Tag Archives: gravestone

A Dutch name on a gravestone in the City of London

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AT THE OLD BAILEY court on the 18th of February 1767, Edward Wild was formally accused (indicted) of stealing 25 yards of woollen cloth worth £10 from the widow, Winifred Vanderplank (https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/record/17670218), and found guilty. At the trial, Winefred’s son Bartholomew Vanderplank told the court:

“I live in Bartholomew-close with my mother; I am a cloth-worker. Last Monday three weeks, the piece of cloth mentioned was taken away; the prisoner at the bar was stopped with it; I was before Justice Welch when he and the cloth was; he there confessed he took it away.”

According to “The records of St. Bartholomew’s priory and of the church and parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield” (publ. 1921), Mr Vanderplank lived close to the Church of St Bartholomew the Great, formerly part of the Priory that existed there until it was disbanded and partially demolished during the reign of King Henry VIII. The records stated:

“… The house of  Mr.  Vanderplank close by (he  lived  at  No.  54 [ i.e., Bartholomew Close])  was  the  monastery  kitchen  from  which  a  subterranean  passage communicated  with  the  church,  persons  having  passed  through  it to  the  knowledge  of  the  proprietor.”

The same records revealed that the Vanderplanks lived at 54 Bartholomew Close:

“In the London Directory  of  1770, No.  54 was in the occupation of the Vanderplanks,  cloth  workers, who  lived  in  the  parish  until  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.”

You might be wondering why I should be telling you about a family whose surname indicates that it probably has Dutch origins. Well, the reason is that yesterday (the 2nd of April 2024), I was in the church of St Bartholomew the Great (near Smithfield Market) when I looked at the floor and spotted the gravestone recording the deaths of several members of the Vanderplank family, including that of Bartholomew, who appeared in court on the 18th of February 1767. 

Regarding Bartholomew, he was affiliated to the City of London’s Clothworker Company (guild) (https://londonroll.org/search), as were some other members of the family, who lived in Bartholomew Close. I have not yet been able to find out when exactly the Vanderplank family settled in England,  but I have read (www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/oms/londons-evil-may-day-riots):

“The Flemish and Dutch arrived in England in large numbers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and were primarily artisans, especially weavers and other cloth workers. This was partly due to ‘pull’ factors in the form of royal invitations and ‘letters of protection’ issued by the king. The Crown was keen to boost the English cloth industry by encouraging the arrival of skilled foreign workers. However, immigrants from the Low Countries also came due to ‘push’ factors, especially the hardships caused by warfare in the region and sentences of mass exile in the late fourteenth century for participating in revolts in Flanders.”

The top of the stone reads:

“Here lieth the Body of Barthow Vanderplank Late of the Parish who died July 19 1792 aged 48 years.”

The stone also commemorates the deaths of other members of his family – his wife and children. Because I was curious about the surname, I did a little research on the Internet, and found what I have just described.

John Constable and a bookseller’s grave

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ST JOHN’S IS the parish church for the C of E parish of Hampstead. The present building, designed by Henry Flitcroft and John Sanderson, was dedicated in 1747. It stands on Church Row, which is lined with elegant 18th century houses and links Heath Street with Frognal.

Church Row, Hampstead, London

The church is at the northern edge of a graveyard well populated with funerary monuments, including the grave of the artist John Constable (1776-1837). This grave is in the old part of the church’s cemetery, which was hardly used after 1878, when it was officially closed. A larger, newer graveyard is on a sloping plot across Church Row and north of St John’s. This is the burial place for a host of well-known people as well as the family of Hampstead’s Pearly Kings and Queens.  

When I used to visit Hampstead in the 1960s and early 1970s, I used to ‘haunt’ a most wonderful second-hand bookshop on Perrins Lane, which leads east from Heath Street. It was owned by an old gentleman, whose name, Francis Norman, I only learnt many years after he died. Recently, I met a member of Mr Norman’s family. He told me that Mr Norman died in 1983 and is buried in the cemetery at St Johns, describing the location as: “by a wall near Harrison and the children’s playground”.

I was not sure to whom he was referring when he mentioned “Harrison”. At the church, we asked a lady about Mr Norman’s grave.  Hearing that he had died in 1983, she suggested that we looked in the newer part of the cemetery. This has a wall that borders a children’s playground. When I looked around carefully, I found  neither any monument to Harrison nor Norman’s gravestone.

On returning to the church and explaining our unsuccessful quest, the lady sent me to see another church official, who was working in an office attached to the church. This lady knew exactly where Mr Norman was buried. She took me into the older part of the cemetery and showed me the gravestones of Francis and his wife Sonia, which lie next to each other. They are next to a small wall and close to a large monument to the clockmaker John Harrison (1693-1776). He was the inventor of a marine chronometer, which solved the problem of how to ascertain longitude whilst at sea. His story can be read in “Longitude” by Davina Sobell.  Norman’s grave is not far from that of John Constable.

Francis and Sonia Norman are amongst the few people buried in the old cemetery after it was closed in 1878.  My helpful informant at the church did not know why they had been interred there instead of in the newer part.

Francis Norman was a kindly, wise, and friendly fellow, who did not mind me and several of my friends spending hours in his shop, often spending very little on his extremely reasonably priced books. I have fond memories of the time that we spent in his presence, which are described in my book “Beneath a Wide Sky: Hampstead and its Environs” (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09R2WRK92).  So, it was with great pleasure that I met one of his family and was able to pay my respects at his grave.