I have been to ... East Greenwich Pleasaunce

A dictionary definition of a pleasaunce is 'a pleasure-garden; a region of garden with the sole purpose of giving pleasure to the senses but not offering fruit or sustenance.' It is thought that the word takes its origin from the former Royal Palace of Placentia or Palace of Pleasaunce which was also known as Greenwich Palace.

Greenwich Palace before it was demolished in the 1660s to make way for the Royal Greenwich Hospital.

It is not a word that one sees or hears in use much these days, but within the boundaries of the Royal Borough of Greenwich there are two places that include the word in their names, the Well Hall Pleasaunce and the East Greenwich Pleasaunce.

The area occupied by the East Greenwich Pleasaunce was originally owned by the Page-Turner family as part of their Westcombe Estate. They sold it in 1856 to the Admiralty for £6,000 for use as a cemetery as the existing one near the Royal Naval Hospital was already full.

Between 1836 and 1838 the London and Greenwich Railway – which was the first steam-powered railway in London – was built.

The route of the London and Greenwich Railway. It was built on a brick viaduct from Tooley Street (later London Bridge) to Greenwich via Deptford.

When the railway was extended eastwards towards Charlton and Woolwich, a railway tunnel (the Maze Hill Tunnel) needed to be built, and as this was going to pass underneath the existing graveyard, the remains of around 3000 sailors and officers – including some who had fought in the Battle of Trafalgar and during the Crimean War – were removed from the hospital site in 1875 and reinterred in the Pleasaunce.

An 1884 map showing the location of the Royal Hospital Cemetery.

In 1925 more bodies were reinterred from the former hospital graveyard to make way for the Devonport nurses home. The following year, the Pleasaunce was sold by the Admiralty to the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich (the forerunner of the Royal Borough of Greenwich), although the did reserve the right to use the site for further burials. Subsequently, the whole area was remodelled so that it could serve as a park.

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Some photographs of the East Greenwich Pleasaunce

A small stone block that commemorates the opening of the Royal Hospital Cemetery in 1857.

Near the entrance to the Pleasaunce is a large memorial that commemorates the  fact that 3,000 bodies from the original Royal Hospital Cemetery were reinterred there in 1875.

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I hope to write a further blog post about some of the people who were buried in the Pleasaunce.