Hi
The independent burial ground of St Thomas Square Hackney is not the parish churchyard of St John Hackney.
St Thomas Square Burial Ground, Mare Street, Hackney, E8 (1787-1876) was an independent chapel burial ground (though by the nineteenth century several of these non-conformist burial grounds had been bought by private speculators). There is a link given in the London and Middlesex burial guide at the top of the main Rootschat boards to the website London Burials which details London churchyards and early burial grounds in each area of London and under Hackney gives details of St Thomas Square Mare Street burial ground with a modern day photograph. This burial ground was laid out as a garden in 1888 (it is therefore unlikely there were any exhumations necessary and this would be were your Taylor family remain buried).
A modern description (given on the website)
'The entrance from St Thomas’ Place remains, but the main gate, a high pedimented portico, is in Mare St . A narrow entry path opens into a pleasant rectangle, with a variety of surrounding buildings: St John Theologos church, Cordwainers’ School,etc. There are table tombs, headstones at the walls, and moderately overgrown flowerbeds. The shelter is a minimalist Tudor oddity. There is one ravaged early 19thc mausoleum.' http://www.burial.magic-nation.co.uk/bghackney.htm The actual registers for this burial ground were deposited with the government and so are held by The National Archives. For an explanation of why non-conformist records particularly pre 1837 (post more likely with local county record offices) are held by The National Archives see the burial guide.
http://www.rootschat.com/links/0ekv/ Images of the registers are online
http://www.bmdregisters.co.uk/http://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/However if you look under the collections held at Hackney Archives - under Tyssen (in the link below - The Tyssen library formed the basis of the Hackney Metropolitan Borough local history collection) there are monumental inscriptions in existence for St John Hackney as well.
'copy of monumental inscriptions for St John at Hackney, South Hackney, St Thomas Square Chapel and New Gravel Pit Chapel 1787-1850'http://www.hackney.gov.uk/c-archives-comprehensive-page12.htmIndexed as such in the LDS catalogue
Hackney, Middlesex, England - Cemeteries
Title: Monumental inscriptions from the old churchyard, St. John's Church, Hackney, 1685-1858
Authors: Church of England. St. John's Church (Hackney, Middlesex)
Microfilm copy of original records in the Hackney Borough Archives, Tyssen Collection, London.
Film Items: Microfilm 1656256 Item 1 1799-1858 Item 2 indexes 1685-1858 Item 3 Monumental inscriptions with indexes for: South Hackney Church St. Thomas' Square Chapel New Gravel Pit Chapel
http://www.londonfhc.org/content/catalogue?c=76&p=England,England,Middlesex,Hackney&f=1so as they are all contained on the same microfilm perhaps the inscriptions are from St John Hackney churchyard. If the burials are in the church registers deposited at the London Metropolitan Archives and digitalised on Ancestry then it would be St John's.
as well (worth looking at) from Hackney Archives and in the LDS catalogue
'pedigrees of Hackney families 1658-1858'The London and Middlesex burial guide does state
'The local archives and history centres in the present day thirty two London boroughs may have produced transcriptions and indexes of the parish registers and monumental inscriptions'. and
'It is worth checking their catalogue (LDS) to see which parish and cemetery registers they hold on microfilm in their Film catalogue' http://www.londonfhc.org/content/catalogue?p=England,EnglandBoth types of online catalogues are well worth searching, or if the local London borough archives don't have their holdings online (increasingly many like Hackney do) and on microfilm, contacting them to see what specifically they hold that may be of help. Ancestry only has a deal to put online some holdings of the London Metropolitan Archives (the equivalent of the county record office for London) and the Guildhall Library (the City of London Archives - the 'square mile'). It has no deal with the 32 local London borough archives. These local archives catalogues as well as the vast collections at the LMA and the Guildhall Library that are not online should not be overlooked.
The LMA cataolgue is not the easiest to search and increasingly it is entering its holdings onto AIM25.
http://www.aim25.ac.uk/search/In the past with lottery funding (now ceased) the LMA and London Boroughs placied some of their holdings on A2A. Here the entry for the monumental inscriptions of St Thomas Square from Hackney Archives on A2A for instance
http://www.rootschat.com/links/0ekx/ Regards
Valda
