W. R. Macdonell 
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of Kinloch s excavations. She also speaks of " Pest Field or Plague Pit in 
Gower's Walk now occupied by Messrs Kinloch's new buildings." I presume, 
however, that slie had no better authority for this view than I have given above 
from Messrs Barton and Peile's report. 
I cannot find that on the discovery of the bones any attention was drawn to 
the existence within a few yards of the spot of a very crowded burial-ground. 
This forms the real difficulty of the investigation. I first had my attention drawn 
to it by examining a very recent map of London published by Gall and Inglis. On 
this map a long strip running south from the Commercial Road about midway 
between Gower's Walk and Backchurch Lane is marked " Burial-Ground." At 
present it appears to be a cartage contractor's mews, paved with cobbles, and 
without the least sign of a burial-ground at all ! Measured on Gall and Inglis' 
map this ground extends about 91 yards south from the Commercial Road. In 
Crutchley's map of 1847 it is also marked Burial-Ground and extends between 90 
and 100 yards from the west and east section of Church Lane, afterwards taken 
up by the extension of Commercial Road. This enclosure first appears with the 
name " burial-ground " in Greenwood's fine map of 1824-6. There is no sign of it 
in any map I have seen from the beginning of the 19th century and still less from 
the end of the 18th. It is difficult to conceive that it existed before houses were 
built on Kinloch's site. In Neele's map of 1806 there is a passage across from 
Gower's Walk to "Church Street," about half-way down to what is now Hooper 
Street. It is represented now by an alley with squalid cottages running east from 
Gower's Walk 148 yards down. It does not go through to Backchurch Lane as it 
did in 1806. This passage would, we hold, have been north of the Kinloch site, 
and it seems extremely unlikely that the burial-ground should have crossed it, and 
originally have extended to Kinloch's site. It was some time before I could 
identify the burial-ground by name. It belonged to an undertaker named Sheen 
and was called Sheen's Burial-Ground*. In 1829 I find Sheen was living in Leman 
* The cartographic history of Sheen's is the following. We find on the west and east section of 
Church Lane (now Commercial Road) a " Chapel" and "Burial-Ground" south of it on Greenwood's map 
of 1824-6. The south end of the ground is 100 to 120 yards from the then Lane. The ground is broader 
than marked on later maps and more like the present cobbled yard. In Horwood, 1792, there is a close, 
which obviously became Sheen's. In Bowles of 1786, and his circular map of 1790, there appears to be 
a house with a garden behind it. Carej', 1787, indicates it too, and I think that this yarden was Horwood's 
close which ultimately became Sheen's. It must not be confused with a house and garden — query, 
chapel and burial-ground — which appear in a very marked way on Laurie and Whittle's map of 1800 ; 
Walter, 1801, and possibly Carey, 1766, seem to give this also. It would be west of Sheen's and at the 
entrance to Great Alie Street. Possibly it was the "Ebenezer Chapel" referred to in a later footnote. 
In 1823 J. Wyld marks "Chapel" at the spot of chapel on Greenwood, and Thompson, 1823, gives 
apparently the lines of Sheen's ground. In 1827 Wyld gives the burial-ground unnamed ; in 1828, Faden 
gives "chapel" without ground. In 1826, 1827, 1835 and 1847 Crutchley has "burial-ground." In Faden, 
Hughes, R. Rowe, Smith, Fores, Darton, Phillips, Mogg, Fairbairn, Langley and Bletch, Luffman, all 
maps from 1803-1810, it does not appear. In Sherwood, Neele and Jones, 1813 ; Mogg, 1814 ; Carey, 
1818; Leigh, 1820; etc. etc. it is absent. Laurie and Whittle, 1809-10, indicate a dotted close, and 
Cooke, 1801, a building at the entrance. To sum up. Sheen's as a burial-ground most likely did not exist 
before 1820 and was probably placed with a chapel on the site of an old house and garden. 
/ 
