Sherman also took a nondenominational approach to burial reform was developed – Abney Park Cemetery. Surrey Chapel – as a result of this 'open door' policy – became a popular London venue for many different religious leaders, societies, and meetings, including some of an avowedly political nature, as well as the site of the first Sunday School in London. So much so, that new premises had to be found to accommodate the growth in services, ragged schools, Sunday schools and the Southwark Mission for the Elevation of the Working Classes – an auxiliary to Surrey Chapel managed by the plain speaking George Murphy for the increasing numbers of industrial poor of the district. These additional premises included a nearby temperance hall (leased for about twenty years from 1844 using a centenary commemoration fund raised by James Sherman in honour of Rowland Hill, thus renamed Hawkstone Hall after his birthplace); and Lambeth Baths (whose use was paid for by Samuel Morley (MP) for additional Sunday services, meetings, lectures, classes, newspaper readings and musical entertainments). This growth led to the educational institutions of Surrey Chapel becoming probably more extensive than those connected with any free Church in the south of England. It became the nucleus of thirteen Sunday schools, four of them evening Ragged Schools, as well as day schools at Mansfield Street, Harrow Street, Kent Street, and Castle Yard, where more than five thousand children were taught by over four hundred teachers. In 1859 the trustees and congregation, did not renew the lease and purchased land at Westminster Bridge Road and Kennington Road where (led by the pastor, Christopher Newman Hall) where they built a larger complex of buildings, which included a large chapel (Christ Church), lecture halls and school rooms (Hawkstone Hall) and the Lincoln Memorial Tower – the latter reflecting Newman Hall's campaigning role in the American Civil War and on the side of Abraham Lincoln and the abolition movement. The congregation migrated there in 1876, as did many of the societies associated with Surrey Chapel. Rowland Hill's original chapel became used for various religious and social purposes, including by the Primitive Methodists for a time, before partial demolition, rebuilding and refitting works to suit it to commercial uses in 1881. The Illustrated London News reported its demise in May 1881 in these terms: The demolition of the well-known circular meeting-house, or Dissenting Chapel, in Blackfriar's-road, Southwark, removes another