Transcription of image displaying part of the Flemish Graveyard at St Olave Parish Church Southwark (The National Archives)

My image of the graveyard (Flemish section) at St Olave Parish Church Southwark arrived today from the National Archives. The description in the catalogue mentioned that you could read the names of some of the graves and I just had to see that. My 3x great grandfather Christopher Buller buried his first wife Mary Beard at St Olave Southwark, buried two of their children who died as infants at St Olave Southwark and when he died in 1832 he too was buried at St Olave Southwark although all of these burials were from the St Mary Magdalen Bermondsey Parish Register with the note being added in all cases burial at St Olave. (To order this document put Tooley Street into the Catalogue Search keyword and MPA in the Department - the document is MPA 1/108.)

True to the catalogue description I can readily read the names on all the sketched graves. It is a very interesting image which was prepared because of the construction of London Bridge. The Bridge ramps would cross over a large section of the graveyard and so this amazing chart was produced to show the impact of the Bridge on the Churchyard of St Olave. The chart is in colour.

I decided to transcribe the names that appear on the document and will attempt to place them as well. Also on the document in pencil is a list of names and dates which I will also attempt to transcribe at a later date - some of them are very very faint (there were two columns in total on the upper right hand side of the image).

The image itself is labeled in the bottom centre of the image.

(this title is centred)
PLAN shewing that Portion of the FLEMISH BURIAL GROUND
in the Parish of St Olave Southwark
Required for the Purposes of the NEW LONDON BRIDGE.

The scale is 1 inch: 5 feet (this is located below the title in the middle of the image and is centred with respect to the title).

Surveyed by George Allen
69 Tooley Street
16 February 1831
(this information is in the lower right hand corner and is handwritten)

The entire image has a fine line border about 1/4 inch from the edge.
If we think of the Thames River as being on a easterly-westerly direction at this point (indeed at this point it has left the east-west flow to a more east south east flow) then I can work my way around the portion of the Churchyard as drawn in the chart.

Possibly fronting on Tooley Street and in the extreme lower left hand corner of the chart is the

"Premises in Occupation of Solomon Davis Esquire"

and approximately 8.9 feet from the top back corner of his building (in a straight line approximately northwestward) the portion of the Churchyard which will be used for the approaches for London Bridge begin. This approach (more or less northward will cut across 78 feet of the churchyard and at the topend of the churchyard will be 71 feet from the roadway. As I write this I am remembering how the land looked around the London Bridge. Of course it is so different now. It is a multilaned bridge with enormous easements which contain massive roadways that lead to the main bridge.

Luckily under the Southwark Bridge along the pedestrial tunnel there is a mural showing the various buildings that had been along Tooley Street before the bridge was built. From records I have looked at thus far I have more or less determined where Christopher Buller's slop shop was (slops being sailor uniforms) and he was about a block away from St Olave  Parish Church.

My hand is pointing to the approximate location of Christopher Buller's shop and just to the left of my arm you can see St Olave Churchyard. The plaque for St Olave Church is on the other side of Tooley Street which rather confused me at the time as I had thought it was along the Thames River because of this picture.

I shall hunt out the other pictures of this mural as it is a most interesting picture of London/ Southwark/ Bermondsey south of the Thames River in the early 1800s. It has come up very nicely on the blog.

This is walking along the underpass below Southwark Bridge. There are a lot of bridges at this point along the Thames River. In a row, there are Southwark, then London and then Tower Bridges. All of which are very very interesting and well worth a walk across each one. We actually crossed all the bridges in London and Westminster doing all the main ones from Lambeth Bridge to Tower Bridge. Each one has something to see or it is just really interesting looking across the water at London from the vantage point of the middle of the River. We also crossed Hungerford and Millenium which are both pedestrian bridges.

This last image is an enlargement of St Olave Churchyard.

I am trying to find the exact location of the Church itself. The section of the Churchyard that was affected by the London Bridge construction was known as the Flemish Section. Looking at the original image which I received I am trying to place the Flemish portion into this larger area.

According to the website the Flemish ground was on Carter Lane and you can see that Carter Lane is above Tooley Street in the picture above directly above St Olave's Churchyard.

http://www.burial.magic-nation.co.uk/bgstolaves.htm

I shall continue to work through the location of this particular piece of property but now I will start the transcription of the names on the image.

I have named the chart and will do a short discussion of the other labels that appear on the image. In the top left hand corner there is a pink bar which creates a triangle in the upper left area bounded by the pink bar and then the two sides. In this area we find the title: New Ascending Roadway leading on to the New London Bridge. The pink bar contains the wording: New Wing Wall supporting the Roadway. This pink bar crosses the very top of the graveyard and beneath this line and outside of the graveyard are the words: Vacant Ground. Along the edge of the graveyard is a partial wall extending up from the premises of Solomon Davis Esquire. A line has been drawn which is parallel to the roadway and it extends across the graveyard.

Beginning in the lower left hand corner beside the premises of Solomon Davis Esquire and working across the graveyard and creating rows from left to right.  Each of the entries represent a plot in the graveyard (the first two in Row 1 are single entries and the third there are three people buried in the plot (just by way of explanation on the spacing of entries).

Row 1: 

Nich[ola]s Furminger 1800

Mrs. Martha Innott 1797

Will[ia]m Atkinson

Ann Atkinson

Sophia Atkinson

Martha Farrington 1781 Aged 18 days

Farrington (mausoleum probably)

Mr. W. Berryman

Wife

and Six Children

Row 2

Mrs. Ann Marsham 1800

William Breach

Mary Breach

Grace Edmeston

Row 3

Walter Brooks &

Frances Brooks 1783

George Worthington

Row 4

Mrs. Sus[anna]h Cuming 1788

Four Children of John & Martha Hiscock

John Hollick and Five of His Children

Row 5 (the graves are rather close together row wise and I will just list them as they occur across the page)

William B___y

and 2 of his Children

Will[ia]m Black 1780

Hannah Black 1756

Rachel Pounder 1814

and Children

S.M. 1751 E.M.

Two Children of Henry and Ann Ealing

Will[ia]m Moore

Mrs. May Latham

Mrs. Mary Kettle

Alexander Mausoleum

John Will[ia]m Moore

Joseph Will[ia]m Moore

Mary

Mr. Will[ia]m Thomas

Sarah Napier

Mrs. Eliz[abe]th Thomas

Ellen Sarah Thomas

There is an entrance gate and walls along the top edge of the burying ground.

There are hand written notes in the top right hand corner that refer to the various burials providing a little more information. At a later date I will transcribe the notes.

Although my intent in purchasing this document was the hope of finding information on my Buller family. However, I did know that it was a Flemish Portion of the St Olave Graveyard so realistically did not think that I would find any Buller graves listed. However, with my Family Finder results giving me so many German matches at the 4 to 5 to Distant Cousin level I thought it worthwhile to at least have a look at it.

The image is excellent. The National Archives does a terrific job of photographing documents when you order them.