First & Last Burial

The First Burial

The first person known to have been buried at Horton Cemetery was Annie James.

She had been a patient at the Manor and was buried on 31 July 1899, aged 47.

Remarkably, details of the cost of her burial survive.

Her shroud cost eight pence. The gravediggers received ten shillings and sixpence, while undertaker James Ockenden was paid £1 12s 6d.

Annie’s burial began a pattern that would continue for more than half a century.

These were principally pauper burials of patients whose bodies had not been claimed for burial elsewhere. A headstone was not automatically provided: it had to be paid for privately by a patient’s family.

Consequently, although thousands of people would eventually be buried at Horton, comparatively few received permanent headstones. The historic landscape assessment records that only around 30 to 40 headstones were erected.

The absence of a stone, however, did not mean the absence of a person.

Behind every burial number was an individual life.

The Last Burials

By the 1950s, Horton Cemetery was approaching the end of its working life.

What had begun as a small institutional burial ground had been used continuously through the reigns of Queen Victoria, Edward VII and George V, through two World Wars and into the early years of Elizabeth II’s reign.

The Cluster itself had changed too.

The old London County Council institutions had become part of the National Health Service in 1948, while ideas about psychiatric care were beginning the long transition away from the enormous asylum system.

Burials at Horton continued until 1955.

Establishing the absolute final burial deserves particular care because of the condition and complexity of the surviving records. Rather than name someone as the “last” without conclusive evidence, the Friends distinguish between the last known burial recorded by the evidence presently available and an assertion that no later burial occurred.

What can be said with confidence is that the cemetery ceased to be used for burials in 1955.

After approximately 56 years, Horton Cemetery closed.