St Mary's Churchyard, Lewisham and the Therapeutic Garden

A church has probably existed at Lewisham from at least the C10th. In 918 AD Elfrida, daughter (niece?) of Alfred the Great reputedly gave her lands in Lewisham, Greenwich and Woolwich to the Abbey of St Peter at Ghent in return for which the monks built the earliest church on this site. Although there is no trace of this early building, the oldest part of the current building dating from the late C15th was incorporated into the rebuilding of 1774-77 by architect George Gibson. The church interior was restored in the C19th and it contains a number of fine monuments including those to Anne Petrie (d.1787), Margaret Petrie (d.1791) and Mary Lushington (d.1797), the latter by John Flaxman. The former vicarage on the corner of Ladywell Road was built in 1692-3 for Revd George Stanhope, Dean of Canterbury, who was visited there by Dean Swift. A spring discovered nearby in the C15th was named Our Lady's Well after the parish church, recalled in Ladywell Fields (q.v.). Lewisham became fashionable in the C17th and C18th, the area later changing as it was built up after the railway arrived in c.1849 when it became a middle-class suburb.

St Mary's Churchyard was the parish burial ground until 1856 when Lewisham Burial Board opened Ladywell Cemetery (q.v.) and part of the old churchyard was laid out as a public garden in 1886. The churchyard was extended a number of times before it closed to burial and has various good chest-tombs and monuments including that of Ephraim How and his son John (d.1736), a cutlery-maker who lived at the Lower Mill in Southend; their successful cutlery business was famous in the early C18th, the mill later becoming a corn mill that was in use until the early C20th and the millpond is now Peter Pan's Pool  (q.v.). The Desvignes Family Vault dates from the mid-C19th designed by architect Peter Hubert Desvignes, who took part in the competition to design the new Houses of Parliament in 1835. The Stainton memorial was erected for Henry Tibbats Stainton (d.1892), a famous entomologist who had lived in Mountsfield House, whose grounds became Mountsfield Park (q.v.). Another fine monument is that of banker Ebenezer Blackwell (d.1782) and his wife Elizabeth, who lived at The Limes in Lewisham High Street, a large house with extensive gardens, demolished in 1894 and now the site of St Saviour's RC church. They were frequently visited by John and Charles Wesley. John Wesley preached in St Mary's in 1777 and Lewisham is referred to in his diaries as a place of refuge. Others buried here include the Irish poet Thomas Dermody (d.1802); Ann Batten Cristall (d.1848), also a poet who was born in Cornwall but whose family moved to Blackheath, her melancholic poems were praised by contemporary reviewers; the naturalist John Edward Gray (d.1875), and Captain Charles Weller (d.1866) of the East India Company. The inscriptions, now much eroded, were transcribed in 1889 by Herbert Kirby and Leland Duncan and further research was later carried out by Ken White in 1992. In 2024 a Lottery grant enabled replacement of the badly cracked footpath in the churchyard.

Separated from the main churchyard by a railed public path, part of the old churchyard is now the new Therapeutic Garden, which opened in 2017. It was established from 2014 when this much-overgrown area of the churchyard was cleared by church volunteers; in addition to managing the main churchyard, they continue to manage the new garden with assistance from the Ladywell Unit, part of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, which uses gardening to promote mental well-being. The garden, which abuts the River Ravensbourne, features perennial beds, wildflower meadows, an orchard, and raised vegetable beds; gardening sessions are held every Tuesday from 1-3pm. Fundraising for new projects in the garden has attacted Lottery and CIS Securities donations, an Aviva Crowdfunding award of £5,300 in 2023, and a Tesco Groundworks award of £1,000 in 2024. The Churchyard won the Green Health category in the 2024 Green Church Awards, sponsored by the Conservation Foundation. 

The churchyard is reputedly the best site in Lewisham for ferns, with at least 7 species recorded, the back of the churchyard wall covered in hart's tongue and black spleenwort, the latter established nowhere else in the borough.