Wednesday, October 15

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.

📍 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.

🗺️ 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.

🕯️ 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.

🧭 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

Tuesday, October 14

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.

Thursday, October 9

Help for Andy: Trying to find the location and information of the Three Mariners in Lower Deptford

Three Mariners is an old sign, of which there are examples among the trades tokens, and which is still to be seen on two or three public-houses in London. There was formerly a tavern known by this sign in Vauxhall.

🌍 Help Find the Lost Location of “The Three Mariners” in Deptford

For years, I’ve been trying to track down the original site of a lost riverside tavern — The Three Mariners — mentioned in a famous 1673 Deptford ghost story. The haunting was said to have taken place “at the Three Mariners in Lower Deptford, by the King’s Yard” at the house of Nicholas Broadway. It’s one of the earliest printed ghost stories linked to the area, but the pub itself seems to have vanished without a trace.

Deptford’s riverside has changed dramatically since the 17th century, and many old inns have disappeared or been renamed. Finding the location of The Three Mariners would help preserve an important part of the area’s maritime and social history.

🕵️ Can you help?
If you’ve come across old maps, directories, parish records, or local photos that mention The Three Mariners, please get in touch. Any lead, no matter how small, could help solve this historical mystery.

👉 Read the original ghost story here: OldDeptfordHistory.com — The Ghost of the Three Mariners (1673)

Wednesday, October 8

The Ghost of Brockley Cemetery

The Ghost of Brockley Cemetery: A Deptford Haunting That Shocked Victorian London

A chilling night in Victorian Deptford

In the spring of 1888, the quiet edges of Brockley Cemetery — then often referred to as the Deptford Cemetery — became the scene of an event that sent ripples through London.

Newspapers reported that a young woman of about 18 years old had collapsed and died after what witnesses described as a terrifying encounter with a “man dressed as a ghost.” The British Medical Journal would later cite these press accounts, describing the tragic case as one of those rare instances in which someone had been, quite literally, “frightened to death.”

This was no theatrical story or whispered legend. It was a headline in real Victorian newspapers — and it captured a city already gripped by ghost panics, moral anxieties, and a fascination with the supernatural.

Brockley Cemetery in the 1880s: on the edge of London

Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery (today managed by Lewisham Council) opened in 1858 as a burial ground for the parishes of Deptford and Lewisham.

By the 1880s, the area around Brockley Lane and Brockley Road was still semi-rural — a landscape of gas lamps, unpaved paths, and looming cemetery trees. Death was a visible part of daily life: funerals were community events, and graveyards were places of both mourning and superstition.

Victorian London was also home to a series of “ghost scares” — men and pranksters dressing in white sheets, sometimes with phosphorescent paint, to terrify pedestrians. These incidents were frequently reported in the London press.

“Frightened to death”

The details of the Brockley Cemetery case emerged in early April 1888.

Newspapers (now catalogued in the British Newspaper Archive and cited in the BMJ of 7 April 1888) described how the young woman encountered a figure “dressed as a ghost” near the cemetery gates at night. She reportedly screamed and collapsed on the spot.

Attempts to revive her failed. The coroner’s report, according to the BMJ summary, concluded that shock and fright had likely triggered heart failure.

At a time when medical science was still entangled with moral and social ideas about fear, sin, and female “nerves,” the story became a cautionary tale repeated in both medical circles and popular newspapers.

“The young woman, startled by the sudden apparition of a supposed ghost, was seized with a violent terror, fell insensible, and expired shortly thereafter. A more melancholy result of such wicked folly can scarcely be imagined.”
— paraphrased from BMJ April 7, 1888

Ghosts, panic, and urban legends

The Brockley incident wasn’t unique. Throughout the late 19th century, similar “ghost” scares were reported across London — from Hammersmith (1804) to Peckham (1875) and Lambeth (1890). Some were cruel pranks; others became unsolved mysteries.

What makes the Brockley Cemetery case stand out is that it ended in death — and that the medical establishment took notice. The BMJ’s decision to reference the case gives historians a solid anchor point in a field often filled with unverifiable folklore.

Deptford’s haunted reputation

Deptford — a maritime district with centuries of layered history — was already rich in ghost stories. From the dockyards said to echo with the footsteps of drowned sailors to the St Nicholas Churchyard, long whispered to be haunted, the area was steeped in a supernatural atmosphere.

The Brockley Cemetery tragedy added a modern, headline-grabbing chapter to that folklore. It reflected both the Victorian obsession with ghosts and the very real dangers of fear in an age before electric light and mass policing of nighttime streets.

Legacy and modern retellings

More than 130 years later, the 1888 “ghost scare” has become a staple of local hauntings lists.
Local history blogs like Brockley SE4 and Old Deptford History have revisited the case, pointing to the BMJ reference and speculating on how urban legend and actual tragedy intertwined.

The cemetery itself — now a peaceful green space with Grade II-listed monuments — still carries an air of Victorian melancholy. Ghost walks in the area sometimes reference the incident, though few realise it was once front-page news.

Timeline of the Brockley Cemetery Ghost Scare (1888)

Date	Event
Early April 1888	Young woman encounters “ghost” figure near Brockley/Deptford Cemetery
Same night	She collapses and dies; local press reports the case
7 April 1888	British Medical Journal cites newspapers, labels death as “fright caused by apparition”
20th century	Story absorbed into Deptford ghost lore
2000s–present	Case revived in blogs and local history circles

Conclusion

The Brockley Cemetery ghost scare of 1888 is more than just a spooky anecdote. It’s a snapshot of Victorian London — where folklore, fear, and real tragedy met under a gas lamp near a cemetery gate.

It reminds us how fragile the line between urban legend and lived reality can be, and how ghost stories often leave very real shadows.

Sources & References

British Medical Journal, April 7, 1888 – note on “frightened to death” case near Deptford Cemetery.
Brockley SE4 Blog — “Ghost story at Brockley Cemetery” (modern summary of the BMJ and press coverage).
Old Deptford History — Ghosts and local legends.
British Newspaper Archive index — Deptford press reports (Greenwich & Deptford Observer).
Lewisham Council history of Brockley & Ladywell Cemetery

OLD DEPTFORD HISTORY