Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park

Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park The Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park - 35 Years of Conserving and Protecting Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park

Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park is the most urban woodland in London. Historically it's one of London's Magnificent Seven cemeteries and was closed to burials in 1966, that same year being re-designated as a Park by Act of Parliament. It is now a designated Local Nature Reserve and Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation. Ackroyd Drive Green Link is one of a several green space additio

ns, along with Scrapyard Meadow on our southern boundary included under the Cemetery Park's Local Nature Reserve status. It runs between Bow Common Lane and Burdett Road E3 and it is a series of 4 green compartments divided by an allotment site. Each compartment has it's own unique character and the Friends aim to manage the Green Link as windows to the main Cemetery Park. We aim to exhibit in a smaller space all the wonderful things that can be seen in the Cemetery Park. The Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park were set up 1990 and have the day to day care and management of the site and undertake all the work across its 3 broad themes of wildlife, people and education. The practical nature conservation projects involve over 3000 volunteers every year. Whilst it is a place of remembrance and local history, the existing monuments now stand romantically amongst mature broadleaved woodland and wildflower meadows. The hard work of volunteers under the guidance of the Friends has made this inner City nature reserve home to a number of rare and endangered species of plants and animals. The Park boasts 60+ bird species, 27 butterfly species (making the site the richest for butterflies in urban London), along with UK rare bumblebees, flies, spiders and beetles. It is also home to an over subscribed education service that works with 8500 school children every year using the Park as the classroom as part of National Curriculum linked environmental workshops. Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park is a vibrant place filled with life and a hub of activity and fun!

🍄🔍 **CLICK ME, I’M A FUN-GI!** 🔍🍄Ready to fall down the wonderfully weird rabbit hole of fungi? 🤩Join us at **Tower Haml...
09/09/2026

🍄🔍 **CLICK ME, I’M A FUN-GI!** 🔍🍄

Ready to fall down the wonderfully weird rabbit hole of fungi? 🤩

Join us at **Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park** for a full-day **Introductory Course on Fungus Identification** — perfect for beginners, nature lovers, conservation volunteers, Forest School leaders and anyone who has ever looked at a mushroom and thought… *“what on earth is THAT?”* 👀🍄

📅 **Sunday 20th September 2026**
⏰ **9:30am to 4:30pm**
📍 Cemetery Park Lodge, Southern Grove, E3
🎟️ **Only 12 places available!**

Your guide for the day is experienced mycologist **Clifford**, who brings an incredible **38 years of experience**, has led more than **200 fungus forays** and delivered over **130 identification courses**. 🍄👏

Across the day you’ll get stuck into:

🔍 How to identify fungi using caps, gills, stems, rings and more
🧫 How to make a **spore print**
📖 How to use a simple identification key
🌳 Fungi habitats and their vital ecological roles
📝 How fungi are recorded scientifically
🍄 The mysterious worlds of basidiomycetes and ascomycetes

And after some indoor learning, we’ll head out into the Cemetery Park for a **guided fungus foray**, putting those new skills straight into practice! 🌳🍂🔎

You’ll also receive a **19-page illustrated course handout** to take home — plus tea, coffee and biscuits to keep your mycological brain fuelled ☕🍪

🍄 **No previous fungi knowledge needed. Just bring curiosity, a packed lunch, clothes for the weather and, if you have one, a hand lens.**

⚠️ **There are only 12 places**, so this really is one to book sooner rather than later!

👉 **ACTION: Grab your place, tag your favourite fungi fanatic and come discover just how extraordinary the hidden kingdom beneath our feet really is!**

🎟️ Book here or via our bio:
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/thefriendsoftowerhamletscemeterypark/2033601

🍄🌿🔍

🌙🪦 **THE DEAD OF THCP — AFTER-DARK HERITAGE WALKS** 🪦🌙When darkness falls over Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, the stories ...
08/09/2026

🌙🪦 **THE DEAD OF THCP — AFTER-DARK HERITAGE WALKS** 🪦🌙

When darkness falls over Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, the stories of the old East End take centre stage…

Join historian **Sheldon K. Goodman of Cemetery Club ** for a very special series of evening walks exploring the extraordinary lives — and deaths — of some of the people buried here. 🔦🌳

📅 **Thursday 29 October to Sunday 1 November**
🕡 **6:30pm & 8:30pm each evening**
📍 Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park
👣 Only **30 places per walk**

Opened in 1841, the Cemetery Park became the final resting place of generations of East Enders. Around **350,000 people** are buried here, and their stories reveal an extraordinary world of:

⚒️ Working-class life
✊ Protest and politics
🌍 Migration
⚔️ War and heroism
🏚️ Poverty and hardship
🎭 Eccentric characters
❤️ Courage, survival and lives lived against the odds

Along the way, meet figures including trade unionist **Harry Orbell**, a heroic schoolboy, a veteran of Waterloo and others whose lives offer fascinating glimpses into Victorian and early 20th-century London.

🎻 **And on Saturday 31st October**, things get even more special as Sheldon is joined by the **Stretto Quartet**, helping revive a song once known and sung by people now buried here. 🎶🪦

Bring a torch, wrap up warm and prepare to experience the Cemetery Park in a completely different way. 🔦🍂🌙

👉 **ACTION: Book early!** These walks are limited to just 30 people and spaces can disappear quickly. If your chosen walk is full, join the waiting list — cancellations do happen.

🎟️ Book here or via the bio:
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/thefriendsoftowerhamletscemeterypark/2391885

Tag the history-lover you’d bring along and share this post with someone who loves discovering the hidden stories of London! 👇✨

🌙🪦🔦

✨ Amaryllis in Full Bloom...again! ✨After weeks of anticipation, our Amaryllis has finally burst into spectacular bloom ...
08/09/2026

✨ Amaryllis in Full Bloom...again! ✨
After weeks of anticipation, our Amaryllis has finally burst into spectacular bloom with several vibrant spikes of bubble-gum pink, funnel-shaped flowers! Many more than last year! 🌸
📜 Folklore Fact: In Greek mythology, Amaryllis was a shepherdess who pierced her heart with a golden arrow to win her love—her blood gave birth to the first Amaryllis flower. ❤️
🐝 Pollinator Fact: These beauties are primarily pollinated by butterflies and moths, drawn by their bright colors and sweet nectar.
🌍 Origin: Native to South America, especially the Andes of Peru and Brazil, Amaryllis thrives in warm, sunny climates.
💡 Your Turn: Seen Amaryllis in bloom? Tag us in your floral finds at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park or share your favorite flower! 🌿

🌿🔍 COME GET WILD WITH KIT! 🔍🌿Fancy discovering what’s really going on amongst the trees, gravestones, meadows and woodla...
07/09/2026

🌿🔍 COME GET WILD WITH KIT! 🔍🌿

Fancy discovering what’s really going on amongst the trees, gravestones, meadows and woodland of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park? 🌳🦋🍄🐝

Join our brilliant Seasonal Park Ranger Kit for a relaxed and fascinating Nature Walk around THCP, taking a closer look at the ecology and wildlife that make this 31-acre urban nature reserve such a special place. 💚

📅 Sunday 13th September
⏰ 10am–11.30am
📍 Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park
🎟️ FREE – donations welcome! Via the link or our bio: www.tickettailor.com/events/thefriendsoftowerhamletscemeterypark/2258219
🌿 Part of Heritage Week

Whether you’re already a nature nerd 🤓🌱 or simply curious about what lives on your doorstep, this is a perfect introduction to the Cemetery Park’s wild side.

Expect wildlife, habitats, fascinating facts, plenty of questions and probably a few things you’ve walked past a hundred times without ever noticing! 👀🐞🌳

👣 We’ll explore around 1–2km of the park, with Kit helping you see this familiar landscape through his eyes.

⚠️ Only 20 places are available and our nature walks can fill quickly!

👉 ACTION: Grab your free place now, bring your curiosity and come exploring with Kit!

🎟️ Book here:
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/thefriendsoftowerhamletscemeterypark/2258219

Already booked? Share this post or tag someone who’d love to join you! 🌿🙌

🌳🐝🦋

Bannermaking Workshop: Friends Against FascismSunday 27 September, 10.00–12.30 and 13.30–16.00The Soanes Centre, Souther...
07/09/2026

Bannermaking Workshop: Friends Against Fascism
Sunday 27 September, 10.00–12.30 and 13.30–16.00
The Soanes Centre, Southern Grove, London E3 4PX

On Sunday 4 October, the Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park will join the march and celebration marking 90 years since the Battle of Cable Street — the day the East End came out in its thousands and turned back Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts.

We need banners for it, and we need you to help make them.

Join creative facilitator and textile artist F. Zeeshan Choudhury - for a day of woodblock printing. We'll begin with a walk through the Cemetery Park. Then, using Zeeshan's bespoke woodblock stamps, we'll decorate the banner with the plants, flowers and features of the park, celebrating the diversity of both the natural world and our East End communities.

A week later, that banner will be carried across the borough.

You can also make your own protest apparel. Bring a cotton t-shirt, a blank placard, a tea towel or any other personal item to decorate with woodblock stamps and fabric markers. Materials — including card for placards — and instructions are all provided.

All ages welcome. No experience required. Come to one session or both.

Free — 20 places in the morning session and 20 in the afternoon. Please book so we know numbers:
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/thefriendsoftowerhamletscemeterypark/2398053

🌿 Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park is a 31-acre urban woodland and Local Nature Reserve in the middle of one of London's densest boroughs. Nearly a third of a million people are buried here, and a good number of them helped make the East End what it is.

💧🌿 Two of our ponds are looking VERY different right now… but don’t panic! 🌿💧This exceptionally hot, dry summer has take...
04/09/2026

💧🌿 Two of our ponds are looking VERY different right now… but don’t panic! 🌿💧

This exceptionally hot, dry summer has taken its toll across Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, and for the first time in a long while all five of our ponds have dried out. ☀️🌡️

It’s understandably worrying to see a pond without water, but periods of drying are part of the natural life cycle of many freshwater habitats. Pond wildlife has evolved some remarkable ways of coping — from moving to damper refuges to surviving in mud, vegetation, eggs or dormant life stages until wetter conditions return. 🐸🪲🐌

And while we’d certainly rather have rain… the dry ponds have given us a rare opportunity to carry out some important management work. 👩‍🌾🌿

✂️ Why have we been removing plants?

Without occasional intervention, vigorous pond plants can spread across the entire pond, taking up space, trapping large amounts of organic material and shading out other species.

With the water temporarily gone, staff and volunteers have been able to safely access areas that are normally difficult to reach and selectively remove some of this dominant vegetation.

The result?

😬 At the moment, the ponds look rather bare!

But that’s temporary.

Beneath the surface is still a living seed bank, roots, rhizomes and the resting stages of countless small organisms. Once rain returns and the ponds refill, aquatic and marginal plants will begin growing again and wildlife will recolonise the water. 🌧️➡️🌱🪲

By creating a mixture of open water, shallows and vegetation, rather than allowing a few plants to dominate everything, we’re helping maintain a greater variety of habitats for pond life in the years ahead. 💚

Sometimes nature conservation can look a little dramatic immediately after the work has been done — but this kind of selective vegetation management is a normal part of caring for healthy ponds.

👉 ACTION: Watch Kit’s video to discover how pond wildlife copes with drought. 🌧️👀

💧🌿🐸

Restorative Pilates is starting at the Soanes Centre — Tuesdays, 5.30–6.30pm, five sessions to begin with. Indoors, but ...
01/09/2026

Restorative Pilates is starting at the Soanes Centre — Tuesdays, 5.30–6.30pm, five sessions to begin with. Indoors, but in nature.

It's a mat class built around strength, mobility and moving with more ease. Low impact, clearly explained, and every exercise comes with options so you can adapt it to your body and to how you're feeling that day. Beginners are as welcome as people with years of practice. You can go slowly. You can sit a section out.

The Soanes Centre is inside the Cemetery Park, so you've got woodland and meadow on the other side of the glass. If you'd like more of that, there's an optional 20-minute walk around the Park at 5pm before the class.

Tickets are on a pay-what-you-can basis, so cost needn't be the thing that decides it:
• £6 if you're a student, unemployed, on benefits or financially stretched
• £10 if you're employed and meeting your basic needs
• £14 if you can afford to pay it forward and support our work

The class is led by Eloise, who emphasises working at your own pace, and on understanding what your body is doing rather than pushing through it, comes from experience rather than theory. She explains what each exercise is for and checks in with everyone as she goes. She's on Instagram as

We have mats you can use, though bring your own if you prefer. Bring a bottle of water. The room takes 12 people, so it's worth booking rather than turning up.

The Soanes Centre, the concrete building behind a black fence on your right as you enter via the main gates on Southern Grove, London E3 4PX. Nearest station is Mile End station. No onsite parking.

Book: https://buytickets.at/thefriendsoftowerhamletscemeterypark/2378372

🎨🌿 YOU ARE THAT — become part of an artwork unfolding through the Cemetery Park 🌿✨This August Bank Holiday weekend, we’r...
31/08/2026

🎨🌿 YOU ARE THAT — become part of an artwork unfolding through the Cemetery Park 🌿✨

This August Bank Holiday weekend, we’re delighted to welcome to Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park for their final day of, You Are That — a new, temporary and participatory public artwork created especially for this remarkable place.

📅 Saturday 29th to Monday 31st August
🕙 10am–4pm daily
📍 Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park
🎟️ FREE | DROP IN | NO BOOKING REQUIRED | ALL AGES WELCOME

🌳 You Are That explores something beautifully simple: how everything is connected — people, plants, wildlife, memory, place and the countless relationships that make up the living world around us.

And this isn’t an artwork you simply stand and look at… 👀

Over three days, visitors are invited to help create an evolving collective artwork that will gradually unfold across the Cemetery Park. You can contribute directly, pause and reflect, watch it change, or simply encounter it as you wander through the woodland. 🎨🍃

There’s no right or wrong way to take part, no artistic experience needed and no set route — just curiosity and a willingness to see this familiar landscape a little differently. 💚

The work is part of White SOL Studio’s programme of contemporary art interventions across London’s Magnificent Seven cemeteries and is led by East London-based multidisciplinary artist and cultural producer Sofia Gryzinski.

🌎 The installation is temporary and environmentally sensitive, with everything carefully removed afterwards, leaving no trace behind.

👉 ACTION: Come along over the Bank Holiday weekend, add your own small contribution and watch as hundreds of individual connections become something collective.

Bring the family, tell a friend and share this post with someone who might enjoy a little art, nature and contemplation in the woods. 🌿✨

🌿🎨✨

🎨🌿 YOU ARE THAT — become part of an artwork unfolding through the Cemetery Park 🌿✨This August Bank Holiday weekend, we’r...
30/08/2026

🎨🌿 YOU ARE THAT — become part of an artwork unfolding through the Cemetery Park 🌿✨

This August Bank Holiday weekend, we’re delighted to welcome to Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park for You Are That — a new, temporary and participatory public artwork created especially for this remarkable place.

📅 Saturday 29th to Monday 31st August
🕙 10am–4pm daily
📍 Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park
🎟️ FREE | DROP IN | NO BOOKING REQUIRED | ALL AGES WELCOME

🌳 You Are That explores something beautifully simple: how everything is connected — people, plants, wildlife, memory, place and the countless relationships that make up the living world around us.

And this isn’t an artwork you simply stand and look at… 👀

Over three days, visitors are invited to help create an evolving collective artwork that will gradually unfold across the Cemetery Park. You can contribute directly, pause and reflect, watch it change, or simply encounter it as you wander through the woodland. 🎨🍃

There’s no right or wrong way to take part, no artistic experience needed and no set route — just curiosity and a willingness to see this familiar landscape a little differently. 💚

The work is part of White SOL Studio’s programme of contemporary art interventions across London’s Magnificent Seven cemeteries and is led by East London-based multidisciplinary artist and cultural producer Sofia Gryzinski.

🌎 The installation is temporary and environmentally sensitive, with everything carefully removed afterwards, leaving no trace behind.

👉 ACTION: Come along over the Bank Holiday weekend, add your own small contribution and watch as hundreds of individual connections become something collective.

Bring the family, tell a friend and share this post with someone who might enjoy a little art, nature and contemplation in the woods. 🌿✨

🌿🎨✨

Meet the “Naked Ladies”! 🌸Colchicums bloom in autumn long before their leaves appear, earning them this cheeky nickname....
29/08/2026

Meet the “Naked Ladies”! 🌸
Colchicums bloom in autumn long before their leaves appear, earning them this cheeky nickname. They've arrived a few weeks earlier than in previous years.

You can spot beautiful patches along the paths by our Southern Grove wall, Cantrell Field and Hamlets Way.

They grow from a bulb-like corm and are often mistaken for crocuses—but, look closer and peek inside, you'll spot the difference! 👀

✅ Colchicum: 3 styles, 6 stamens
✅ Crocus: 1 style, 3 stamens

Fun (and dark!) fact: Colchicums are highly toxic. In fact, Victorian serial killer Catherine Wilson is thought to have used them to poison her victims. 😱

📍 Next time you visit, see if you can spot them! Tag us when you do! 📸

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Address

The Cemetery Park Lodge, Southern Grove
London
E34PX

Telephone

+442039828670

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