What did George Kemp and St. Alphage stone plaque do at St Alphage Garden?

The Story

# St Alphage Garden: A Sacred Ground Transformed Standing in St. Alphage Garden today, you're walking on hallowed ground that George Kemp, as Rector of the parish, helped rescue from obscurity and decay. This burial ground, which had served the medieval church of St. Alphage for centuries and contained precious fragments of London's Roman defensive wall, had fallen into neglect—a forgotten corner of the City hemmed in by urban sprawl. In 1872, Kemp worked alongside his churchwardens William Smith and G.R. Tattershall to transform this cemetery from a cramped, overgrown space into a contemplative garden, a decision that required an act of Parliament just nineteen years earlier to officially close it for burials. By creating this peaceful refuge and preserving the Roman stones embedded within it, Kemp wove together London's ancient past with the spiritual needs of his Victorian congregation, ensuring that this small plot would become a quiet monument to the City's layered history—a place where you can still touch the same weathered Roman masonry that has witnessed nearly two thousand years of London's story.