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Rippleside Cemetery Tour
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The heritage volunteers visited Rippleside Cemetery on the 23d of October, it did not go unobserved that this was the date of the auspicious St Ethelburga’s feast which celebrated the first Abbess of Barking, with festivities such as the Barking Fair, until 1875. This event has recently been marked by Eastbury Manor House, as St Ethelburga’s Hallowtide Fair, produced by Punchdrunk, in 2014. We looked forward to warming up with a hot drink and refuelling with lunch at Eastbury Manor House, a short walk away, after our tour, especially as it was a damp day (some of us got wet feet).We gathered at Rippleside’s beautiful grade II listed Chapel of Rest, designed by local architect CJ Dawson and inspired by St Margaret’s Church and the Curfew Tower, when the Barking Burial Board sought to find more space for burials beyond St Margaret’s Churchyard. The new cemetery and chapel opened in 1886 and we discovered a photograph at Eastbury afterwards, which showed the cemetery at this time, the chapel looked marooned in a rather desolate place (previously known as Maesbrook Meadow) before the graves were dug and the newly planted trees had grown (praised by London gardens online website as, ‘notable cedars, holly, yew, laurel and bay…’).
Cemetery staff joined us inside the chapel where we discussed some of the Barking residents who had pursued the town improvements and Social reform which became prevalent in the late Victorian period, including two members of the Barking Burial Board of the 1880s: Doctor Hugh Herbert Mason and his wife Susannah Mason, who lived at Abbey Lodge, East Street. Dr Mason was also Barking’s factory surgeon and local medical officer as well as manging the Dispensary on The Braodway, which offered subscriptions to enable the poorer residents to afford medical advice and medications, in the days before the NHS. Mrs Mason served on the Barking School Board in the 1890s and became the first female councillor for the inaugural Barking Urban District Council in 1894! She would have served in the offices of the newly built Town Hall - now known as the magistrate’s court and probably the finest of Barking’s few Victorian buildings, also designed by CJ Dawson who had his offices there. Susannah made an extremely significant contribution to local society for a Victorian woman, particularly as she was also the mother to two young children Edward and Marianne. Tragically Marianne passed away in October 1896, and with a spooky coincidence was buried at Rippleside a day earlier than our visit, 123 years ago.
Marianne’s grave was found to be unmarked, though lying next to that of CJ Dawson, who was buried some time later in 1933 with his wife and several of his sons, who had died before him. Marianne was not without a memorial however, as her parents paid for the set of striking stained-glass windows inside the chapel, one of which depicts Marianne, just seven years old, in her likeness, with her parents behind her (see the attached photograph). Dr Mason had a fine red beard, which is on fine display in a portrait of him as the first Chairman of the Urban District Council (from 1895), unveiled by his wife in 1897, a year after Marianne’s death. Her parents departed Barking after forty years’ service to the area, and returned to the midlands in the early 1900s, so they are not buried at Rippleside, leaving Marianne’s memorial in the chapel and evidence of their significant impact on the area to tell their story. Mark Watson, the heritage officer, informed us that the cemetery chapel was not consecrated because the Burial Board had intended that it could be used by people of all faiths, and it certainly still feels like a spiritual and peaceful space for anyone remembering those who have been lost to us.
Outside the chapel the closest graves are the oldest graves in the cemetery and the heritage volunteers were able to find several of the past residents and reformers, that they have been researching. We marked our respects to these people of the past who we have become familiar with, with red roses. One of whom, Robert Hewett, whose eye-catching grave is recognised by a nautical anchor, was of the distinguished Barking fishing family, who lived for several years at Fawley House on East Street, first built by the Hewett family in the early nineteenth century. Robert chose not to be buried in the family plot at St Margaret’s but in the newer Rippleside Cemetery, which fits well with his contributions to the improvements of the town during the Victorian period. Significantly the victims of the fatal Barking boiler explosion of 1899, which occurred at Hewett’s Yard and acted as death knell for the last remains of the Short Blue Fishing Fleet in Barking, are also buried at Rippleside. We paid respects at the grave Arthur Hulme, one of the youngest victims, an apprentice, sixteen years old, at the time of the tragic explosion. He is buried with his father of the same name, who had been born and raised in France before returning to England and training as an organ player, as noted in John Blake’s article on the Barking (and district) Historical Society website, and served as St Margaret’s Church organist for 43 years. Sadly, like the Mason Family, and Dawson family the Hulmes had to live with the bereavement of a child, something that even wealthy and distinguished families could not avoid. Poorer residents could not always afford a separate grave for their youngest loved ones, and at a time of high infant and child mortality Mark and the cemetery staff informed us that a mass child grave used to exist at Rippleside...
On a brighter note the volunteers recognised several other graves of local residents and traders of East Street and important contributors to Victorian Barking, including Arthur Blake whose Ironmongery gave the name to Blake’s Corner (corner of East Street and Ripple road), the site of Boots in recent years. This building was lost to enemy action in World War 2 along with its locally famous ‘clock house’, though the connected buildings remain in East Street. We are very grateful to the cemetery staff who also guided us to the grave of Annie Huggett the longest surviving suffragette, who died in 1996, aged 104. She moved into one of the borough’s first council houses in King Edward’s Road in 1903 and was the longest card-carrying member of the Labour Party. We also debated which of the Frogley family were buried here, there were generations of Josephs, but we agreed that the Frogley who recorded and illustrated Victorian Barking so effectively in his unpublished manuscript, in the early twentieth century, was William Holmes Frogley. We have been lucky enough to see this wonderful old record of Barking at the borough’s Archives and Local Studies Library, Valence House.
Also accompanying us on our tour was Jonathan King (we wondered if he knew of the King Family who owned businesses in Barking for several decades – the best photo of one of them is that of John H King’s store in 1931, on our website homepage). We are grateful for Jon’s report of our Rippleside cemetery tour on the Post website, the link is included here, it has additional photos of the day and the portrait of Dr Mason. The Post will also be publishing a heritage article on the ‘Stories behind the Stores’ of East Street, for Woolworths/Abbey Lodge – so stay posted for that!