Abney Park in Stoke Newington, London, formerly one of the ‘magnificent seven’ garden cemeteries of London, is now a woodland memorial park and Local Nature Reserve managed by the Abney Park Trust. We offer free public access, and educational facilities - including a small stone carving workshop, training centre/ classroom, and visitors centre.

Please click on the links in the title bar at the top of this page to visit our pages about history and ecology, or for details of services, events, courses and facilities.

A brief introduction...

The park originated in the eighteenth century when the land was laid out by Lady Mary Abney.

It was, for many years, home to Dr Isaac Watts, the ‘father of hymnology’, whose ‘Busy Little Bee’ and ‘O God our help in ages past’ are well known today.

By the early nineteenth century, the grounds were used, in part, by a novel Quaker school for girls founded by William Allen and Grizelle Birkbeck.

However its most well-know land-use dates from 1840, when a unique non-denominational garden cemetery was laid out with a remarkable

A to Z arboretum, and a small Wesleyan training college. Its centre-piece, the Abney Park Chapel, was deigned to be a landmark to religious toleration, being open to all. It formed a dramatic centre-piece, overlooking a well timbered landscape and specialist planting by Loddiges Nursery.

The original trust cemetery was sold to a commercial company in the 1880s, who ran it for almost a hundred years before it became insolvent, and closed in 1978, passing the property to the London borough of Hackney. Ideas for the restoration of the chapel as a visitor centre and for the future management of the historic park with community involvement, were developed during the 1980s. Since 1991 the park has been leased to the Abney Park Trust as a nature reserve, educational facility, and memorial park, in partnership with the freeholder, the London Borough of Hackney.

The Council remains responsible for the residual cemetery function, being a burial authority whose practices and  duties towards the maintenance of the park and the relatives of those interred here, are governed by the Local Authorities Cemeteries Order 1977. However certain areas are closed altogether to burial and headstone rights acquired from the former cemetery company, including all paths.

The Trust opened a visitor centre in the front lodge, restored the outer and inner courtyard, and upon becoming an accredited training centre added temporary classroom facilities, stone and woodcraft carving workshops, and a children’s garden. Creative and performing arts are also supported, as is a continuing memorial function. Unlike many historic parks and gardens, including some garden cemeteries from the same era, the Trust allows the public to enjoy the grounds during daylight hours free of any membership requirement or entrance charge. Opening and closing times are set by the Trust, and serviced by the Hackney Park’s Service.

The Trust has been an Accredited Training Centre for City and Guilds for over 15 years, and holds an ‘Approved Centre’ certificate for City and Guilds and the National Proficiency Test Council. In recent years the Trust has been granted accreditation to offer various training courses for NPTC and the Awarding Body Consortium in horticulture, conservation, woodwork, Skills for Working Life, and a level 2 diploma in work-based environmental conservation. Most recently the Trust has expanded its provision of practical skill workshops to offer non-certificated drop-in courses open to all for stone carving and woodcraft, funded by Natural England and the Big Lottery.

If you or your friends would like to donate through the secure Big Give Website ... simply click HERE to find out more ... or click on the ‘BigGive.org.uk’ banner below.

This will help all our services, ranging from improving and maintaing the Children’s Garden, to wood and stone craft training courses, practical outdoor nature conservation, family history and archives work, and arts education and performances.

please help us fund-raise... idea two...

...more about the park

In the mid 1800’s, the hey day of Abney Park as a garden cemetery, it was described as ‘the most ornamental garden cemetery in the vicinity of London’ (q.v. John Loudon).  It also became the principal place of memorial for prominent London dissenters (Congregationalists, Baptists and other nonconformists, including many abolitionists authors and missionaries). In Robert Southey’s opinion, the new garden cemetery at Abney Park was undoubtedly ‘the Campo Santa of Dissenters’ of the nineteenth century; a sobriquet he applied to Abney Park’s predecessor cemetery, Bunhill Fields, for eighteenth century nonconformist burials.

The fortunes of the park as a garden cemetery began to decline after the First World War, but until this date a galaxy of people, ranging from popular Music Hall stars to the founders of the Salvation Army (William and Catherine Booth) chose to be buried here. Music Hall and variety artistes commemorated at Abney Park include Albert Chavalier and George Leybourne. Chartists include James Bronterre O’Brien, Henry Vincent and Benjamin Lucraft. Prominent nonconformists (ministers, missionaries authors and abolitionists), include Dr Newman Hall, Dr John Pye Smith, Dr Andrew Reed, Dr Thomas Binney, William Brock, James Sherman, Emily Gosse, Thomas Burchell and Samuel Oughton. Notable horticulturists include James Shirley Hibberd and Conrad Loddiges. Educational philanthropists include Sir Hugh Owen and Samuel Morley. Joanna Vassa, daughter of the famous black author and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano,is also buried here; as is the black author and playwright Eric Walrond.

In recent decades the wooded memorial estate has been designated an Historic Park and Garden, and became Hackney’s first Local Nature Reserve.  The grounds are rich in birdlife, providing habitat for breeding populations of Green Woodpeckers, Tawny Owls, Firecrests, Bullfinches and Nuthatch in a green oasis of woodland trees, flowering plants and fungi; and the dappled glades support the largest breeding population of Speckled Wood butterflies this close to the centre of London.

...map and leaflet (click to download)

useful links...

* Searchable Index of burials by Surname

* N16 Magazine

* Hackney Archives

* Revd Dr Stephen Orchard, Gresham College - Abney Park & Christian Philanthropy in London 1830-1850

* Wikipedia - Abney Park Cemetery,

                     Abney Park Chapel,

                     Abney Park,

                     Notable Burials at Abney Park Cemetery

* The Independent - Postcode from the edge: Abney’s hidden treasure

* Londontown.com - Abney Park Cemetery & Nature Reserve

* Londonisfree - Abney Park Cemetery

* English Heritage - a declining Park & Garden with high vulnerability, Abney Park Cemetery

* Commonwealth War Graves Commission

* Garden&Green - Places in Peril, Abney Park Cemetery

* Black Environment Network -    Greenspace of the Month Feb 2004

* BBC Breathing Places - Abney Park

* BBC London - Abney Park Cemetery

* Capital Ring - Interesting Places, Abney Park Cemetery video link

* Discover Hackney

* Hackney Council for Voluntary Service

* Abney’s Owls

* londonist nature-ist 1.Abney Park

* Stoke Newington Birds

* London Bird Club - Abney Park

* Hackney Wildlife

* Abney Park’s fungi (and natural world)

* Wonderful Abney Park

1. *Sepia Images
   

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