originally Deptford Cemetery) offers an evocative sense of the scale of Victorian burial grounds.

When you walk these streets, remember: the ground beneath you once held a burial ground — a quiet resting place on the edge of a growing town.

📚 Sources & Further Reading

• Stanford’s Library Map of London (1862)

• Ordnance Survey Maps (late 19th century)

• Mrs Basil Holmes, The London Burial Grounds (1896)

• London Picture Archive & Layers of London

• Lewisham Council: Archaeological Priority Area reports

• OldDeptfordHistory blog and local oral accounts

The KIngs Arms Deptford. Another Ghost Story

 

 The Kings Arms, Deptford

A Ghost in the Dumb Waiter?

Deptford has never been short on strange tales. Its streets are layered with the footsteps of sailors, merchants, rebels, and rogues. But one story has persisted quietly through the years — the ghost said to haunt the Kings Arms, a centuries-old pub tucked along Church Street.

The Kings Arms was already listed in 19th-century trade directories, serving dock workers, shipwrights, and market folk near the bustling Thames. By all accounts, it was a classic local — a solid bit of Victorian brickwork, all dark wood, tiled floors, and low amber lighting in the evenings.
Pubs like this often gather stories as easily as they gather regulars, and the Kings Arms is no exception.
According to local lore, the ghost that haunts the Kings Arms is none other than a former landlord, a man who ran the place with a firm hand and a watchful eye. Nobody remembers precisely when he lived — and no official record has tied a name to the legend — but the story goes like this:
When a new landlord took over, the old spirit was not pleased.
Staff began noticing odd happenings. A pint left on the bar might suddenly tip over — or, more eerily, slide as if nudged by invisible hands. The dumb waiter, unused for years, would rattle or groan in the still of night. And then there was the bell.
It’s said the pub’s old service bell — long disconnected from anything practical — would sometimes ring on its own. Quiet evenings would be punctuated by that sharp, metallic chime, echoing down the hallway like a call from another time.
One of the best-known anecdotes repeats itself in pub folklore columns: one night, a glass slid clear off the counter and shattered on the floor. A barmaid swore no one had touched it. Another witness — a regular — claimed to have seen it “flicked” into the air.

Of course, skeptics have their theories:

• Uneven surfaces.
• Vibrations from traffic or the trains.
• Old fittings that creak and clang in drafts.
But others say it’s the ghostly landlord, making his opinion known.
The tale has found its way into several modern “haunted pub” lists and Halloween roundups. It’s simple, memorable, and rooted in real geography — the Kings Arms, Church Street, Deptford. That makes it the kind of local ghost story that clings to a neighbourhood for generations.
What makes it more mysterious is the lack of a clear record: no name for the landlord, no precise date for the events. Just whispers, a rattling dumb waiter, and a bell that shouldn’t ring anymore.
Many haunted pub stories are born from creaky buildings, tall tales told over a pint, and the delicious thrill of a good scare. The Kings Arms haunting seems to fit squarely in this tradition — half history, half legend.
But walk past the pub on a damp autumn night, when the air off the Thames is thick and the streets echo with your own footsteps, and it’s not hard to imagine that sharp ding of the bell cutting through the quiet.
Maybe it’s just old pipes and tired wood.
Or maybe, just maybe, the old landlord still wants to make sure things are being done properly behind the bar.

✍️ Sources: local folklore listings, Deptford pub directories (19th c.), Halloween feature, oral retellings. No primary documentation has been verified to date.

The Kings Arms, Church Street, Deptford, London.