Looking for the Grave of George and Alice Ivall

George Ivall (1853-1932) was my great grandfather. An item https://ivall.blogspot.com/search/label/George%20Ivall%20%281853-1932%29 about his life is on this blog. My second cousin Paul, recently sent me a document showing where George and his wife Alice (1856-1935) are buried.

On the back of the document it says

First Interment            George Ivall                78 years           30^th June 1932

Second Interment        Alice Ivall                   79 years           16^th May 1935

Bay Street, Dalston (where George was living when he died) no longer exists. Its site is now occupied by modern housing in Freshfield Avenue. Tottenham Park Cemetery is in Edmonton, North London and was opened in 1912. It is 7 miles north of Bay Street.

Most of the burials at Tottenham Park Cemetery since the 1950s are of people from the Turkish Cypriot community. The Guardian.com published an article about the cemetery on 2 Oct 2018. It contained the following text

 Police have opened an investigation after a broken skull, a shoulder blade and leg-bones were among suspected human remains discovered lying uncovered in a cemetery. The bones include a partial skeleton and were found at the privately owned Tottenham Park cemetery in north London by a group of campaigners who fear that graves are being dug up and reused without consent amid a nationwide shortage of burial space.

More bones have been found by members of the Tottenham Park Cemetery Action Group who have relatives buried there. Police and a leading forensic pathologist have confirmed to the Guardian that some of the bones discovered in recent months are human remains. Tests are pending on others, according to Scotland Yard.

The cemetery is owned by an Essex-based company that runs two private cemeteries in London and charges up to £4,100 per plot. Tottenham Park is one of the largest Turkish-Cypriot burial grounds in the UK and part of it is leased as an Islamic cemetery. While four out of five people are now cremated in Britain, demand for burials remain high among Turkish and Muslim communities that require it for religious and traditional reasons.

Concern about the management of the cemetery has been simmering for years. David Johnson, a medical engineer who has five members of his family buried in three neighbouring plots, claims he discovered in 2005 that two elaborate marble structures had been erected over two of the plots to memorialise two completely unconnected people who appeared to have been buried there. He said he has not been able to get answers about what has happened to the remains of his loved ones. “What have they done with them? We think they have been dumped in a skip. I feel very angry to have this done to my family.”

The Burial Act 1857 makes it an offence to remove buried human remains without a licence from the government, or permission from the Church of England if it is consecrated ground.

Scotland Yard said a man has been interviewed under caution as part of its investigation, which began in May when the first bones were found. It said it was alerted to the discovery of more bones on 29 August and “a dismantled human-looking partial skeleton” on 14 September. “Police will continue to liaise with local volunteer groups and the Tottenham Park cemetery to repatriate the [latest discovered] bones, once confirmed as human, at the location as soon as is practicable,” said a spokesman. Scotland Yard said that bones discovered at Tottenham Park cemetery in May and June were forensically examined and confirmed as human.

In November 2018, Tottenham Park Cemetery Ltd was placed into voluntary liquidation. In 2019 it was under new management, who say “Our aim is to clean the cemetery and reinstate the respect and reverence the cemetery deserves.”

 I visited the cemetery recently to look for George and Alice Ivall’s grave (2132, square C). Most of the memorials there are ornate and for people with Turkish sounding names. There isn’t much space between the gravestones. In most UK cemeteries, enough memorials have the grave number inscribed onto them to work out where another grave is located, if you know its number. In Tottenham Park Cemetery, very few of the memorials have the grave number displayed, so it is not possible to locate other graves this way. I managed to find the approximate location of square C but could not find a gravestone with George and Alice’s name on it.

I phoned the cemetery office who told me that it was very likely that a grave from the 1930s would have been reused since then. I sent an email asking whether they could definitely confirm this and tell me the name on the memorial currently on grave 2132 (if there is one), but have had no reply.