Visit to Quaker Burial Ground
Winchmore Hill
21 March 2024
Winchmore Hill
21 March 2024
March 21st 2024, exactly 160 years after his death, a group of admirers gathered in the Quaker meeting house in Winchmore Hill to celebrate the remarkable achievements of Luke Howard. Margaret Burr introduced the afternoon by quoting from his obituary in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. Someone who had known him well in the latter part of his life said: |
“Those who lived with him will not soon forget his interest in the appearance of the sky. Whether at morning, noon, or night, he would go out to look around on the heavens, and notice the changes going on. His intelligent remarks and pictorial descriptions gave a character to the scene never before realised by some. A beautiful sunset was a real and intense delight to him; he would stand at the window, change his position, go out of doors, and watch it to the last lingering ray; and long after he ceased, from failing memory, to name the ‘cirrus,’ or ‘cumulus,’ he would derive a mental feast from the gaze, and seem to recognise old friends in their outlines.”
The afternoon was fine, and we moved outside to the Quaker burial ground, tranquil in the spring sunshine; like most Quaker burial grounds, the space has a quiet ease. Luke Howard had been born and raised in the Society of Friends, but by the time of his death he and his wife Mariabella had both left; the Beaconite rupture of the 1830s was a time of great sorrow for those who left, and for those who stayed. His sons, Robert Howard and John Eliot Howard, built the Brook Street chapel which opened in 1839 after Brethren had begun meeting at the house of Mrs. Sands in Stoneley South. However, their burial ground there was full, so their family chose Winchmore Hill as for Luke and Mariabella’s final resting place. The original building has been extended over the years and the Chapel, a non-denominational worship community, thrives to this day.
It’s Quaker practice not to place headstones over graves, but Rachel Macdonald explained how Mariabella’s headstone was tracked down. Mariabella’s headstone was found in a stack of slabs and repositioned over her grave which was marked on the plan of the burial ground. Luke Howard’s headstone, if it exists, has not yet been found. Mark Friend had laid out the original plan of the site from 1847, as well as the 1943 updated version, which shows all the grave sites. The informative afternoon was organised jointly by Tottenham Clouds and the Edmonton Hundred Historical Society, and the meeting house was made available thanks to Mark Friend, premises administrator and a member of Winchmore Hill Meeting. It felt appropriate to be celebrating the life of this extraordinary man on the Equinox, and there was some discussion that perhaps 21st March should continue to be a day when his achievements are remembered. Joanna Hines, Luke Howard descendant |