At first glance it seems innocuous enough. But a five-acre copse off a B road hides the moving tales of 9,000 Brits, lost from history over the past 120 years.
They died while patients at five mental asylums and were buried in a haunting plot which bears no mention of their extraordinary tales.
The dead include war heroes, a Titanic survivor, a Victorian actor and a dancer who posed for Picasso, becoming his muse.
Single mums – unjustly sent to the asylum – lie beneath too, as do criminals and some of the poorest and most wretched souls from London’s Victorian workhouses.
Now a charity is fighting to stop Horton Cemetery, on the B284 near Epsom, Surrey, from being developed so their amazing stories can take their places in the history books.
The plot was a burial ground from 1899 to 1955 but was abandoned long ago. It has given up some of its secrets due to shifting land over the decades.
A skull and other bones have been found since it was sold to a developer.
The Friends of Horton Cemetery, backed by 40 volunteers, have already uncovered some remarkable stories .
Comedy actor Byron Pedley was buried there. He had enjoyed a 30-year career before being admitted to Long Grove asylum in June 1910.
He was diagnosed with “confusional insanity/delirium” after being treated for heart disease in Lambeth Infirmary. Byron died weeks after arriving at Long Grove – one of five asylums in the Epsom Cluster.
Then there was Beatrice Bates, so consumed by grief when her war hero husband died that she fell into manic depression.
Her son had her sectioned to West Park hospital in April 1933 where she was inoculated with the malaria parasite to induce fever. She died in August 1933.
Malaria therapy – used on some patients – and electro-convulsive shock therapy were among treatments used in the early days.
Charity trustee Bethany Turner learned her great-great-gran, Adeline Marham, was sent to St Ebba’s hospital after giving birth in 1909 in a London workhouse.
With no father present, Adeline tried to look after the child, Alice, but gave her up to another family at nine months.
She was admitted on the grounds of “epilepsy with insanity” and died at 27 in 1915. Cause of death was pneumonia and fever – likely caused by the malaria treatment.
Bethany says: “I went to the cemetery and it made me sick to my stomach because she is my family and you should look after your family, even in death. I felt powerless and desperately sad. It breaks my heart to think she was treated like that, then left in a derelict unmarked grave.”
Former Epsom mayor Alan Carlson has raised awareness since 1990. He said locals felt shame “about the way people have been treated after death”.
He added: Communities are judged on how they treat the weakest in society. This project is about trying to get back some dignity for those people.”
The cemetery was set up after London County Council built the five asylums to clear the capital’s crowded and decrepit mental homes and workhouses. Bodies of unclaimed patients were buried in the unconsecrated cemetery.
The hospitals were sold off for housing from the 1990s while the cemetery plot is in the hands of developer Marque Securities. There have been attempts to buy it back and the charity remains hopeful.
Trustees hope to create a public garden and memorial.
The charity’s Sheila Berry said: “People were put in unmarked graves with no headstones. Men, women, children and, in some cases, babies. Where is the dignity in that?”
