St George's Gardens

Lovely garden hidden away in Bloomsbury.Gardens
were known as “open air sitting rooms for the poor”
in the 19th century.Virginia Woolf talks about her
walks among the graves here in her novels
This garden contains the grave, of Anna Cromwell, the 6th & “favourite
daughter” of Oliver Cromwell, “the Protector” who died in 1727.
Her grave bears the family coat of arms. The street address (Heathcote) named
after my distant relative, the Rev Heathcote of the Foundling Hospital nearrby

St George's Gardens, created in 1713 was the first graveyard was in London who hasn’t its own church. Also many parishes can bury their dead.
The bad conditions of the graveyard leads to be closed it in 1855 before to be reopen in 1885 like a garden for poor people.
This gardens isn't very tourist, it’s a peaceful gardens in the centre of London.http://www.voyageurdumonde.com/carnet_de_voyage_londres.

Beautiful, secluded, peaceful gardens hidden away in the centre of London. We stumbled on these gardens by accident when wandering aimlessly around the back streets of Bloomsbury. The gardens were originally two graveyards, rescued from dilapidation and ruin by worthy Victorian types seeking to provide green open spaces for the poor. Their efforts paid off, and these gorgeous gardens are the result. There’s something oddly peaceful about the gardens, due in no small part I’m sure to the fact that they are dotted with tombs and lined with gravestones.

A lovely place to spend a few relaxed hours on a sunny day.

A really nice small park located between the bustle of Grays Inn Road/Kings Cross and the Brunswick shopping centre/Bloomsbury. There are a number of benches and it is usually empty apart from the occasional dogwalker. The beds and planting is all looked after well and there are a number of gravestones and markers left from when there were two cemetaries (including he grave of oliver Cromwell’s 6th daughter) on this site.

Due to being walled in and the large trees it feels really cut off from the traffic of the main roads and is really quiet. There is a Waitrose close by in the Brunswick centre if you fancy a picnic, but otherwise it is great to come to for some peace and quiet.

Only just found this place after walking through the area for years. It’s near the Brunswick Centre and Goodenough College. I got in through the entrance at the end of Handel Street. It was an 18th century graveyard that got filled up by the mid 19th century and was one of the first, or the first, to be turned into a garden, a sitting room for the people to quote the sign. There are lovely huge flowerbeds and grassed areas, dotted with huge old anti-body snatching tombs. So this is the place to head to on a sunny day if you’re in the area, because no-one knows it’s here!
Update: had a picnic in here yesterday (15th) and I can confirm my suspicions were correct, this is a good place to have a picnic. We stocked up at Waitrose on big french bread things, brie, dried tomatoes, houmous, slices of ham and so on, and sat between the graves in the sun. There were a couple of shy teenagers trying to look a bit threatening, and then one genuine hoody roared through on a presumably stolen scooter, but that was the only trouble. And it was more amusing than anything.
There were only ten other people in there the whole time, and they were just quiet. We managed to lure a squirrel towards us with a bit of bread, then someone who shall remain unnamed chucked a piece of bread that was too big and it ran off, content. Shame. Then off for pints in the Young’s pub in Conduit street.

Wonderfully secluded graveyard gardens, especially beautiful in summer surrounded by a haze of blooms and smelling of damp earth. Read the centuries-old gravestones lined up against the gardens’ walls, or peer into the depths of a tomb whose bricks have crumbled into darkness…or just sit and eat your lunch on the grass. A hidden beauty spot of ghostly atmosphere and a glimpse of London of bygone days. As children we used to climb the tombstones to search for bones, or read the names and tell stories about the people who once lived nearby so long ago.