The burial ground was located in the parish of St Botolph without Bishopsgate and in Bishopsgate ward, just north of London's wall and where Broad Street station once stood, a site now located under the west half of modern Liverpool Street (the road), within the north-east corner of the modern City of London. Until 1569, the site of the New Churchyard was an undeveloped plot of land located on the eastern edge of Moorfields proper, or lower Moorfields, one of the last pieces of open land in the City of London, near Bishopsgate. The site was originally part of the lands of Bethlem Hospital and, by the 16th century, was being used as a garden. The plot became part of the lands of the City of London Corporation following the Dissolution in 1541, and was being leased as a tenterground immediately prior to its conversion into a burial ground in 1569.