Monument: St John the Baptist upon Walbrook
Erection date: 1884
{On the main body of the monument:}
Sacred to the memory of the dead interred in the ancient church & churchyard of St John the Baptist upon Walbrook during four centuries.
The formation of the District Railway having necessitated the destruction of the greater part of the churchyard all the human remains contained therein were carefully collected and reinterred in a vault beneath this monument AD 1884.
{Lower down:}
Rev. Lewis Borrett White, DD, Rector
John R. W. Luck, Edward White - Church wardens
An unusual and unsuccessful siting of a three-dimensional monument. One face is presented to the pavement, the rest of the monument is behind rather nice chunky railings and a nasty modern metal fence, along with some old gravestones and, when we visited, the usual detritus: traffic cones, old paint tins, litter, etc. Behind the monument is a ventilation shaft for the underground. A number of London's monuments disguise similar shafts and we've listed the ones we know about at Dance's obelisk.
Convinced that this arrangement is not as originally intended we found this 1904 map which shows the site with no building and the monument free-standing.
Site: St John the Baptist upon Walbrook (1 memorial)
EC4, Cloak Lane
2016: Mike Coleman has directed us to BBC Autos - an excellent long post with lots of images, concerning cemeteries, plague pits, and the construction of the railways.
Go to map of other memorials in this area
