I've recently spent a month in London, with a side trip to Paris for a weekend. I visited a number of London's major historic cemeteries, and of course Pere LaChaise in Paris. I now have lots of photos and want so share some of them, and their stories. The following is a rather long background piece about my favourite - Kensal Green. The next blog posts will be about some of the monuments, mausolea, and tombs at Kensal Green that caught my eye.
Kensal Green Cemetery was the first of the seven great Victorian cemeteries to be created around London, known collectively as the Magnificent Seven. The General Cemetery Company, a private, commercial company was set up in 1830 with the express purpose of creating a cemetery to assist with solving the pressing issues about disposal of the dead throughout London. It was a joint stock (limited liability) company empowered by an Act of Parliament in 1832 to create a cemetery “for the interment of the Dead in the neighbourhood of the Metropolis”. According to Terry Philpot, author of “31 London Cemeteries To Visit Before You Die”, Kensal Green is “perhaps the most remarkable of all of the Magnificent Seven in terms of its architecture, tombs, and who is buried here. This is the aristocrat of cemeteries – proud, unbowed despite difficult times, which endows those whom it shelters as much as they endow it. It has also been termed “The Belgravia of Death”.
54 acres (22 hectares) of land was purchased in north London in 1832, alongside a stretch of the Grand Union Canal. It straddles the northern extremities of the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and the southern boundary of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and is easily accessed by various bus routes from the West End.
39 acres were consecrated on 24 January 1833 by the Bishop of London, and the first burial took place a few days later. The remaining 15 acres were set aside for Dissenters who wished to be buried in unconsecrated ground. Of the cemetery’s 65,000 monuments 152 are designated Grade II or Grade II* listed, being of special architectural or historic interest. These include the Anglican Chapel and the Dissenters Chapel, as well as the colonnade/catacomb and perimeter walls and railings. The cemetery is the burial site of approximately 250,000 individuals, including upwards of 500 members of the British nobility and 550 people listed in the Dictionary of National Biography.
A unique feature of Kensal Green is the catafalque and hydraulic coffin lift in the Anglican Chapel. “A catafalque is a raised bier, box, or similar platform, often movable, that is used to support the casket, coffin, or body of the deceased during a funeral or memorial service”. The catafalque descended on the hydraulic lift into Catacomb 2, from where the triple shell, lead-sealed coffins could easily be transferred to one of the 4,000 loculi (a space within a catacomb for the insertion of a triple shell coffin).
Uniquely amongst the joint stock companies of the day the General Cemetery Company still owns and manages Kensal Green.
Burials and cremations are conducted daily still at Kensal Green Cemetery. Most recently, the actor Alan Rickman was cremated, after his death from pancreatic cancer in January 2016.
Kensal Green Cemetery was the first of the seven great Victorian cemeteries to be created around London, known collectively as the Magnificent Seven. The General Cemetery Company, a private, commercial company was set up in 1830 with the express purpose of creating a cemetery to assist with solving the pressing issues about disposal of the dead throughout London. It was a joint stock (limited liability) company empowered by an Act of Parliament in 1832 to create a cemetery “for the interment of the Dead in the neighbourhood of the Metropolis”. According to Terry Philpot, author of “31 London Cemeteries To Visit Before You Die”, Kensal Green is “perhaps the most remarkable of all of the Magnificent Seven in terms of its architecture, tombs, and who is buried here. This is the aristocrat of cemeteries – proud, unbowed despite difficult times, which endows those whom it shelters as much as they endow it. It has also been termed “The Belgravia of Death”.
54 acres (22 hectares) of land was purchased in north London in 1832, alongside a stretch of the Grand Union Canal. It straddles the northern extremities of the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and the southern boundary of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and is easily accessed by various bus routes from the West End.
39 acres were consecrated on 24 January 1833 by the Bishop of London, and the first burial took place a few days later. The remaining 15 acres were set aside for Dissenters who wished to be buried in unconsecrated ground. Of the cemetery’s 65,000 monuments 152 are designated Grade II or Grade II* listed, being of special architectural or historic interest. These include the Anglican Chapel and the Dissenters Chapel, as well as the colonnade/catacomb and perimeter walls and railings. The cemetery is the burial site of approximately 250,000 individuals, including upwards of 500 members of the British nobility and 550 people listed in the Dictionary of National Biography.
A unique feature of Kensal Green is the catafalque and hydraulic coffin lift in the Anglican Chapel. “A catafalque is a raised bier, box, or similar platform, often movable, that is used to support the casket, coffin, or body of the deceased during a funeral or memorial service”. The catafalque descended on the hydraulic lift into Catacomb 2, from where the triple shell, lead-sealed coffins could easily be transferred to one of the 4,000 loculi (a space within a catacomb for the insertion of a triple shell coffin).
Uniquely amongst the joint stock companies of the day the General Cemetery Company still owns and manages Kensal Green.
Burials and cremations are conducted daily still at Kensal Green Cemetery. Most recently, the actor Alan Rickman was cremated, after his death from pancreatic cancer in January 2016.
