Churchyard

Our churchyard is about half a mile from the church, in Mutton Lane. It was closed for burials in the late 1970s however ashes can still be interred here.

There are a number of interesting World War One related graves: there is the tiny grave of 'The Infant Daughter of Lord and Lady Trenchard'. This was the daughter of Sir Hugh Trenchard, First Marshall and founder of the Royal Air Force who lived nearby in South Mymms.

The churchyard also used to house the graves of Commander Wilhelm Schramm and his 15 crew members of the German Schutte-Lanz Airship SL-11, until they were re-interred some years ago at the large cemetery for similar German dead at Cannock Chase, near Birmingham. This was the airship famously brought down by the guns of Royal Flying Corps (RFC) Captain William Leefe Robinson in his biplane over Cuffley on September 3rd 1916, for which he received the Victoria Cross (Leefe Robinson lies buried in the little cemetery situated at Harrow Weald, Stanmore). Also Kapitan Heinrich Mathy with his Zeppelin crew were one time buried in the churchyard. His Zeppelin, the Z31, was brought down in Potters Bar on the night of the 1st October 1916, by Lieutenant Wulstan Tempest flying a BE2c aircraft of the RFC. As with Schramm's crew the Zeppelin crew was later reinterred at Cannock Chase. The cross on the altar in the All Souls' Chapel is made from some of the metal from the wreckage of the Z31 airship.

This memorial was dedicated at a ceremony in 1948 to those who died in POW camps during World War Two and were buried in cemeteries in Poland, Indonesia, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Singapore, France and Thailand. The Mutton Lane Memorial is thought to be one of two such memorials to British servicemen who died abroad while serving in WWII. The garden of remembrance in which the memorial stands was provided by the Potters Bar and Little Heath Urban Council Prisoner of War Fund, it was re-opened with a second ceremony in 2002. Some of POWs commemorated worked on the Burma-Siam railway, which was completed in 1943 for the Japanese army, and included the building of the Bridge over the River Kwai.

Please contact us for more information about the churchyard.