The gravestones arranged along the wall on the east side of the playground point to its former use as a burial ground, in fact it is two adjacent former burial grounds joined together.  The section that opened in 1896 was formerly the Friends’ Burial Ground, purchased in 1697 and probably used for burials for those who attended at the Horsleydown Meeting House.  It was much used and probably raised once or twice.  The Horsleydown Meeting House was sold in 1800 and the Meeting combined with that held in Redcross Street. The Burial Ground was closed in 1855.

 

There was a burial ground attached to the Redcross Street meeting house in Worcester Street (now O’Meara Street) and in 1860 both meeting house and burial ground were compulsorily purchased by the Metropolitan Board of Works for the formation of Southwark Street.  Just under a thousand skeletons that had been buried in now perished wooden and nineteen lead coffins still complete were carefully dug up and tranported by hearse to the Long Lane burial ground where they were reburied in two long pits that had been especially dug. All the while, a  member of the Friends Meeting House attended to ensure the procedure was undertaken properly and with respect.

 

The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association after “considerable negotiation” with the Society of Friends arranged for Bermondsey Vestry to lease the former burial ground and the MPGA contributed £150 towards the laying out of the new public space.  Mrs Basil Holmes wrote ‘The London Burial Grounds’ in 1896 as the park was being laid out and before the adjoining Ebernezer Burial Ground was added to form a larger space.  This latter burial ground was formed at the end of the 18th century and was owned originally by the Independent Chapel in Beck Street and then by the Ebenezer Baptist Chapel.  Mrs Basil Holmes reported it was “closed and untidy.” Some buildings that lay between the Friends Burial Ground and fronting on to Long Lane were demolished probably in the middle of the 20th century and the cleared ground added to the park.