he Jewish Burial Ground off Kingsbury Road, Dalston, which operated between 1843 and 1951, is owned by the West London Synagogue. As London's first Victorian Jewish burial ground, with many points of interest for its Jewish community, and indeed for the wider community, it is Grade II listed by Historic England.
The name "Balls Pond Cemetery" comes from the fact that there used to be a pond here that was popular for duck-shooting. According to Walter Besant, the area was once "notorious for baiting and other cruel sports, and seems to have been named from one John Ball, who had a tavern with the sign of The Salutation here" (545). However, when the British Reform Movement broke away from the Sephardic Jews of the Bevis Marks Synagogue, the still undeveloped ground here, then in use as a plant nursery, became their own separate cemetery. It is only 1 1/4 acres (Holmes 290), but this was where many important members of the new movement were buried. Nevertheless, Historic England notes a "mixture of Ashkenazi and Sephardi grave markers," bearing witness to the fact that the new movement succeeded in "transcending ethnic origins and creating a community of British Jews."
The cemetery was closed after the opening of the larger Hoop Lane Cemetery in Golders Green in 1896, which included a separate area in its south-west part for the Jews of the West London Synagogue (see Cherry and Pevsner 136). But interments continued to take place in reserved plots in the older cemetery, up to and during the Second World War (see Willats 135), and indeed, according to Historic England, until 1951. When it was still in full use, it was described as "small," but with some "very large and extravagant tombstones," and "very neatly kept" (Holmes 158), but the years have taken their toll and nature has reclaimed the ground, prompting calls for its restoration. At the time of writing, this is now being planned.
View in the cemetery. Photo by Judith Flanders, by kind permission.
In an item about the restoration project, The Jewish News reports that about a thousand people are buried in the cemetery — although a copy of the Cemetery Register, also kindly supplied by Judith Flanders, puts the number a little lower. At any rate, it was certainly fully used. Within the restricted space inside the cemetery's high brick walls are "numerous regularly arranged tombstones set in grass with plane trees along the Kingsbury Road and south boundaries" ("The Jewish Burial Ground...."). What is surprising is not only the mixture of Sephardi or Ashkenazi burials, but also the variety of types of headstones described in the Historic England listing text — from obelisks like the one seen in the photograph on the right to "headstones and ledger stones as well as chest tombs, broken columns, caskets, open ... Cohenim hands [hands spread in priestly blessing] and felled trees at the tops of headstones, as well as gothic and classical motifs," with some of the headstones carved with floral motifs and even one with a mourning figure. This last was typical enough for the time, but not at all usual for a Jewish tombstone. The cosmopolitan nature of the graveyard is borne out by inscriptions in various languages besides English and Hebrew.
The names of several of those interred here will be familiar to Victorianists, notably the author Amy Levy and the architect David Mocatta, while many more share the same surnames as, and may well have been related to, a larger number of well-known people of the era. — Jacqueline Banerjee
Links to Related Material
- Judaism in Victorian Britain
- Sir Julian Goldsmid, Bart., M. P., President of the Anglo-Jewish Association, and of the Jews Infant Schools(interred here)
- Rev. Professor D. W. Marks, Chief Minister of the West London (Reform) Synagogue (interred here)
- Frederick D. Mocatta, President of the Jewish Home and Vice-President of the Anglo-Jewish Association (interred here)
Victorian Gravestones
Bibliography
"Balls Road Cemetery Appeal." See West London Synagogue. Web. 21 May 2025.
Besant, Walter. London North of the Thames. London: A. Black, 1908. Internet Archive, from a copy of the book in Robarts library, University of Toronto. Web. 21 May 2025.
Cherry, Bridget, and Nikolaus Pevsner. London 4: North (Buildings of England Series). New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Holmes, Mrs Basil. The London Burial Grounds from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. New York: Macmillan, 1896. Internet Archive, from a copy of the book in the library of the University of Michigan. Web. 21 May 2025.
"The Jewish Burial Ground, Islington (also known as Balls Pond Cemetery, Kingsbury Road Cemetery, Balls Pond Burial Ground)." Parks & Gardens. Web. 21 May 2025.
"Restoration Begins at Victorian Jewish Cemetery...." Jewish News. 21 January 2025. Web. 21 May 2025. https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/restoration-begins-at-victorian-jewish-cemetery-thanks-to-190000-grant/
Weinreb, Ben, et al. The London Encyclopaedia. 3rd ed. London: Macmillan, 2008.
West London Reform Cemetery. Historic England. Web. 21 May 2025.
Willats, Eric A. Streets with a Story: Islington. Islington: Islington Local History Education Trust, 1987.
Created 21 May 2025