Enon Chapel
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Enon Chapel was located on Clement's Lane (today St. Clement's Lane) near the Strand and was built around 1823. The upper part was dedicated to the worship of God, the lower part to the burial of the dead. The two parts were separated by a board floor. In 1839 the remains of thousands of bodies were found in a vault beneath Enon Chapel. They were the collection of a corrupt Baptist minister who had promised that, for a bargain fee of 15 shillings, he could provide burials.
In actual fact he crammed the bodies into a 12ft by 59ft pit. Apparently, worshippers bravely breathed in the noxious fumes of rotting flesh from the burial room below for 17 years before the hoard of bodies was discovered. People praying in the church regularly experienced fainting and sickness due to the stench from the decaying corpses a few inches below their feet.
This scandal contributed to burial reform within London in the mid-19th century.
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