Memorial: Burning Cross
On 17th April 1941 Christchurch was set on fire by enemy action and the church cross fell in flames on this spot. These stones mark where the grass was scorched by the burning cross.
September 2013: Our colleague Jamie Davis tells us that the plaque was stolen, presumably for its scrap value.
Site: Christ Church, Southwark (2 memorials)
SE1, Blackfriars Road, Christ Church
From the church's modern information board: "Christ Church Garden is the remains of the much larger medieval Paris Garden mentioned in William Shakespeare's play Henry VIII. The present parish boundary largely follows the line of the Paris Garden. The street called Broadwall separated the Garden from Lambeth Marsh to the west and the street Paris Garden itself recalls the origins of the site.
The first church was erected in 1671 but began to sink into the boggy ground and had to be rebuilt in 1738. The last burial was in 1856 as the churchyard was full. In 1895 some coffins had been damaged by flooding and 650 bodies were removed from the churchyard and vaults and reburied at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. In 1900 The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association created a new garden from the cleared churchyard as a public amenity and placed it under the care of the local authority.
... Writers Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley ... and the Rennie family of railway and bridge engineers were parishioners and the church was known to Charles Dickens.
The present building dates from 1959 and replaces the second church which was severely damaged by enemy action on 17 April 1941. The stone cross in the grass behind the church marks where the tower's cross fell and was listed in the National Register of War Memorials in 2003."
