London Necropolis Company
Encyclopedia
The London Necropolis Company (LNC), formally the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company until 1927, was a cemetery
operator established by Act of Parliament
in 1852 in reaction to the crisis caused by the closure of London's
graveyards in 1851. The LNC intended to establish a single cemetery large enough to accommodate all of London's future burials in perpetuity. The company's founders recognised that the recently invented technology of the railway provided the ability to conduct burials a long distance from populated areas, mitigating concerns over public health risks from living near burial sites. Accordingly, the company bought a very large tract of land in Brookwood, Surrey
, around 25 miles (40.2 km) from London, and converted a portion of it into Brookwood Cemetery
. A dedicated railway line, the London Necropolis Railway
, linked the new cemetery to the city.
Financial mismanagement and internal disputes led to delays in the project. By the time Brookwood Cemetery opened in late 1854, a number of other cemeteries had opened nearer to London or were in the process of opening. While some parish
es in London did arrange for the LNC to handle the burials of their dead, many preferred to use nearer cemeteries. The LNC had anticipated handling between 10,000–50,000 burials per year, but the number never rose above 4,100 per year, and in its first 150 years of operations only 231,730 burials had been conducted. Buying the land for Brookwood Cemetery and building the cemetery and railway had been very expensive, and by the time the cemetery opened the LNC was already on the verge of bankruptcy. The LNC remained solvent by selling surplus parts of its land, but as the land had been chosen in the first place for its remoteness, sales were low.
From the 1880s the LNC began a more aggressive programme to maximise its income. The process for the sale of surplus land was improved, resulting in increased income. The LNC redeveloped its lands at Hook Heath into housing and a golf course, creating a new suburb of Woking
and providing a steady income from rentals. After an 1884 ruling that cremation
was lawful in England the LNC also took advantage of its proximity to Woking Crematorium
by providing transport for bodies and mourners on its railway line and after 1910 by interring ashes in a dedicated columbarium
. The LNC also provided the land for a number of significant military cemeteries and memorials at Brookwood after both of the World Wars. In 1941 London Necropolis railway station
, the LNC's London railway terminus, was badly damaged by bombing, and the London Necropolis Railway was abandoned.
Rising property prices in Surrey in the 1940s and 1950s made the LNC increasingly valuable, but also made it a target for property speculators. In 1959 a hostile takeover succeeded, and LNC's independence came to an end. From 1959 to 1985 a succession of owners stripped the profitable parts of the business from the company, leaving a rump residual company operating the increasingly derelict cemetery. In 1985 what remained of the company came into the ownership of Ramadan Güney
, who set about reviving what remained. Links were formed with London's Muslim
communities in an effort to encourage new burials, and a slow programme of clearing and restoring the derelict sections of the cemetery commenced. Although it was never as successful as planned, the LNC was very influential on both the funeral industry and the development of the area around Woking, and Brookwood Cemetery remains the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom.
s for storage. From the 14th century onwards the charnel houses themselves were overwhelmed, and exhumed bones were scattered where they had been dug up or reburied in pits. Despite this practice, by the mid 17th century the city was running seriously short of burial space. A proposal by Christopher Wren
to use the reconstruction following the 1666 Great Fire of London
as an opportunity to cease burials in the churchyards and establish new cemeteries
outside the city was approved by the King and Parliament but vetoed by the Corporation of London
, and burials continued at the newly-rebuilt churches.
In the first half of the 19th century the population of London more than doubled, from a little under a million people in 1801 to almost two and a half million in 1851. Despite this rapid growth in population, the amount of land set aside for use as graveyard
s remained unchanged at approximately 300 acre (0.468750414456536 sq mi; 1.2 km²), spread across around 200 small sites. The difficulty of digging without disturbing existing graves led to bodies often simply being stacked on top of each other to fit the available space and covered with a layer of earth. In more crowded areas even relatively fresh graves had to be exhumed to free up space for new burials, their contents being unearthed and scattered to free up space. In some cases large pits were dug on existing burial grounds, unearthing the previous burials, and fresh corpses crammed into the available space. Intact material from burials was sold on a thriving market in second hand coffin furniture, coffin wood was burned as household fuel, and exhumed bones were shipped in bulk to the north of England to be sold as fertilizer. Decaying corpses contaminated the water supply and the city suffered regular epidemics of cholera
, smallpox
, measles
and typhoid; in 1842 the mean working life of a London professional man was 30 years and of a London labourer just 17 years.
Public health policy at this time was shaped by the miasma theory
(the belief that airborne particles released by decaying flesh were the primary factor in the spread of contagious illness), and the bad smells and risks of disease caused by piled bodies and exhumed rotting corpses caused great public concern. A Royal Commission
established in 1842 to investigate the problem concluded that London's burial grounds had become so overcrowded that it was impossible to dig a new grave without cutting through an existing one. Commissioner and sanitation campaigner Edwin Chadwick
testified that each year, 20,000 adults and 30,000 children were being buried in less than 218 acre (0.340625301171749 sq mi; 0.88221548 km²) of already full burial grounds; the Commission heard that one cemetery, Spa Fields in Clerkenwell
, designed to hold 1,000 bodies, contained 80,000 graves, and that gravediggers throughout London were obliged to shred bodies in order to cram the remains into available grave space. In 1848–49 a cholera epidemic killed 14,601 people in London and overwhelmed the burial system completely. Bodies were left stacked in heaps awaiting burial, and even relatively recent graves were exhumed to make way for new burials.
had recently opened a short distance from London or were in the process of opening, and temporarily became London's main burial grounds. A proposal by Francis Seymour Haden
to ship the bodies of London's dead to the Thames Estuary
for use in land reclamation met with little approval, and the government sought alternative means to prevent the constantly increasing number of deaths in London from overwhelming the new cemeteries in the same manner in which it had overwhelmed the traditional burial grounds.
The new suburban cemeteries had a combined size of just 282 acre (0.440625389589144 sq mi; 1.1 km²), and the Board of Health
did not consider any of them suitable for long-term use. As a long term solution to the crisis, Edwin Chadwick proposed the closure of all existing burial grounds in the vicinity of London other than the privately-owned Kensal Green Cemetery
in west London. Kensal Green Cemetery was to be nationalised and greatly enlarged to provide a single burial ground for west London. A large tract of land on the Thames around 9 miles (14.5 km) southeast of London in Abbey Wood
(on the site of present-day Thamesmead
) was to become a single burial ground for east London. All bodies would be shipped by river and canal to the new cemeteries, bringing an end to burials in London itself.
The Treasury was sceptical that Chadwick's scheme would ever be financially viable. It also met with widespread public concerns about the impact of monopoly control of the burial industry, and about the government taking control of an industry previously controlled by religious bodies and private entrepreneurs. The process of decomposition was still poorly understood and it was generally believed that (92%) of a decaying corpse was dispersed as gas; local authorities in the vicinity of the proposed new cemeteries were horrified at the prospect of an estimated 3000000 cubic feet (84,950.5 m³) per year of miasma (disease-carrying vapour) spreading from the cemeteries across surrounding areas. Although the Metropolitan Interments Act 1850 authorised Chadwick's scheme to proceed, the Metropolitan Interment Amendment Act 1852 repealed the authorisation.
near Woking
, Surrey
, to be called Brookwood Cemetery
or the London Necropolis. At this distance, the land would be far beyond the maximum projected size of the city's growth, greatly reducing any potential hazards from miasma. In the 18th century this land had been nicknamed "the Waste of Woking", and with poor quality gravel soil it was of little use in farming and thus available very cheaply. The London and South Western Railway
(LSWR)—which had connected London to Woking in 1838—would enable bodies and mourners to be shipped from London to the site easily and cheaply. Broun envisaged dedicated coffin trains, each carrying 50–60 bodies, travelling from London to the new Necropolis in the early morning or late at night, and the coffins being stored on the cemetery site until the time of the funeral. Mourners would then be carried to the appropriate part of the cemetery by a dedicated passenger train during the day.
Broun calculated that a 1500 acre (2.3 sq mi; 6.1 km²) site would accommodate a total of 5,830,500 individual graves in a single layer. The legislation authorising Brookwood Cemetery did not permit mass graves at the site, and burials were restricted to one family per grave. If the practice of only burying a single family in each grave were abandoned and the traditional practice for pauper burials of ten burials per grave were adopted, the site was capable of accommodating 28,500,000 bodies. Assuming 50,000 deaths per year and presuming that families would often choose to share a grave, Broun calculated that even with the prohibition of mass graves it would take over 350 years to fill a single layer of the cemetery. Although the Brookwood site was a long distance from London, Broun and Sprye argued that the railway made it both quicker and cheaper to reach than the seven existing cemeteries, all of which required a slow and expensive horse-drawn hearse to carry the body and mourners from London to the burial site.
was hostile in general to railway funeral schemes, arguing that the noise and speed of the railways was incompatible with the solemnity of the Christian burial service. Blomfield also considered it inappropriate that the families of people from very different backgrounds would potentially have to share a train, and felt that it demeaned the dignity of the deceased for the bodies of respectable members of the community to be carried on a train also carrying the bodies and relatives of those who had led immoral lives. Meanwhile Henry Drummond, Member of Parliament for the West Surrey
constituency which covered the Brookwood site, James Mangles, MP for the nearby constituency of Guildford
, and labour reform campaigner Lord Ashley
(later Lord Shaftesbury) lobbied against the proposal. Drummond considered the scheme a front for land speculation, believing that the promoters only intended to use 400 acre (0.625000552608715 sq mi; 1.6 km²) for the cemetery and to develop the remaining 80% for building; Mangles felt that the people of Woking were not being fairly compensated for the loss of their historic rights to use the common lands; Ashley felt that the Metropolitan Interments Act 1850 had been a victory for the campaign to end private profiteering from death and that the new scheme would reverse these gains, and was also concerned about the health implications of diseased bodies being transported to and stored at the London terminus in large numbers while awaiting trains to Brookwood.
By this time, Broun and Sprye had lost control of the scheme. On 1 April 1851 a group of trustees led by Poor Law Commission
er William Voules purchased the rights to the scheme from Broun and Sprye for £20,000 (about £ in terms of consumer spending power) and, once the Act of Parliament had been passed, founded the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company on their own without regard to their agreement with the original promoters. These trustees proved inept, wasting large sums of money; meanwhile Richard Broun lobbied vigorously against the "misrepresentations and ambiguous assertions" of the new trustees. With financiers sceptical of the scheme's viability Voules and his trustees were unable to raise the funds to buy the proposed site from Lord Onslow. In early 1853, amid widespread allegations of voting irregularities and with the company unable to pay promised dividends, a number of the directors resigned, including Voules, and the remaining public confidence in the scheme collapsed.
Broun's scheme had envisaged the cemetery running along both sides of the LSWR main line and divided by religion, with separate private railway halts on the main line, each incorporating a chapel, to serve each religion's section. The new consulting engineer to the company, William Cubitt
, rejected this idea and recommended a single site to the south of the railway line, served by a private branch line through the cemetery. The company also considered Broun's plan for dedicated coffin trains unrealistic, arguing that relatives would not want the coffins to be shipped separately from the deceased's family.
and York Street
(now Leake Street) was chosen as the site for the London railway terminus. Architect William Tite
and engineer William Cubitt drew up a design for a station, which was approved in June 1854, and completed in October 1854. In July 1854 work began on the drainage of the marshlands designated as the initial cemetery site, and on the construction of the embankment carrying the railway branch into the cemetery.
With the ambition to become London's sole burial site in perpetuity, the LNC were aware that if their plans were successful, their Necropolis would become a site of major national importance. As a consequence, the cemetery was designed with attractiveness in mind, in contrast to the squalid and congested London burial grounds and the newer suburban cemeteries which were already becoming crowded. The LNC aimed to create an atmosphere of perpetual spring in the cemetery, and chose the plants for the cemetery accordingly. It had already been noted that evergreen
plants from North America thrived in the local soil. Robert Donald, the owner of an arboretum
near Woking, was contracted to supply the trees and shrubs for the cemetery. The railway line through the cemetery and the major roads and paths within the cemetery were lined with giant sequoia
trees, the first significant planting of these trees (only introduced to Europe in 1853) in Britain. As well as the giant sequoias, the grounds were heavily planted with magnolia
, rhododendron
, coastal redwood, azalea
, andromeda
and monkeypuzzle
, with the intention of creating perpetual greenery with large numbers of flowers and a strong floral scent throughout the cemetery.
On 7 November 1854 the new cemetery opened and the southern Anglican
section was consecrated by Charles Sumner, Bishop of Winchester
. At the time it was the largest cemetery in the world. On 13 November the first scheduled train left the new London Necropolis railway station
for the cemetery, and the first burial (that of the stillborn twins of a Mr and Mrs Hore of Ewer Street, Borough) took place.
had been suggested by Richard Broun. Its proximity to the Thames meant that bodies could be cheaply transported to the terminus by water from much of London, while being situated near three major Thames bridges the area was easily accessed from both north and south of the river. The arches of the huge brick viaduct carrying the LSWR into Waterloo Bridge station (now London Waterloo station) were easily converted into mortuaries. Broun also felt that the journey out of London from Waterloo Bridge would be less distressing for mourners; while most of the rail routes out of London ran through tunnels and deep cuttings or through densely populated areas, at this time the urban development of what is now south London had not taken place and the LSWR route ran almost entirely through parkland and countryside. In March 1854 the LNC purchased a plot of land between Westminster Bridge Road
and York Street
(now Leake Street). Architect William Tite
and engineer William Cubitt
drew up a design for a station, which was approved in June 1854 and completed in October of that year.
As the station abutted the arches of the LSWR's viaduct, it acted as an obstacle to any increase in the number of lines serving Waterloo station (renamed from Waterloo Bridge station in 1886). Urban growth in the area of what is now south west London, through which trains from Waterloo ran, led to congestion at the station and in 1896 the LSWR formally presented the LNC with a proposal to provide the LNC with a new station in return for the existing station. The LNC agreed to the proposals, in return for the LSWR granting the LNC control of the design of the new station and leasing the new station to the LNC for a token rent in perpetuity, providing new rolling stock, removing any limit on the number of passengers using the Necropolis service, and providing the free carriage of machinery and equipment to be used in the cemetery. Although the LSWR was extremely unhappy at what they considered excessive demands, in May 1899 the companies signed an agreement, in which the LSWR gave in to every LNC demand. In addition the LSWR paid £12,000 compensation (about £ in terms of consumer spending power) for the inconvenience of relocating the LNC station and offices, and agreed that mourners returning from the cemetery could travel on any LSWR train to Waterloo, Vauxhall
or Clapham Junction
. A site for the replacement terminus was bought by the LSWR in 1899, south of the existing site and on the opposite side of Westminster Bridge Road. The new station was completed on 8 February 1902, and the LSWR viaduct was widened to serve a greatly enlarged Waterloo station, destroying all traces of the original LNC terminus.
section of the cemetery, and South station served the Anglican section. On William Cubitt's advice the two stations in the cemetery were built as temporary structures, in the expectation that they would need to be rebuilt once the railway was operational and the issues with operating a railway of this unique nature became clearer. Other than brick platform faces, chimneys and foundations, the stations were built entirely of wood. Each station held first class and ordinary reception rooms for mourners, a first class and an ordinary refreshment room, and a set of apartments for LNC staff. To provide an attractive first view of the cemetery for visitors arriving at the stations, the areas around the stations and their associated chapels were planted with groves of bay
, Cedar of Lebanon, rhododendron and Portuguese laurel
.
At the time the cemetery opened, the nearest railway station other than those on the cemetery branch was Woking railway station
, 4 miles (6.4 km) away. As only one train per day ran from London to the cemetery stations and back, and even that ran only when funerals were due to take place, access to the cemetery was difficult for mourners and LNC staff. Although in the negotiations leading to the creation of the cemetery the LSWR had told the LNC that they planned to build a main line station near the cemetery, they had not done so. On 1 June 1864 the LSWR finally opened Brookwood railway station
on their main line, immediately adjacent to the cemetery. A substantial commuter village grew around the northern (i.e. non-cemetery) side of the new station.
expense in the section of the cemetery designated for that parish. Although the LNC was forbidden from using mass graves (other than the burial of next of kin in the same grave) and thus even the lowest class of funeral provided a separate grave for the deceased, third class funerals were not granted the right to erect a permanent memorial on the site. (The families of those buried could pay afterwards to upgrade a third class grave to a higher class if they later wanted to erect a memorial, but this practice was rare.) Despite this, Brookwood's pauper graves granted more dignity to the deceased than did other graveyards and cemeteries of the period, all of which other than Brookwood continued the practice of mass graves for the poor. Brookwood was one of the few cemeteries to permit burials on Sundays, which made it a popular choice with the poor as it allowed people to attend funerals without the need to take a day off work. As theatrical performances were banned on Sundays at this time, it also made Brookwood a popular choice for the burial of actors for the same reason, to the extent that actors were provided with a dedicated section of the cemetery near the station entrance.
While the majority of burials conducted by the LNC (around 80%) were pauper funerals on behalf of London parishes, the LNC also reached agreement with a number of societies, guilds, religious bodies and similar organisations. The LNC provided dedicated sections of the cemetery for these groups, on the basis that those who had lived or worked together in life could remain together after death. Although the LNC was never able to gain the domination of London's funeral industry for which its founders had hoped, it was very successful at targeting specialist groups of artisans and trades, to the extent that it became nicknamed "the Westminster Abbey of the middle classes". A large number of these dedicated plots were established, ranging from Chelsea Pensioners and the Ancient Order of Foresters
to the Corps of Commissionaires
and the LSWR. The Nonconformist cemetery also includes a Parsee burial ground established in 1862, which remains the only Zoroastrian
burial ground in Europe. Dedicated sections in the Anglican cemetery were also reserved for burials from those parishes which had made burial arrangements with the LNC.
Immediately after its foundation the LNC used existing firms of London undertakers to arrange funerals, but over time took over all aspects of the arrangements from coffin-making to masonry. LNC funerals were intentionally kept as similar as possible to those of traditional undertakers, with the exception that a railway carriage was used in place of a hearse. On being commissioned to provide a funeral, invitations would be sent out either by the deceased's family or from the LNC offices. These letters specified the waiting room to be used, the time of the train to Brookwood, and the expected return time to London. If the funeral was to be held in London, a traditional hearse and carriage would take the deceased to their parish church for the service, and then on to the London railway terminus; if the funeral was to take place in the terminus or in Brookwood, the procession would come directly to the terminus.
on platform level, for those cases where mourners were unable to make the journey to Brookwood.) Each door of the waiting train would be labelled with the name of the deceased, to ensure all passengers travelled with the correct funeral party; the names of the deceased being carried on the train would be called in turn, and that person's mourners would board the train. At the time the service was inaugurated, the LNC's trains were divided both by class and by religion, with separate Anglican and Nonconformist sections of the train. This distinction applied to both living and dead passengers. Intended to prevent persons from different social background from mixing and potentially distressing mourners and to prevent bodies of persons from different social classes being carried in the same compartment rather than to provide different facilities, the carriages intended for all classes and religions were very similar in design, and the primary difference was different ornamentation on the compartment doors. At 11.35 am (11.20 am on Sundays) the train would leave London for Brookwood, arriving at Necropolis Junction at 12.25 pm (12.20 pm on Sundays).
On arrival at North or South station coffins would usually be unloaded onto a hand-drawn bier
and pulled by LNC staff to the appropriate chapel. While this was taking place the mourners were escorted to the waiting rooms at the station. On arrival at the chapels first and second class funerals would generally have a brief service (third class funerals had a single service in the appropriate chapel for all those being buried). For those burials where the funeral service had already been held at either a parish church or the LNC's London terminus the coffins would be taken directly from the train to the grave.
The return trains to London generally left South station at 2.15 pm and Necropolis Junction at 2.30 pm; the return journey initially took around an hour owing to the need to stop to refill the engine with water, but following the construction of the water tower in the cemetery this fell to around 40 minutes. An 1854 agreement between the LNC and LSWR gave consent for the LNC to operate two or three funeral trains each day if demand warranted it, but traffic levels never rose to a sufficient level to activate this clause.
The train only ran if there was a coffin or passengers at the London terminus waiting to use it, and both the journey from London to Brookwood and the later return would be cancelled if nobody was due to leave London that morning. It would not run if there was only a single third or second class coffin to be carried, and in these cases the coffin and funeral party would be held until the next service. Generally the trains ran direct from London to the cemetery, other than occasional stops to take on water. Between 1890 and 1910 the trains also sometimes stopped at Vauxhall
and Clapham Junction
for the benefit of mourners from south west London who did not want to travel via Waterloo, but these intermediate stops were discontinued and never reinstated. After 1 October 1900 the Sunday trains were discontinued, and from 1902 the daily train service was ended and trains ran only as required. On some occasions where there were very large numbers of mourners the LSWR would provide special passenger trains from Waterloo to their own station at Brookwood to carry additional mourners to the vicinity of the cemetery.
As well as intending to conduct those burials which would previously have taken place in London's now-closed graveyards, the LNC also envisaged the physical relocation of the closed burial grounds to their Necropolis, to provide a final solution to the problems caused by burials in built-up areas. The massive London civil engineering projects of the mid-19th century—the railways, the sewer system
and from the 1860s the precursors to the London Underground
—often necessitated the demolition of existing churchyards. The first major relocation took place in 1862, when the construction of Charing Cross railway station
and the routes into it necessitated the demolition of the burial ground of Cure's College in Southwark
. Around 5000 cubic yards (3,822.8 m³) of earth was displaced, uncovering at least 7,950 bodies. These were packed into 220 large containers, each containing 26 adults plus children, and shipped on the London Necropolis Railway to Brookwood for reburial, along with at least some of the existing headstones from the cemetery, at a cost of around 3 shillings per body. At least 21 London burial grounds were relocated to Brookwood via the railway, along with numerous others relocated by road following the railway's closure. The LNC's exhumation and relocation business, split from the LNC in 1973 and renamed "Necropolis", continued to operate until 2002.
The success of the LNC relied on taking over all, or at least a significant portion, of the burials of London's dead. However, while the Metropolitan Interment Amendment Act 1852 had repealed Chadwick's scheme for two very large cemeteries near London, it had also permitted London's parishes to make their own arrangements for the burial of their dead. Each parish could make arrangements with the cemetery of its choosing, or use money from the rates
to create their own cemeteries. The financial mismanagement and internal disputes within the LNC had delayed the opening of Brookwood Cemetery by 18 months, and during this period new cemeteries nearer London had opened or were nearing completion. While some parishes did choose Brookwood as their burial site, many preferred either to make arrangements with less distant cemeteries, or to buy land on the outskirts of London and open their own suburban cemeteries. Concerns over the financial irregularities and the viability of the scheme had led to only 15,000 of the 25,000 LNC shares being sold, severely limiting the company's working capital and forcing it to take out large loans. Buying the land from Lord Onslow, compensating local residents for the loss of rights over Woking Common, draining and landscaping the portion to be used for the initial cemetery, and building the railway lines and stations were all expensive undertakings. With far fewer burial contracts with London parishes than had been anticipated, by the time Brookwood Cemetery opened in November 1854 the LNC was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Recognising their financial predicament, the LNC lobbied Parliament for a new Act of Parliament to allow the venture to survive. On 23 July 1855 the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Amendment Act 1855 received Royal Assent. This Act released the LNC from those compulsory purchases of land which had been mandated by the 1852 Act but had not yet been completed, easing the immediate financial burden. It also allowed a ten year window for the LNC to sell certain parts of the land bought from Lord Onslow which were not required for the cemetery, to provide a source of income.
Although the 1855 Act permitted the LNC to sell land, this proved difficult. Of the 2200 acre (3.4 sq mi; 8.9 km²) site, around 700 acre (1.1 sq mi; 2.8 km²) were occupied by the initial Necropolis site and the adjacent reserve site, and a further 200 acre (0.312500276304357 sq mi; 0.809372 km²) retained their common land
rights and could not be developed in any way, rendering them worthless to prospective buyers. While this left 1300 acre (2 sq mi; 5.3 km²) theoretically able to be sold, the Brookwood site had been chosen for its remoteness and there were few prospective buyers. While 214 acre (0.334375295645662 sq mi; 0.86602804 km²) were bought by the government as sites for prisons and a lunatic asylum, the LNC struggled to sell the remainder. By the time the ten year window for land sales expired in 1865, only 346 acre (0.540625478006538 sq mi; 1.4 km²) had been sold.
With the majority of the surplus lands still unsold, as the ten year window expired the LNC successfully petitioned for a further five year extension. The LNC was by this time in serious financial difficulties, and dependent on loans from its own directors to settle outstanding debts. The business had been established on the basis that the cemetery would handle between 10,000 and 50,000 burials per year, but the number never exceeded 4,100 and over its first 20 years of operations averaged just 3,200. As the five year extension expired the financial difficulties remained, and under pressure from shareholders the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Amendment Act 1869 was passed. This removed all restrictions on land sales, other than within the existing cemetery and the adjacent reserve site. Despite the releasing of restrictions in the 1869 Act, land sales remained disappointing. By 1887 less than half the surplus land had been sold, much of it at very low prices.
Tubbs established a masonry works and showroom near the centre of the cemetery, allowing the LNC to provide grave markers without the difficulty of shipping them from London, and opened a LNC-owned nursery in the grounds for the sale of plants and wreaths. This increased the practice of mourners planting flowers and shrubs around graves, which was in turn used by the LNC in their promotional material to promote Brookwood as a "Garden of Sleep". In around 1904 the masonry works was expanded and equipped with a siding from the railway branch line, allowing the LNC to sell its gravestones and funerary art
to cemeteries nationwide.
Tubbs also oversaw a restructuring of the ailing programme to sell the LNC's surplus lands. The estate was partitioned into three sections, and separate estate agents appointed to oversee the disposal of each. Many of the lands near Woking railway station and around Brookwood were sold, at much higher prices than the LNC disposals had previously fetched. No suitable agent could be found to oversee the sale of the third portion of LNC land, Hook Heath, and as a consequence Tubbs kept it under LNC control and oversaw its development himself. Over the 1890s the site was subdivided into plots for large detached houses, and a golf course was built to attract residents and visitors.
In August 1914, on the outbreak of the First World War, the LNC offered to donate to the War Office
1 acres (4,046.9 m²) of land "for the free interment of soldiers and sailors who have returned from the front wounded and may subsequently die". The offer was not taken up until 1917, when a section of the cemetery was set aside as Brookwood Military Cemetery, used for the burials of service personnel who died in the London District
. In 1921 this area was sold to the Imperial War Graves Commission
(later the Commonwealth War Graves Commission), and since then the military cemeteries have been administered and maintained by the IWGC/CWGC and its equivalents for other nations whose military are buried there. In September 1922 the LNC sold an area adjacent to the Military Cemetery to the US government. The LNC was hired by the US government to landscape this area and build a chapel, creating the American Military Cemetery
(later the Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial), the only burial ground in Britain for US casualties of the First World War. Although built by the LNC, since 1923 the American Military Cemetery has been administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission
. After the Second World War the military cemeteries were extended to include dedicated sections for many of the Allied
nations, and in 1958 the Brookwood Memorial, commemorating 3,500 Commonwealth
casualties of the Second World War with no known grave, was dedicated at the site. Between them, the military cemeteries occupy around 37 acres (149,733.8 m²) of the site.
bought an isolated piece of the LNC's Brookwood land and built Woking Crematorium
on the site. The crematorium was completed in 1879 but Richard Cross
, the Home Secretary
, bowed to strong protests from local residents and threatened to prosecute if any cremations were conducted. As a consequence the crematorium was not used other than for the experimental incineration of livestock. The 1884 trial of William Price established that human cremation was not unlawful in England, and on 26 March 1885 the first human cremation took place at Woking. Although the LNC was hostile to the idea of cremation, Woking Crematorium was the only operational crematorium in the country. Since the Necropolis Railway provided the easiest way to transport bodies and mourners from London to the Woking area, transport to and from Woking Crematorium soon began to provide a significant source of revenue for the LNC.
Cremation remained unusual and very expensive; the cost of a cremation at Woking was £6, not including transport and funeral costs, more than twice the £2 10s cost of a first class burial at Brookwood. By 1891 only 177 people had been cremated at Woking. Cyril Tubbs recognised that a potential increase in cremations once the practice became accepted represented an opportunity for the LNC. In July 1891 he proposed that the LNC build its own crematorium and columbarium
(building for the storage of cremated remains) within the cemetery, with the ultimate goal of taking over all funeral arrangements for the Cremation Society. The Cremation Society were keen to prevent a competitor to Woking Crematorium, and sought to cooperate with the LNC. The fares for the transport of mourners and coffins on the London Necropolis Railway had been fixed by Parliament in 1852 at 6s for a living first class passenger and £1 for a first class coffin (in 1891 worth about £ and £ respectively in consumer terms). Rival firms of undertakers were not permitted to use the LNC's trains to Brookwood Cemetery and had to pay the much more expensive LSWR fares to transport coffins and mourners from Waterloo to Woking, giving the LNC a significant advantage in carriage to the crematorium. While the LNC never built its own crematorium, in 1910 Lord Cadogan
decided he no longer wanted to be interred in the mausoleum he had commissioned at Brookwood. This building, the largest mausoleum in the cemetery, was bought by the LNC, fitted with shelves and niches to hold urns, and used as a dedicated columbarium from then on.
During the Second World War Waterloo station and the nearby Thames bridges were a significant target for bombing, and there were several near-misses on the station during the London Blitz of 1940–41. Although there were several interruptions to the Necropolis train service owing to enemy action elsewhere on the line, the Necropolis station was undamaged during the early stages of the bombing campaign. During the night of 16–17 April 1941, in one of the last major air raids on London, this good fortune came to an end. As bombs repeatedly fell on the Waterloo area, the rolling stock parked in the Necropolis siding was burned, and the railway arch connecting the main line to the Necropolis terminus was badly damaged. Multiple incendiary devices and high explosive bombs struck the central section of the terminus building. While the LNC's office building and the station platforms survived, the central section of the station was reduced to rubble. On 11 May 1941 the station was officially declared closed.
The Southern Railway
(SR), which had absorbed the LSWR in 1923, offered the LNC the temporary use of Waterloo station to allow the Necropolis Railway service to be continued, but refused to allow the LNC to continue to sell cheap tickets to visitors travelling to and from the cemetery stations other than those involved in a funeral that day, meaning those visiting the cemetery had little reason to choose the LNC's irregular and infrequent trains to the cemetery stations over the SR's fast and frequent services to Brookwood. The LNC attempted to negotiate a deal by which genuine mourners could still travel cheaply to the cemetery on the 11.57 am service to Brookwood (the SR service closest to the LNC's traditional departure time), but the SR management (themselves under severe financial pressure owing to wartime constraints and damage) refused to entertain any compromise. In September 1945, following the end of hostilities, the directors of the LNC met to consider whether to rebuild the terminus and reopen the London Necropolis Railway. Although the main line from Waterloo to Brookwood had remained in use throughout the war and was in good condition, the branch line from Brookwood into the cemetery had been almost unused since the destruction of the London terminus. With the soil of the cemetery causing the branch to deteriorate even when it had been in use and regularly maintained, the branch line was in extremely poor condition.
Although Richard Broun had calculated that over its first century of operations the cemetery would have seen around five million burials at a rate of 50,000 per year, at the time the last train ran on 11 April 1941 only 203,041 people had been buried at Brookwood in almost 87 years of operations. Increased use of motorised road transport had damaged the profitability of the railway for the LNC, and faced with the costs of rebuilding the cemetery branch line, building a new London terminus and replacing the rolling stock damaged or destroyed in the air raid, the directors concluded that "past experience and present changed conditions made the running of the Necropolis private train obsolete". In mid 1946 the LNC formally informed the SR that the Westminster Bridge Road terminus would not be reopened.
The decision prompted complicated negotiations with the SR over the future of the LNC facilities in London. In December 1946 the directors of the two companies finally reached agreement. The railway-related portions of the LNC site (the waiting rooms, the caretaker's flat and the platforms themselves) would pass into the direct ownership of the SR, while the remaining surviving portions of the site (the office block on Westminster Bridge Road, the driveway and the ruined central portion of the site) would pass to the LNC to use or dispose of as they saw fit. The LNC sold the site to the British Humane Association
in May 1947 for £21,000 (about £ in terms of consumer spending power), and the offices of the LNC were transferred to the Superintendent's Office at Brookwood. The SR continued to use the surviving sections of the track as occasional sidings into the 1950s, before clearing what remained of their section of the site.
While most of the LNC's business was now operated by road, an agreement on 13 May 1946 allowed the LNC to make use of SR services from Waterloo to Brookwood station for funerals, subject to the condition that should the service be heavily used the SR (British Railways after 1948) reserved the right to restrict the number of funeral parties on any given train. Although one of the LNC's hearse carriages had survived the bombing it is unlikely that this was ever used, and coffins were carried in the luggage space of the SR's coaches. Coffins would either be shipped to Brookwood ahead of the funeral party and transported by road to one of the mortuaries at the disused cemetery stations, or travel on the same SR train as the funeral party to Brookwood and be transported from Brookwood station to the burial site or chapel by road.
Although the LNC proposed to convert the cemetery branch line into a grand avenue running from Brookwood station through the cemetery, this never took place. The rails and sleepers of the branch were removed in around 1947, and the trackbed became a dirt road and footpath. The run-around loop and stub of the branch line west of Brookwood station remained operational as sidings, before being dismantled on 30 November 1964. After the closure of the branch line the buildings of the two cemetery stations remained open as refreshment kiosks, and were renamed North Bar and South Bar. On the retirement in 1956 of a Mr and Mrs Dendy, who operated North Bar from 1948–56 and lived in the station apartment, North station was abandoned, and demolished in the 1960s owing to dry rot
. South Bar continued to operate as a refreshment kiosk.
, Bishop of Guildford
in 1950. Intentionally designed for informality, traditional gravestones and memorials were prohibited, and burials were marked only by small 2 to 3 in (5.1 to 7.6 cm) stones.
Although at its founding the LNC had hoped to handle 50,000 burials per year and even without being granted a monopoly on London burials had planned for 10,000 per year, Brookwood Cemetery was never as popular as hoped. At the time of the railway's closure only 203,041 burials had been conducted, and the rate was steadily falling; on the LNC's 150th anniversary in November 1994, a total of 231,730 burials had been conducted. Even with the unusually large individual 9 foot grave sites offered by the LNC for even the cheapest burials, the site had been planned to accommodate 5,000,000 burials, and much of the land was empty.
Despite the decline in burials from an already low level, rising land values in the post war years meant that the LNC was a valuable and successful company. In the 1940s it bought out a number of other firms of funeral directors, particularly those catering for the expanding and prosperous suburbs of south west London within easy reach of Brookwood by road. The LNC continued to lobby the SR and its 1948 successor British Railways until the 1950s on the matter of cheap fares for visitors to the cemetery, but were unable to come to any agreement. In 1957 the Southern Region of British Railways
considered allowing the LNC to sell discounted fares of 7s 6d (compared to the standard rate of 9s 4d) for return tickets for same-day travel from London to Brookwood and back. By this time most visitors to the cemetery were travelling by road. The LNC felt that the relatively minor difference between the fares would not be sufficient to attract visitors back to the railway, and the proposal was abandoned.
Owing to Henry Drummond's concerns in 1852 that the LNC was a front for land speculation, the sale of LNC-owned land for building had been expressly forbidden by the Act of Parliament establishing the LNC, and consequently much of the land not in use for burials remained undeveloped, aside from the land sold in the 1850s and 1860s, and the areas sold by Cyril Tubbs.
By the 1950s, with the area around Woking by this time heavily populated, rental income from the LNC's land holdings was an extremely valuable asset, and in May 1955 the Alliance Property Company launched a hostile takeover bid with the aim of using the cemetery's land for property development. The bid failed, but prompted the LNC to secure the passing of the London Necropolis Act 1956, allowing the sale of all remaining surplus land. A new company, the Brookwood Estates Realisation Company, was founded to oversee the disposal of the remaining unsold lands as well as the cemetery reserve, finally formally recognising that Brookwood Cemetery would never expand beyond its original boundaries.
The former South station was near the A322 road making it one of the most easily accessed parts of the cemetery once the railway had closed, and the land surrounding it was now redundant. As part of the London Necropolis Act 1956 the LNC obtained Parliamentary consent to convert the disused Anglican chapel of 1854 into a crematorium, using a newer chapel built by Cyril Tubbs in 1908–09 for funeral services and the station building for coffin storage and as a refreshment room for those attending cremations. Suffering cash flow problems and distracted by the hostile takeover bid, the LNC management never proceeded with the scheme.
Repeated takeover bids from various companies were unsuccessfully attempted in 1956 and 1957, until in December 1957 Alliance Property announced that it controlled a majority of the shares of the Brookwood Estates Realisation Company. In January 1959 Alliance Property announced the successful takeover of the London Necropolis Company itself, bringing over a century of independence to an end.
After Alliance Property's land sales, the London Necropolis Company had been reduced to Brookwood Cemetery itself and Frederick W. Paine, a Kingston-upon-Thames firm of funeral directors which had been bought by the LNC in 1947. In 1970 Alliance Property sold the LNC to Cornwall Property (Holdings) Ltd. The following year Cornwall Property sold it on to the Great Southern Group, the owners of Streatham Park Cemetery, South London Crematorium and a chain of funeral directors in central London.
The Great Southern Group dismantled much of what remained of the company. Frederick W. Paine was detached from the LNC, along with the specialist division overseeing the exhumation and relocation of existing burial grounds to allow property development on formerly consecrated sites. All that remained of the LNC was Brookwood Cemetery itself, by this time moribund and becoming heavily overgrown. Considered virtually worthless, Great Southern sold the LNC to property speculators Maximilian Investments in July 1973 for £400,000.
Although the Act of 1975 had specified that a portion of the profits from land sales be used to maintain the remaining cemetery, little restoration work was done and the cemetery continued to revert to wilderness. With the new owners of the land interested only in redeveloping those parts of the cemetery not currently in use, the cemetery itself sank further into neglect.
The last operators of the refreshment kiosk in the former South station retired in the late 1960s and from then on the station building was used as a cemetery storeroom. Around half the building was destroyed by fire in September 1972. The building was popular with railway and architectural enthusiasts as a distinctive piece of Victorian railway architecture, but despite a lobbying campaign to preserve the surviving sections of the station the remaining buildings (other than the platform itself) were demolished shortly afterwards. By the time of its demolition the "temporary" structure was 118 years old. In 1982 as part of the programme of land sales the station site, the two derelict Anglican chapels and 5 acres (20,234.3 m²) of land around it were sold to the St. Edward Brotherhood, an order of Russian Orthodox monks. The Brotherhood set about restoring the chapels for religious use. The original 1854 chapel is used as a visitor's centre and living quarters for the monastery, while the larger Anglican chapel built by Cyril Tubbs in 1908–09 immediately north of the station is now the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Edward the Martyr, and houses the relics and shrine of Edward the Martyr
, king of England from 975–978 AD. The main monastery has been built on the site of the former station building, while the platform itself remains intact and now marks the boundary of the monastic enclosure.
In March 1985 the company was bought by Ramadan Güney
, whose family still owns the cemetery as of 2011. The Guney family embarked on a programme of building links with London's mosques to encourage new burials in the cemetery. Guney began a slow programme of clearing the overgrown sections of the cemetery and restoring significant memorials. The Guney family's efforts to attract new custom have been successful, to the extent that some of the lands sold off in the 1970s have now been repurchased by the cemetery. In June 1989 the cemetery was designated a Conservation Area
, and subsequently was declared a Site of Special Scientific Interest
. In 1992 the Brookwood Cemetery Society was formed to improve awareness of the cemetery; the Society holds open days, guided walks and other events, restores damaged memorials, and maintains and improves the signage within the cemetery.
While it was never as successful as planned, the London Necropolis Company had a significant impact on the funeral industry, and the principles established by the LNC influenced the design of many other cemeteries worldwide. The village of Brookwood has grown on the northern (non-cemetery) side of the LSWR railway line, focused on the 1864 railway station which remains heavily used both by commuters and by visitors to the cemetery. Brookwood Cemetery remains the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in the world. Although not the world's only dedicated funeral railway line, the London Necropolis Railway was the first, the longest lasting and by far the best known. While the growth of the part of Surrey around the cemetery was heavily influenced by the LNC, some iron columns in Newnham Terrace SW1 which once supported the Necropolis Railway viaduct and the LNC's surviving office building at 121 Westminster Bridge Road are the only surviving London Necropolis Company structures in London itself.
Cemetery
A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term "cemetery" implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are where the final ceremonies of death are observed...
operator established by Act of Parliament
Acts of Parliament in the United Kingdom
An Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom is a type of legislation called primary legislation. These Acts are passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom at Westminster, or by the Scottish Parliament at Edinburgh....
in 1852 in reaction to the crisis caused by the closure of London's
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
graveyards in 1851. The LNC intended to establish a single cemetery large enough to accommodate all of London's future burials in perpetuity. The company's founders recognised that the recently invented technology of the railway provided the ability to conduct burials a long distance from populated areas, mitigating concerns over public health risks from living near burial sites. Accordingly, the company bought a very large tract of land in Brookwood, Surrey
Brookwood, Surrey
Brookwood is a village in Surrey, located about 5 km west of Woking, in a semi-rural location. It lies on the western border of the Woking Borough ....
, around 25 miles (40.2 km) from London, and converted a portion of it into Brookwood Cemetery
Brookwood Cemetery
Brookwood Cemetery is a burial ground in Brookwood, Surrey, England. It is the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in western Europe.-History:...
. A dedicated railway line, the London Necropolis Railway
London Necropolis Railway
The London Necropolis Railway was a railway line opened in November 1854 by the London Necropolis Company , to carry cadavers and mourners between London and the LNC's newly opened Brookwood Cemetery southwest of London in Brookwood, Surrey...
, linked the new cemetery to the city.
Financial mismanagement and internal disputes led to delays in the project. By the time Brookwood Cemetery opened in late 1854, a number of other cemeteries had opened nearer to London or were in the process of opening. While some parish
Parish
A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...
es in London did arrange for the LNC to handle the burials of their dead, many preferred to use nearer cemeteries. The LNC had anticipated handling between 10,000–50,000 burials per year, but the number never rose above 4,100 per year, and in its first 150 years of operations only 231,730 burials had been conducted. Buying the land for Brookwood Cemetery and building the cemetery and railway had been very expensive, and by the time the cemetery opened the LNC was already on the verge of bankruptcy. The LNC remained solvent by selling surplus parts of its land, but as the land had been chosen in the first place for its remoteness, sales were low.
From the 1880s the LNC began a more aggressive programme to maximise its income. The process for the sale of surplus land was improved, resulting in increased income. The LNC redeveloped its lands at Hook Heath into housing and a golf course, creating a new suburb of Woking
Woking
Woking is a large town and civil parish that shares its name with the surrounding local government district, located in the west of Surrey, UK. It is part of the Greater London Urban Area and the London commuter belt, with frequent trains and a journey time of 24 minutes to Waterloo station....
and providing a steady income from rentals. After an 1884 ruling that cremation
Cremation
Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....
was lawful in England the LNC also took advantage of its proximity to Woking Crematorium
Woking Crematorium
Woking Crematorium is a crematorium in Woking, a large town in the west of Surrey, England. Established in 1878, it was the first custom-built crematorium in the United Kingdom and is closely linked to the history of cremation in this country.-Location:...
by providing transport for bodies and mourners on its railway line and after 1910 by interring ashes in a dedicated columbarium
Columbarium
A columbarium is a place for the respectful and usually public storage of cinerary urns . The term comes from the Latin columba and originally referred to compartmentalized housing for doves and pigeons .The Columbarium of Pomponius Hylas is a particularly fine ancient Roman example, rich in...
. The LNC also provided the land for a number of significant military cemeteries and memorials at Brookwood after both of the World Wars. In 1941 London Necropolis railway station
London Necropolis railway station
London Necropolis railway station refers to two stations in Waterloo, London, which served successively as the London terminus of the London Necropolis Railway. The London Necropolis Railway was opened in 1854 as a reaction to severe overcrowding in London's existing graveyards and cemeteries...
, the LNC's London railway terminus, was badly damaged by bombing, and the London Necropolis Railway was abandoned.
Rising property prices in Surrey in the 1940s and 1950s made the LNC increasingly valuable, but also made it a target for property speculators. In 1959 a hostile takeover succeeded, and LNC's independence came to an end. From 1959 to 1985 a succession of owners stripped the profitable parts of the business from the company, leaving a rump residual company operating the increasingly derelict cemetery. In 1985 what remained of the company came into the ownership of Ramadan Güney
Ramadan Güney
Ramadan Hüseyin Güney was a British-Turkish Cypriot businessman and politician. He was the owner of Brookwood Cemetery, the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom, with the aim of establishing a Turkish cemetery...
, who set about reviving what remained. Links were formed with London's Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
communities in an effort to encourage new burials, and a slow programme of clearing and restoring the derelict sections of the cemetery commenced. Although it was never as successful as planned, the LNC was very influential on both the funeral industry and the development of the area around Woking, and Brookwood Cemetery remains the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom.
Background
Since the conversion of London to Christianity in the early 7th century, the city's dead had been buried in and around the local churches. With a limited amount of space for burials, the oldest graves were regularly exhumed to free space for new burials, and the remains of the previous occupants transferred to charnel houseCharnel house
A charnel house is a vault or building where human skeletal remains are stored. They are often built near churches for depositing bones that are unearthed while digging graves...
s for storage. From the 14th century onwards the charnel houses themselves were overwhelmed, and exhumed bones were scattered where they had been dug up or reburied in pits. Despite this practice, by the mid 17th century the city was running seriously short of burial space. A proposal by Christopher Wren
Christopher Wren
Sir Christopher Wren FRS is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history.He used to be accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710...
to use the reconstruction following the 1666 Great Fire of London
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...
as an opportunity to cease burials in the churchyards and establish new cemeteries
Cemetery
A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term "cemetery" implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are where the final ceremonies of death are observed...
outside the city was approved by the King and Parliament but vetoed by the Corporation of London
Corporation of London
The City of London Corporation is the municipal governing body of the City of London. It exercises control only over the City , and not over Greater London...
, and burials continued at the newly-rebuilt churches.
In the first half of the 19th century the population of London more than doubled, from a little under a million people in 1801 to almost two and a half million in 1851. Despite this rapid growth in population, the amount of land set aside for use as graveyard
Graveyard
A graveyard is any place set aside for long-term burial of the dead, with or without monuments such as headstones...
s remained unchanged at approximately 300 acre (0.468750414456536 sq mi; 1.2 km²), spread across around 200 small sites. The difficulty of digging without disturbing existing graves led to bodies often simply being stacked on top of each other to fit the available space and covered with a layer of earth. In more crowded areas even relatively fresh graves had to be exhumed to free up space for new burials, their contents being unearthed and scattered to free up space. In some cases large pits were dug on existing burial grounds, unearthing the previous burials, and fresh corpses crammed into the available space. Intact material from burials was sold on a thriving market in second hand coffin furniture, coffin wood was burned as household fuel, and exhumed bones were shipped in bulk to the north of England to be sold as fertilizer. Decaying corpses contaminated the water supply and the city suffered regular epidemics of cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
, smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
, measles
Measles
Measles, also known as rubeola or morbilli, is an infection of the respiratory system caused by a virus, specifically a paramyxovirus of the genus Morbillivirus. Morbilliviruses, like other paramyxoviruses, are enveloped, single-stranded, negative-sense RNA viruses...
and typhoid; in 1842 the mean working life of a London professional man was 30 years and of a London labourer just 17 years.
Public health policy at this time was shaped by the miasma theory
Miasma theory of disease
The miasma theory held that diseases such as cholera, chlamydia or the Black Death were caused by a miasma , a noxious form of "bad air"....
(the belief that airborne particles released by decaying flesh were the primary factor in the spread of contagious illness), and the bad smells and risks of disease caused by piled bodies and exhumed rotting corpses caused great public concern. A Royal Commission
Royal Commission
In Commonwealth realms and other monarchies a Royal Commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue. They have been held in various countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Saudi Arabia...
established in 1842 to investigate the problem concluded that London's burial grounds had become so overcrowded that it was impossible to dig a new grave without cutting through an existing one. Commissioner and sanitation campaigner Edwin Chadwick
Edwin Chadwick
Sir Edwin Chadwick KCB was an English social reformer, noted for his work to reform the Poor Laws and improve sanitary conditions and public health...
testified that each year, 20,000 adults and 30,000 children were being buried in less than 218 acre (0.340625301171749 sq mi; 0.88221548 km²) of already full burial grounds; the Commission heard that one cemetery, Spa Fields in Clerkenwell
Clerkenwell
Clerkenwell is an area of central London in the London Borough of Islington. From 1900 to 1965 it was part of the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury. The well after which it was named was rediscovered in 1924. The watchmaking and watch repairing trades were once of great importance...
, designed to hold 1,000 bodies, contained 80,000 graves, and that gravediggers throughout London were obliged to shred bodies in order to cram the remains into available grave space. In 1848–49 a cholera epidemic killed 14,601 people in London and overwhelmed the burial system completely. Bodies were left stacked in heaps awaiting burial, and even relatively recent graves were exhumed to make way for new burials.
Proposed solutions to the burial crisis
In the wake of public concerns following the cholera epidemic and the findings of the Royal Commission, the Act to Amend the Laws Concerning the Burial of the Dead in the Metropolis (Burials Act) was passed in 1851. Under the Burials Act, new burials were prohibited in what were then the built-up areas of London. Seven large cemeteriesMagnificent Seven, London
The "Magnificent Seven" is an informal term applied to seven large cemeteries in London. They were established in the 19th century to alleviate overcrowding in existing parish burial grounds.-Background:...
had recently opened a short distance from London or were in the process of opening, and temporarily became London's main burial grounds. A proposal by Francis Seymour Haden
Francis Seymour Haden
Sir Francis Seymour Haden , was an English surgeon, best known as an etcher.He was born in London, his father, Charles Thomas Haden, being a well-known doctor and lover of music. He was educated at Derby School, Christ's Hospital, and University College, London, and also studied at the Sorbonne,...
to ship the bodies of London's dead to the Thames Estuary
Thames Estuary
The Thames Mouth is the estuary in which the River Thames meets the waters of the North Sea.It is not easy to define the limits of the estuary, although physically the head of Sea Reach, near Canvey Island on the Essex shore is probably the western boundary...
for use in land reclamation met with little approval, and the government sought alternative means to prevent the constantly increasing number of deaths in London from overwhelming the new cemeteries in the same manner in which it had overwhelmed the traditional burial grounds.
The new suburban cemeteries had a combined size of just 282 acre (0.440625389589144 sq mi; 1.1 km²), and the Board of Health
Local board of health
Local Boards or Local Boards of Health were local authorities in urban areas of England and Wales from 1848 to 1894. They were formed in response to cholera epidemics and were given powers to control sewers, clean the streets, regulate slaughterhouses and ensure the proper supply of water to their...
did not consider any of them suitable for long-term use. As a long term solution to the crisis, Edwin Chadwick proposed the closure of all existing burial grounds in the vicinity of London other than the privately-owned Kensal Green Cemetery
Kensal Green Cemetery
Kensal Green Cemetery is a cemetery in Kensal Green, in the west of London, England. It was immortalised in the lines of G. K. Chesterton's poem The Rolling English Road from his book The Flying Inn: "For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen; Before we go to Paradise by way of...
in west London. Kensal Green Cemetery was to be nationalised and greatly enlarged to provide a single burial ground for west London. A large tract of land on the Thames around 9 miles (14.5 km) southeast of London in Abbey Wood
Abbey Wood
Abbey Wood is a district of South-East London, England, located mostly in the London Borough of Greenwich, and partly within the London Borough of Bexley. It is situated east of Charing Cross.-Development:...
(on the site of present-day Thamesmead
Thamesmead
Thamesmead is a district of south-east London, England, located in the London Boroughs of Greenwich and Bexley. It is situated east of Charing Cross....
) was to become a single burial ground for east London. All bodies would be shipped by river and canal to the new cemeteries, bringing an end to burials in London itself.
The Treasury was sceptical that Chadwick's scheme would ever be financially viable. It also met with widespread public concerns about the impact of monopoly control of the burial industry, and about the government taking control of an industry previously controlled by religious bodies and private entrepreneurs. The process of decomposition was still poorly understood and it was generally believed that (92%) of a decaying corpse was dispersed as gas; local authorities in the vicinity of the proposed new cemeteries were horrified at the prospect of an estimated 3000000 cubic feet (84,950.5 m³) per year of miasma (disease-carrying vapour) spreading from the cemeteries across surrounding areas. Although the Metropolitan Interments Act 1850 authorised Chadwick's scheme to proceed, the Metropolitan Interment Amendment Act 1852 repealed the authorisation.
Richard Broun and Richard Sprye
While the negotiations over the state taking control of burials were ongoing, an alternative proposal was being drawn up by Richard Broun and Richard Sprye. Broun and Sprye intended to use the emerging technology of mechanised land transport to provide a final solution to the problem of London's dead. They envisaged buying a single very large tract of land around 23 miles (37 km) from London in BrookwoodBrookwood, Surrey
Brookwood is a village in Surrey, located about 5 km west of Woking, in a semi-rural location. It lies on the western border of the Woking Borough ....
near Woking
Woking
Woking is a large town and civil parish that shares its name with the surrounding local government district, located in the west of Surrey, UK. It is part of the Greater London Urban Area and the London commuter belt, with frequent trains and a journey time of 24 minutes to Waterloo station....
, Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, to be called Brookwood Cemetery
Brookwood Cemetery
Brookwood Cemetery is a burial ground in Brookwood, Surrey, England. It is the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in western Europe.-History:...
or the London Necropolis. At this distance, the land would be far beyond the maximum projected size of the city's growth, greatly reducing any potential hazards from miasma. In the 18th century this land had been nicknamed "the Waste of Woking", and with poor quality gravel soil it was of little use in farming and thus available very cheaply. The London and South Western Railway
London and South Western Railway
The London and South Western Railway was a railway company in England from 1838 to 1922. Its network extended from London to Plymouth via Salisbury and Exeter, with branches to Ilfracombe and Padstow and via Southampton to Bournemouth and Weymouth. It also had many routes connecting towns in...
(LSWR)—which had connected London to Woking in 1838—would enable bodies and mourners to be shipped from London to the site easily and cheaply. Broun envisaged dedicated coffin trains, each carrying 50–60 bodies, travelling from London to the new Necropolis in the early morning or late at night, and the coffins being stored on the cemetery site until the time of the funeral. Mourners would then be carried to the appropriate part of the cemetery by a dedicated passenger train during the day.
Broun calculated that a 1500 acre (2.3 sq mi; 6.1 km²) site would accommodate a total of 5,830,500 individual graves in a single layer. The legislation authorising Brookwood Cemetery did not permit mass graves at the site, and burials were restricted to one family per grave. If the practice of only burying a single family in each grave were abandoned and the traditional practice for pauper burials of ten burials per grave were adopted, the site was capable of accommodating 28,500,000 bodies. Assuming 50,000 deaths per year and presuming that families would often choose to share a grave, Broun calculated that even with the prohibition of mass graves it would take over 350 years to fill a single layer of the cemetery. Although the Brookwood site was a long distance from London, Broun and Sprye argued that the railway made it both quicker and cheaper to reach than the seven existing cemeteries, all of which required a slow and expensive horse-drawn hearse to carry the body and mourners from London to the burial site.
Opposition
Shareholders in the LSWR were concerned at the impact the cemetery scheme would have on the normal operations of the railway. At a shareholders' meeting in August 1852 concerns were raised about the impact of funeral trains on normal traffic and of the secrecy in which negotiations between the LSWR and the promoters of the cemetery were conducted. The LSWR management pledged that no concessions would be made to the cemetery operators, other than promising them the use of one train each day. Charles Blomfield, Bishop of LondonBishop of London
The Bishop of London is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of London in the Province of Canterbury.The diocese covers 458 km² of 17 boroughs of Greater London north of the River Thames and a small part of the County of Surrey...
was hostile in general to railway funeral schemes, arguing that the noise and speed of the railways was incompatible with the solemnity of the Christian burial service. Blomfield also considered it inappropriate that the families of people from very different backgrounds would potentially have to share a train, and felt that it demeaned the dignity of the deceased for the bodies of respectable members of the community to be carried on a train also carrying the bodies and relatives of those who had led immoral lives. Meanwhile Henry Drummond, Member of Parliament for the West Surrey
West Surrey (UK Parliament constituency)
West Surrey was a parliamentary constituency in the county of Surrey, which returned two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the bloc vote system.It was created under the Great Reform Act for the 1832 general election, and abolished...
constituency which covered the Brookwood site, James Mangles, MP for the nearby constituency of Guildford
Guildford (UK Parliament constituency)
Guildford is a county constituency in Surrey which returns one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first-past-the-post voting system....
, and labour reform campaigner Lord Ashley
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury KG , styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851, was an English politician and philanthropist, one of the best-known of the Victorian era and one of the main proponents of Christian Zionism.-Youth:He was born in London and known informally as Lord Ashley...
(later Lord Shaftesbury) lobbied against the proposal. Drummond considered the scheme a front for land speculation, believing that the promoters only intended to use 400 acre (0.625000552608715 sq mi; 1.6 km²) for the cemetery and to develop the remaining 80% for building; Mangles felt that the people of Woking were not being fairly compensated for the loss of their historic rights to use the common lands; Ashley felt that the Metropolitan Interments Act 1850 had been a victory for the campaign to end private profiteering from death and that the new scheme would reverse these gains, and was also concerned about the health implications of diseased bodies being transported to and stored at the London terminus in large numbers while awaiting trains to Brookwood.
Formation of the London Necropolis Company
Despite the opposition, on 30 June 1852 the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Act 1852 was passed, giving the Brookwood scheme Parliamentary consent to proceed. The former Woking Common at Brookwood, owned by the Earl of Onslow, was chosen as the site for the new cemetery. To prevent the LSWR from exploiting its monopoly on access to the cemetery, the private Act of Parliament authorising the scheme bound the LSWR to carry corpses and mourners to the cemetery in perpetuity and set a maximum tariff which could be levied on funeral traffic, but did not specify details of how the funeral trains were to operate.By this time, Broun and Sprye had lost control of the scheme. On 1 April 1851 a group of trustees led by Poor Law Commission
Poor Law Commission
The Poor Law Commission was a body established to administrate poor relief after the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. The commission was made up of three commissioners who became known as "The Bashaws of Somerset House", their secretary and nine clerks or assistant commissioners...
er William Voules purchased the rights to the scheme from Broun and Sprye for £20,000 (about £ in terms of consumer spending power) and, once the Act of Parliament had been passed, founded the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company on their own without regard to their agreement with the original promoters. These trustees proved inept, wasting large sums of money; meanwhile Richard Broun lobbied vigorously against the "misrepresentations and ambiguous assertions" of the new trustees. With financiers sceptical of the scheme's viability Voules and his trustees were unable to raise the funds to buy the proposed site from Lord Onslow. In early 1853, amid widespread allegations of voting irregularities and with the company unable to pay promised dividends, a number of the directors resigned, including Voules, and the remaining public confidence in the scheme collapsed.
Broun's scheme had envisaged the cemetery running along both sides of the LSWR main line and divided by religion, with separate private railway halts on the main line, each incorporating a chapel, to serve each religion's section. The new consulting engineer to the company, William Cubitt
William Cubitt
Sir William Cubitt was an eminent English civil engineer and millwright. Born in Norfolk, England, he was employed in many of the great engineering undertakings of his time. He invented a type of windmill sail and the prison treadwheel, and was employed as chief engineer, at Ransomes of Ipswich,...
, rejected this idea and recommended a single site to the south of the railway line, served by a private branch line through the cemetery. The company also considered Broun's plan for dedicated coffin trains unrealistic, arguing that relatives would not want the coffins to be shipped separately from the deceased's family.
Brookwood Cemetery
In September 1853 a Committee of Enquiry into the mismanagement of the company recommended the expulsion of the four remaining trustees and the reform of the company under a new board of directors. This was unanimously approved by the shareholders, and work finally began on the scheme. A 2200 acre (3.4 sq mi; 8.9 km²) tract of land stretching from Woking to Brookwood was purchased from Lord Onslow. The westernmost 400 acre (0.625000552608715 sq mi; 1.6 km²), at the Brookwood end, were designated the initial cemetery site, and a branch railway line was built from the LSWR main line into this section. A plot of land between Westminster Bridge RoadWestminster Bridge Road
Westminster Bridge Road is a short, but busy, road in London, England. It runs on an east-west axis and passes through the boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark....
and York Street
Leake Street
Leake Street, also known as the "Banksy tunnel", is a road in Lambeth, London. It is about 300 metres long, runs off York Road and under the platforms and tracks of Waterloo station. The walls are decorated with graffiti - initially created during the "Cans Festival" organised by Banksy in 2008 May...
(now Leake Street) was chosen as the site for the London railway terminus. Architect William Tite
William Tite
Sir William Tite, CB was an English architect who served as President of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He was particularly associated with various London buildings, with railway stations and cemetery projects....
and engineer William Cubitt drew up a design for a station, which was approved in June 1854, and completed in October 1854. In July 1854 work began on the drainage of the marshlands designated as the initial cemetery site, and on the construction of the embankment carrying the railway branch into the cemetery.
With the ambition to become London's sole burial site in perpetuity, the LNC were aware that if their plans were successful, their Necropolis would become a site of major national importance. As a consequence, the cemetery was designed with attractiveness in mind, in contrast to the squalid and congested London burial grounds and the newer suburban cemeteries which were already becoming crowded. The LNC aimed to create an atmosphere of perpetual spring in the cemetery, and chose the plants for the cemetery accordingly. It had already been noted that evergreen
Evergreen
In botany, an evergreen plant is a plant that has leaves in all seasons. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which completely lose their foliage during the winter or dry season.There are many different kinds of evergreen plants, both trees and shrubs...
plants from North America thrived in the local soil. Robert Donald, the owner of an arboretum
Arboretum
An arboretum in a narrow sense is a collection of trees only. Related collections include a fruticetum , and a viticetum, a collection of vines. More commonly, today, an arboretum is a botanical garden containing living collections of woody plants intended at least partly for scientific study...
near Woking, was contracted to supply the trees and shrubs for the cemetery. The railway line through the cemetery and the major roads and paths within the cemetery were lined with giant sequoia
Sequoiadendron
Sequoiadendron giganteum is the sole living species in the genus Sequoiadendron, and one of three species of coniferous trees known as redwoods, classified in the family Cupressaceae in the subfamily Sequoioideae, together with Sequoia sempervirens and...
trees, the first significant planting of these trees (only introduced to Europe in 1853) in Britain. As well as the giant sequoias, the grounds were heavily planted with magnolia
Magnolia
Magnolia is a large genus of about 210 flowering plant species in the subfamily Magnolioideae of the family Magnoliaceae. It is named after French botanist Pierre Magnol....
, rhododendron
Rhododendron
Rhododendron is a genus of over 1 000 species of woody plants in the heath family, most with showy flowers...
, coastal redwood, azalea
Azalea
Azaleas are flowering shrubs comprising two of the eight subgenera of the genus Rhododendron, Pentanthera and Tsutsuji . Azaleas bloom in spring, their flowers often lasting several weeks...
, andromeda
Pieris (plant)
Pieris is a genus of seven species of shrubs in the family Ericaceae, native to mountain regions of eastern and southern Asia, eastern North America and Cuba. Known commonly as andromedas or fetterbushes, they are broad-leaved evergreen shrubs growing to 1–6 m tall and wide...
and monkeypuzzle
Araucaria araucana
Araucaria araucana is an evergreen tree growing to tall with a trunk diameter. The tree is native to central and southern Chile, western Argentina and south Brazil. Araucaria araucana is the hardiest species in the conifer genus Araucaria...
, with the intention of creating perpetual greenery with large numbers of flowers and a strong floral scent throughout the cemetery.
On 7 November 1854 the new cemetery opened and the southern Anglican
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
section was consecrated by Charles Sumner, Bishop of Winchester
Bishop of Winchester
The Bishop of Winchester is the head of the Church of England diocese of Winchester, with his cathedra at Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire.The bishop is one of five Church of England bishops to be among the Lords Spiritual regardless of their length of service. His diocese is one of the oldest and...
. At the time it was the largest cemetery in the world. On 13 November the first scheduled train left the new London Necropolis railway station
London Necropolis railway station
London Necropolis railway station refers to two stations in Waterloo, London, which served successively as the London terminus of the London Necropolis Railway. The London Necropolis Railway was opened in 1854 as a reaction to severe overcrowding in London's existing graveyards and cemeteries...
for the cemetery, and the first burial (that of the stillborn twins of a Mr and Mrs Hore of Ewer Street, Borough) took place.
Cemetery railway line
As the Brookwood site had been intentionally chosen for its distance from London, at the time of its opening the only practical way to reach the cemetery was by railway. William Cubitt decided that the terrain of the initial cemetery site was best suited to a railway branch from the LSWR at the west of the cemetery, and work began on the earthworks and rails for the new branch in early September 1854. The single-track branch was completed in time for the opening two months later. The junction with the LSWR, known as Necropolis Junction, was west-facing, meaning that trains to and from London were obliged to reverse in and out of the branch to the two stations in the cemetery. The poor quality gravel soil, which had been the initial reason for the site's cheapness and its selection as the site for the cemetery, was poorly suited as a railway trackbed. The rails, and in particular the sleepers, deteriorated rapidly and needed constantly to be replaced.London rail stations
A site for the London terminus near WaterlooWaterloo, London
Waterloo is a district of London, England, and part of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is situated east of Charing Cross. The area is part of a business improvement district known as Waterloo Quarter, which includes The Cut and the Old Vic and Young Vic theatres, including some sections in the...
had been suggested by Richard Broun. Its proximity to the Thames meant that bodies could be cheaply transported to the terminus by water from much of London, while being situated near three major Thames bridges the area was easily accessed from both north and south of the river. The arches of the huge brick viaduct carrying the LSWR into Waterloo Bridge station (now London Waterloo station) were easily converted into mortuaries. Broun also felt that the journey out of London from Waterloo Bridge would be less distressing for mourners; while most of the rail routes out of London ran through tunnels and deep cuttings or through densely populated areas, at this time the urban development of what is now south London had not taken place and the LSWR route ran almost entirely through parkland and countryside. In March 1854 the LNC purchased a plot of land between Westminster Bridge Road
Westminster Bridge Road
Westminster Bridge Road is a short, but busy, road in London, England. It runs on an east-west axis and passes through the boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark....
and York Street
Leake Street
Leake Street, also known as the "Banksy tunnel", is a road in Lambeth, London. It is about 300 metres long, runs off York Road and under the platforms and tracks of Waterloo station. The walls are decorated with graffiti - initially created during the "Cans Festival" organised by Banksy in 2008 May...
(now Leake Street). Architect William Tite
William Tite
Sir William Tite, CB was an English architect who served as President of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He was particularly associated with various London buildings, with railway stations and cemetery projects....
and engineer William Cubitt
William Cubitt
Sir William Cubitt was an eminent English civil engineer and millwright. Born in Norfolk, England, he was employed in many of the great engineering undertakings of his time. He invented a type of windmill sail and the prison treadwheel, and was employed as chief engineer, at Ransomes of Ipswich,...
drew up a design for a station, which was approved in June 1854 and completed in October of that year.
As the station abutted the arches of the LSWR's viaduct, it acted as an obstacle to any increase in the number of lines serving Waterloo station (renamed from Waterloo Bridge station in 1886). Urban growth in the area of what is now south west London, through which trains from Waterloo ran, led to congestion at the station and in 1896 the LSWR formally presented the LNC with a proposal to provide the LNC with a new station in return for the existing station. The LNC agreed to the proposals, in return for the LSWR granting the LNC control of the design of the new station and leasing the new station to the LNC for a token rent in perpetuity, providing new rolling stock, removing any limit on the number of passengers using the Necropolis service, and providing the free carriage of machinery and equipment to be used in the cemetery. Although the LSWR was extremely unhappy at what they considered excessive demands, in May 1899 the companies signed an agreement, in which the LSWR gave in to every LNC demand. In addition the LSWR paid £12,000 compensation (about £ in terms of consumer spending power) for the inconvenience of relocating the LNC station and offices, and agreed that mourners returning from the cemetery could travel on any LSWR train to Waterloo, Vauxhall
Vauxhall station
Vauxhall station is a National Rail, London Underground and London Buses interchange station in central London. It is at the Vauxhall Cross road junction opposite the southern approach to Vauxhall Bridge over the River Thames in the London district of Vauxhall...
or Clapham Junction
Clapham Junction railway station
Clapham Junction railway station is near St John's Hill in the south-west of Battersea in the London Borough of Wandsworth. Although it is in Battersea, the area around the station is commonly identified as Clapham Junction....
. A site for the replacement terminus was bought by the LSWR in 1899, south of the existing site and on the opposite side of Westminster Bridge Road. The new station was completed on 8 February 1902, and the LSWR viaduct was widened to serve a greatly enlarged Waterloo station, destroying all traces of the original LNC terminus.
Cemetery rail stations
The two stations in the cemetery were very similar in design. North station served the NonconformistNonconformism
Nonconformity is the refusal to "conform" to, or follow, the governance and usages of the Church of England by the Protestant Christians of England and Wales.- Origins and use:...
section of the cemetery, and South station served the Anglican section. On William Cubitt's advice the two stations in the cemetery were built as temporary structures, in the expectation that they would need to be rebuilt once the railway was operational and the issues with operating a railway of this unique nature became clearer. Other than brick platform faces, chimneys and foundations, the stations were built entirely of wood. Each station held first class and ordinary reception rooms for mourners, a first class and an ordinary refreshment room, and a set of apartments for LNC staff. To provide an attractive first view of the cemetery for visitors arriving at the stations, the areas around the stations and their associated chapels were planted with groves of bay
Bay Laurel
The bay laurel , also known as sweet bay, bay tree, true laurel, Grecian laurel, laurel tree, or simply laurel, is an aromatic evergreen tree or large shrub with green, glossy leaves, native to the Mediterranean region. It is the source of the bay leaf used in cooking...
, Cedar of Lebanon, rhododendron and Portuguese laurel
Prunus lusitanica
Prunus lusitanica, with common name Portugal laurel, is a species of cherry, native to southwestern France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, and Macaronesia .-Distribution:...
.
At the time the cemetery opened, the nearest railway station other than those on the cemetery branch was Woking railway station
Woking railway station
Woking railway station is a railway station in England, serving the town of Woking, Surrey. It is a major stop on the South Western Main Line and is used by many commuters...
, 4 miles (6.4 km) away. As only one train per day ran from London to the cemetery stations and back, and even that ran only when funerals were due to take place, access to the cemetery was difficult for mourners and LNC staff. Although in the negotiations leading to the creation of the cemetery the LSWR had told the LNC that they planned to build a main line station near the cemetery, they had not done so. On 1 June 1864 the LSWR finally opened Brookwood railway station
Brookwood railway station
Brookwood is a National Rail railway station in Brookwood in the English county of Surrey. It was constructed to serve the adjacent Brookwood Cemetery and was at one stage served by its own station in London for the funeral trains...
on their main line, immediately adjacent to the cemetery. A substantial commuter village grew around the northern (i.e. non-cemetery) side of the new station.
Burials
The London Necropolis Company offered three classes of funerals. A first class funeral allowed its buyer to select the grave site of their choice anywhere in the cemetery; at the time of opening prices began at £2 10s (about £ in terms) for a basic 9 foot with no special coffin specifications. It was expected by the LNC that those using first class graves would erect a permanent memorial of some kind in due course following the funeral. Second class funerals cost £1 (about £ in terms) and allowed some control over the burial location. The right to erect a permanent memorial cost an additional 10 shillings (about £ in terms); if a permanent memorial was not erected the LNC reserved the right to re-use the grave in future. Third class funerals were reserved for pauper funerals; those buried at parishParish
A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...
expense in the section of the cemetery designated for that parish. Although the LNC was forbidden from using mass graves (other than the burial of next of kin in the same grave) and thus even the lowest class of funeral provided a separate grave for the deceased, third class funerals were not granted the right to erect a permanent memorial on the site. (The families of those buried could pay afterwards to upgrade a third class grave to a higher class if they later wanted to erect a memorial, but this practice was rare.) Despite this, Brookwood's pauper graves granted more dignity to the deceased than did other graveyards and cemeteries of the period, all of which other than Brookwood continued the practice of mass graves for the poor. Brookwood was one of the few cemeteries to permit burials on Sundays, which made it a popular choice with the poor as it allowed people to attend funerals without the need to take a day off work. As theatrical performances were banned on Sundays at this time, it also made Brookwood a popular choice for the burial of actors for the same reason, to the extent that actors were provided with a dedicated section of the cemetery near the station entrance.
While the majority of burials conducted by the LNC (around 80%) were pauper funerals on behalf of London parishes, the LNC also reached agreement with a number of societies, guilds, religious bodies and similar organisations. The LNC provided dedicated sections of the cemetery for these groups, on the basis that those who had lived or worked together in life could remain together after death. Although the LNC was never able to gain the domination of London's funeral industry for which its founders had hoped, it was very successful at targeting specialist groups of artisans and trades, to the extent that it became nicknamed "the Westminster Abbey of the middle classes". A large number of these dedicated plots were established, ranging from Chelsea Pensioners and the Ancient Order of Foresters
Ancient Order of Foresters
The Ancient Order of Foresters is a friendly society which was formed in 1834. The society is now known as Foresters Friendly Society, and has approximately 70,000 members...
to the Corps of Commissionaires
Corps of Commissionaires
The Corps of Commissionaires is a British security firm that has regional offices around the world.- History :The Corps of Commissionaires was founded in 1859 by Captain Sir Edward Walter KCB. It is the oldest security company in the world. Currently trading as 'Corps Security', the head of the...
and the LSWR. The Nonconformist cemetery also includes a Parsee burial ground established in 1862, which remains the only Zoroastrian
Zoroastrianism
Zoroastrianism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of prophet Zoroaster and was formerly among the world's largest religions. It was probably founded some time before the 6th century BCE in Greater Iran.In Zoroastrianism, the Creator Ahura Mazda is all good, and no evil...
burial ground in Europe. Dedicated sections in the Anglican cemetery were also reserved for burials from those parishes which had made burial arrangements with the LNC.
Immediately after its foundation the LNC used existing firms of London undertakers to arrange funerals, but over time took over all aspects of the arrangements from coffin-making to masonry. LNC funerals were intentionally kept as similar as possible to those of traditional undertakers, with the exception that a railway carriage was used in place of a hearse. On being commissioned to provide a funeral, invitations would be sent out either by the deceased's family or from the LNC offices. These letters specified the waiting room to be used, the time of the train to Brookwood, and the expected return time to London. If the funeral was to be held in London, a traditional hearse and carriage would take the deceased to their parish church for the service, and then on to the London railway terminus; if the funeral was to take place in the terminus or in Brookwood, the procession would come directly to the terminus.
Funerals
On arrival at the terminus the mourners would be led either to one of the dedicated first class waiting rooms (for first and second class funerals) or to the communal third class waiting room. The coffin would be discreetly unloaded from the hearse and sent to the platform level by lift. Those attending first and second class funerals would be permitted to watch the coffins being loaded onto the train if they so wished. (After the relocation to the new London terminus in 1902, some funeral services would be held in a Chapelle ArdenteChapelle Ardente
Chapelle Ardente is the chapel or room in which the corpse of a sovereign or other exalted personage lies in state pending the funeral service. The name is in allusion to the many candles which are lighted round the catafalque. This custom is first chronicled as occurring at the obsequies of...
on platform level, for those cases where mourners were unable to make the journey to Brookwood.) Each door of the waiting train would be labelled with the name of the deceased, to ensure all passengers travelled with the correct funeral party; the names of the deceased being carried on the train would be called in turn, and that person's mourners would board the train. At the time the service was inaugurated, the LNC's trains were divided both by class and by religion, with separate Anglican and Nonconformist sections of the train. This distinction applied to both living and dead passengers. Intended to prevent persons from different social background from mixing and potentially distressing mourners and to prevent bodies of persons from different social classes being carried in the same compartment rather than to provide different facilities, the carriages intended for all classes and religions were very similar in design, and the primary difference was different ornamentation on the compartment doors. At 11.35 am (11.20 am on Sundays) the train would leave London for Brookwood, arriving at Necropolis Junction at 12.25 pm (12.20 pm on Sundays).
On arrival at North or South station coffins would usually be unloaded onto a hand-drawn bier
Bier
A bier is a stand on which a corpse, coffin or casket containing a corpse, is placed to lie in state or to be carried to the grave.In Christian burial, the bier is often placed in the centre of the nave with candles surrounding it, and remains in place during the funeral.The bier is a flat frame,...
and pulled by LNC staff to the appropriate chapel. While this was taking place the mourners were escorted to the waiting rooms at the station. On arrival at the chapels first and second class funerals would generally have a brief service (third class funerals had a single service in the appropriate chapel for all those being buried). For those burials where the funeral service had already been held at either a parish church or the LNC's London terminus the coffins would be taken directly from the train to the grave.
The return trains to London generally left South station at 2.15 pm and Necropolis Junction at 2.30 pm; the return journey initially took around an hour owing to the need to stop to refill the engine with water, but following the construction of the water tower in the cemetery this fell to around 40 minutes. An 1854 agreement between the LNC and LSWR gave consent for the LNC to operate two or three funeral trains each day if demand warranted it, but traffic levels never rose to a sufficient level to activate this clause.
The train only ran if there was a coffin or passengers at the London terminus waiting to use it, and both the journey from London to Brookwood and the later return would be cancelled if nobody was due to leave London that morning. It would not run if there was only a single third or second class coffin to be carried, and in these cases the coffin and funeral party would be held until the next service. Generally the trains ran direct from London to the cemetery, other than occasional stops to take on water. Between 1890 and 1910 the trains also sometimes stopped at Vauxhall
Vauxhall station
Vauxhall station is a National Rail, London Underground and London Buses interchange station in central London. It is at the Vauxhall Cross road junction opposite the southern approach to Vauxhall Bridge over the River Thames in the London district of Vauxhall...
and Clapham Junction
Clapham Junction railway station
Clapham Junction railway station is near St John's Hill in the south-west of Battersea in the London Borough of Wandsworth. Although it is in Battersea, the area around the station is commonly identified as Clapham Junction....
for the benefit of mourners from south west London who did not want to travel via Waterloo, but these intermediate stops were discontinued and never reinstated. After 1 October 1900 the Sunday trains were discontinued, and from 1902 the daily train service was ended and trains ran only as required. On some occasions where there were very large numbers of mourners the LSWR would provide special passenger trains from Waterloo to their own station at Brookwood to carry additional mourners to the vicinity of the cemetery.
As well as intending to conduct those burials which would previously have taken place in London's now-closed graveyards, the LNC also envisaged the physical relocation of the closed burial grounds to their Necropolis, to provide a final solution to the problems caused by burials in built-up areas. The massive London civil engineering projects of the mid-19th century—the railways, the sewer system
London sewerage system
The London sewerage system is part of the water infrastructure serving London. The modern system was developed during the late 19th century, and as London has grown the system has been expanded.-History:...
and from the 1860s the precursors to the London Underground
London Underground
The London Underground is a rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and some parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex in England...
—often necessitated the demolition of existing churchyards. The first major relocation took place in 1862, when the construction of Charing Cross railway station
Charing Cross railway station
Charing Cross railway station, also known as London Charing Cross, is a central London railway terminus in the City of Westminster, England. It is one of 18 stations managed by Network Rail, and trains serving it are operated by Southeastern...
and the routes into it necessitated the demolition of the burial ground of Cure's College in Southwark
Southwark
Southwark is a district of south London, England, and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated east of Charing Cross, it forms one of the oldest parts of London and fronts the River Thames to the north...
. Around 5000 cubic yards (3,822.8 m³) of earth was displaced, uncovering at least 7,950 bodies. These were packed into 220 large containers, each containing 26 adults plus children, and shipped on the London Necropolis Railway to Brookwood for reburial, along with at least some of the existing headstones from the cemetery, at a cost of around 3 shillings per body. At least 21 London burial grounds were relocated to Brookwood via the railway, along with numerous others relocated by road following the railway's closure. The LNC's exhumation and relocation business, split from the LNC in 1973 and renamed "Necropolis", continued to operate until 2002.
Developments and difficulties
Rates (tax)
Rates are a type of property tax system in the United Kingdom, and in places with systems deriving from the British one, the proceeds of which are used to fund local government...
to create their own cemeteries. The financial mismanagement and internal disputes within the LNC had delayed the opening of Brookwood Cemetery by 18 months, and during this period new cemeteries nearer London had opened or were nearing completion. While some parishes did choose Brookwood as their burial site, many preferred either to make arrangements with less distant cemeteries, or to buy land on the outskirts of London and open their own suburban cemeteries. Concerns over the financial irregularities and the viability of the scheme had led to only 15,000 of the 25,000 LNC shares being sold, severely limiting the company's working capital and forcing it to take out large loans. Buying the land from Lord Onslow, compensating local residents for the loss of rights over Woking Common, draining and landscaping the portion to be used for the initial cemetery, and building the railway lines and stations were all expensive undertakings. With far fewer burial contracts with London parishes than had been anticipated, by the time Brookwood Cemetery opened in November 1854 the LNC was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Recognising their financial predicament, the LNC lobbied Parliament for a new Act of Parliament to allow the venture to survive. On 23 July 1855 the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Amendment Act 1855 received Royal Assent. This Act released the LNC from those compulsory purchases of land which had been mandated by the 1852 Act but had not yet been completed, easing the immediate financial burden. It also allowed a ten year window for the LNC to sell certain parts of the land bought from Lord Onslow which were not required for the cemetery, to provide a source of income.
Although the 1855 Act permitted the LNC to sell land, this proved difficult. Of the 2200 acre (3.4 sq mi; 8.9 km²) site, around 700 acre (1.1 sq mi; 2.8 km²) were occupied by the initial Necropolis site and the adjacent reserve site, and a further 200 acre (0.312500276304357 sq mi; 0.809372 km²) retained their common land
Common land
Common land is land owned collectively or by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect firewood, or to cut turf for fuel...
rights and could not be developed in any way, rendering them worthless to prospective buyers. While this left 1300 acre (2 sq mi; 5.3 km²) theoretically able to be sold, the Brookwood site had been chosen for its remoteness and there were few prospective buyers. While 214 acre (0.334375295645662 sq mi; 0.86602804 km²) were bought by the government as sites for prisons and a lunatic asylum, the LNC struggled to sell the remainder. By the time the ten year window for land sales expired in 1865, only 346 acre (0.540625478006538 sq mi; 1.4 km²) had been sold.
With the majority of the surplus lands still unsold, as the ten year window expired the LNC successfully petitioned for a further five year extension. The LNC was by this time in serious financial difficulties, and dependent on loans from its own directors to settle outstanding debts. The business had been established on the basis that the cemetery would handle between 10,000 and 50,000 burials per year, but the number never exceeded 4,100 and over its first 20 years of operations averaged just 3,200. As the five year extension expired the financial difficulties remained, and under pressure from shareholders the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Amendment Act 1869 was passed. This removed all restrictions on land sales, other than within the existing cemetery and the adjacent reserve site. Despite the releasing of restrictions in the 1869 Act, land sales remained disappointing. By 1887 less than half the surplus land had been sold, much of it at very low prices.
Cyril Tubbs
In December 1887 the LNC appointed Cyril Tubbs to supervise the LNC estate. Tubbs was given a broad remit to "advance the company's interests", including buying and selling land, supervising the railway stations, advertising the cemetery and liaising with the LSWR. Tubbs set about restructuring the design of Brookwood Cemetery to make it more appealing to mourners and visitors. The cemetery was divided into numbered sections, separated by an expanded network of avenues. These avenues were all named, and signposts were erected along them, to allow visitors easily to find their way around the sprawling Brookwood site, and to locate particular graves; the naming and numbering system devised by Tubbs has remained in use ever since.Tubbs established a masonry works and showroom near the centre of the cemetery, allowing the LNC to provide grave markers without the difficulty of shipping them from London, and opened a LNC-owned nursery in the grounds for the sale of plants and wreaths. This increased the practice of mourners planting flowers and shrubs around graves, which was in turn used by the LNC in their promotional material to promote Brookwood as a "Garden of Sleep". In around 1904 the masonry works was expanded and equipped with a siding from the railway branch line, allowing the LNC to sell its gravestones and funerary art
Funerary art
Funerary art is any work of art forming, or placed in, a repository for the remains of the dead. Tomb is a general term for the repository, while grave goods are objects—other than the primary human remains—which have been placed inside...
to cemeteries nationwide.
Tubbs also oversaw a restructuring of the ailing programme to sell the LNC's surplus lands. The estate was partitioned into three sections, and separate estate agents appointed to oversee the disposal of each. Many of the lands near Woking railway station and around Brookwood were sold, at much higher prices than the LNC disposals had previously fetched. No suitable agent could be found to oversee the sale of the third portion of LNC land, Hook Heath, and as a consequence Tubbs kept it under LNC control and oversaw its development himself. Over the 1890s the site was subdivided into plots for large detached houses, and a golf course was built to attract residents and visitors.
War Office
The War Office was a department of the British Government, responsible for the administration of the British Army between the 17th century and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the Ministry of Defence...
1 acres (4,046.9 m²) of land "for the free interment of soldiers and sailors who have returned from the front wounded and may subsequently die". The offer was not taken up until 1917, when a section of the cemetery was set aside as Brookwood Military Cemetery, used for the burials of service personnel who died in the London District
London District (British Army)
London District is the name given by the British Army to the area of operations encompassing the Greater London area. Established in 1870 as Home District, it was re-formed in 1905 as London District to be an independent district within the larger command structure of the army, and has remained so...
. In 1921 this area was sold to the Imperial War Graves Commission
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is an intergovernmental organisation of six independent member states whose principal function is to mark, record and maintain the graves, and places of commemoration, of Commonwealth of Nations military service members who died in the two World Wars...
(later the Commonwealth War Graves Commission), and since then the military cemeteries have been administered and maintained by the IWGC/CWGC and its equivalents for other nations whose military are buried there. In September 1922 the LNC sold an area adjacent to the Military Cemetery to the US government. The LNC was hired by the US government to landscape this area and build a chapel, creating the American Military Cemetery
Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial
Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial is the only American Military Cemetery of World War I in the British Isles. Located approximately southwest of London, Brookwood American Cemetery contains the graves of 468 American war dead, including the graves of 41 unknown servicemen, from World War...
(later the Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial), the only burial ground in Britain for US casualties of the First World War. Although built by the LNC, since 1923 the American Military Cemetery has been administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission
American Battle Monuments Commission
The American Battle Monuments Commission is a small independent agency of the United States government. Established by Congress in 1923, it is responsible for:...
. After the Second World War the military cemeteries were extended to include dedicated sections for many of the Allied
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
nations, and in 1958 the Brookwood Memorial, commemorating 3,500 Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
casualties of the Second World War with no known grave, was dedicated at the site. Between them, the military cemeteries occupy around 37 acres (149,733.8 m²) of the site.
Cremation
In 1878 the Cremation Society of Great BritainCremation Society of Great Britain
The Cremation Society of Great Britain is an special interest organisation that advocates cremation in the United Kingdom.-The beginnings:Cremation was not legal in Great Britain until 1885, but interest in this form of burial emerged during the second half of the 19th century from ideas that...
bought an isolated piece of the LNC's Brookwood land and built Woking Crematorium
Woking Crematorium
Woking Crematorium is a crematorium in Woking, a large town in the west of Surrey, England. Established in 1878, it was the first custom-built crematorium in the United Kingdom and is closely linked to the history of cremation in this country.-Location:...
on the site. The crematorium was completed in 1879 but Richard Cross
R. A. Cross, 1st Viscount Cross
Richard Assheton Cross, 1st Viscount Cross, GCB, GCSI, PC, FRS , known before his elevation to the peerage as R. A. Cross, was a British statesman and Conservative politician...
, the Home Secretary
Home Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
, bowed to strong protests from local residents and threatened to prosecute if any cremations were conducted. As a consequence the crematorium was not used other than for the experimental incineration of livestock. The 1884 trial of William Price established that human cremation was not unlawful in England, and on 26 March 1885 the first human cremation took place at Woking. Although the LNC was hostile to the idea of cremation, Woking Crematorium was the only operational crematorium in the country. Since the Necropolis Railway provided the easiest way to transport bodies and mourners from London to the Woking area, transport to and from Woking Crematorium soon began to provide a significant source of revenue for the LNC.
Cremation remained unusual and very expensive; the cost of a cremation at Woking was £6, not including transport and funeral costs, more than twice the £2 10s cost of a first class burial at Brookwood. By 1891 only 177 people had been cremated at Woking. Cyril Tubbs recognised that a potential increase in cremations once the practice became accepted represented an opportunity for the LNC. In July 1891 he proposed that the LNC build its own crematorium and columbarium
Columbarium
A columbarium is a place for the respectful and usually public storage of cinerary urns . The term comes from the Latin columba and originally referred to compartmentalized housing for doves and pigeons .The Columbarium of Pomponius Hylas is a particularly fine ancient Roman example, rich in...
(building for the storage of cremated remains) within the cemetery, with the ultimate goal of taking over all funeral arrangements for the Cremation Society. The Cremation Society were keen to prevent a competitor to Woking Crematorium, and sought to cooperate with the LNC. The fares for the transport of mourners and coffins on the London Necropolis Railway had been fixed by Parliament in 1852 at 6s for a living first class passenger and £1 for a first class coffin (in 1891 worth about £ and £ respectively in consumer terms). Rival firms of undertakers were not permitted to use the LNC's trains to Brookwood Cemetery and had to pay the much more expensive LSWR fares to transport coffins and mourners from Waterloo to Woking, giving the LNC a significant advantage in carriage to the crematorium. While the LNC never built its own crematorium, in 1910 Lord Cadogan
George Cadogan, 5th Earl Cadogan
George Henry Cadogan, 5th Earl Cadogan KG, PC, JP was a British Conservative politician.-Background and education:...
decided he no longer wanted to be interred in the mausoleum he had commissioned at Brookwood. This building, the largest mausoleum in the cemetery, was bought by the LNC, fitted with shelves and niches to hold urns, and used as a dedicated columbarium from then on.
Closure of the London Necropolis Railway
On 13 April 1927 Cyril Tubbs died, after almost 40 years as surveyor, general manager and later a director of the LNC. Shortly afterwards, during meetings of the LNC's shareholders on 16 June and 14 July 1927, the words "National Mausoleum" were formally dropped from the LNC's name, the company being officially renamed the London Necropolis Company. On 28 December 1927 George Barratt, who had worked for the LNC for 63 years and been Superintendent of Brookwood Cemetery for 41 years, also died. Although the number of burials was gradually declining, it remained relatively steady. However, by this time mechanical hearses had begun to affect the numbers of people using the London Necropolis Railway. Trains still ran to the cemetery when there was demand, but the service which had previously operated almost every day was now generally only running around twice a week. By now the trees planted by the LNC in its early years of operations were mature, and Brookwood Cemetery was becoming a tourist attraction in its own right, often featuring in excursion guides of the 1920s and 1930s.During the Second World War Waterloo station and the nearby Thames bridges were a significant target for bombing, and there were several near-misses on the station during the London Blitz of 1940–41. Although there were several interruptions to the Necropolis train service owing to enemy action elsewhere on the line, the Necropolis station was undamaged during the early stages of the bombing campaign. During the night of 16–17 April 1941, in one of the last major air raids on London, this good fortune came to an end. As bombs repeatedly fell on the Waterloo area, the rolling stock parked in the Necropolis siding was burned, and the railway arch connecting the main line to the Necropolis terminus was badly damaged. Multiple incendiary devices and high explosive bombs struck the central section of the terminus building. While the LNC's office building and the station platforms survived, the central section of the station was reduced to rubble. On 11 May 1941 the station was officially declared closed.
The Southern Railway
Southern Railway (Great Britain)
The Southern Railway was a British railway company established in the 1923 Grouping. It linked London with the Channel ports, South West England, South coast resorts and Kent...
(SR), which had absorbed the LSWR in 1923, offered the LNC the temporary use of Waterloo station to allow the Necropolis Railway service to be continued, but refused to allow the LNC to continue to sell cheap tickets to visitors travelling to and from the cemetery stations other than those involved in a funeral that day, meaning those visiting the cemetery had little reason to choose the LNC's irregular and infrequent trains to the cemetery stations over the SR's fast and frequent services to Brookwood. The LNC attempted to negotiate a deal by which genuine mourners could still travel cheaply to the cemetery on the 11.57 am service to Brookwood (the SR service closest to the LNC's traditional departure time), but the SR management (themselves under severe financial pressure owing to wartime constraints and damage) refused to entertain any compromise. In September 1945, following the end of hostilities, the directors of the LNC met to consider whether to rebuild the terminus and reopen the London Necropolis Railway. Although the main line from Waterloo to Brookwood had remained in use throughout the war and was in good condition, the branch line from Brookwood into the cemetery had been almost unused since the destruction of the London terminus. With the soil of the cemetery causing the branch to deteriorate even when it had been in use and regularly maintained, the branch line was in extremely poor condition.
Although Richard Broun had calculated that over its first century of operations the cemetery would have seen around five million burials at a rate of 50,000 per year, at the time the last train ran on 11 April 1941 only 203,041 people had been buried at Brookwood in almost 87 years of operations. Increased use of motorised road transport had damaged the profitability of the railway for the LNC, and faced with the costs of rebuilding the cemetery branch line, building a new London terminus and replacing the rolling stock damaged or destroyed in the air raid, the directors concluded that "past experience and present changed conditions made the running of the Necropolis private train obsolete". In mid 1946 the LNC formally informed the SR that the Westminster Bridge Road terminus would not be reopened.
The decision prompted complicated negotiations with the SR over the future of the LNC facilities in London. In December 1946 the directors of the two companies finally reached agreement. The railway-related portions of the LNC site (the waiting rooms, the caretaker's flat and the platforms themselves) would pass into the direct ownership of the SR, while the remaining surviving portions of the site (the office block on Westminster Bridge Road, the driveway and the ruined central portion of the site) would pass to the LNC to use or dispose of as they saw fit. The LNC sold the site to the British Humane Association
British Humane Association
The British Humane Association is a British charitable association, established in 1920. Its headquarters are based in 4 Charterhouse Mews in Clerkenwell, London and it has been directed by Ben Campbell-Johnston since May 1988...
in May 1947 for £21,000 (about £ in terms of consumer spending power), and the offices of the LNC were transferred to the Superintendent's Office at Brookwood. The SR continued to use the surviving sections of the track as occasional sidings into the 1950s, before clearing what remained of their section of the site.
While most of the LNC's business was now operated by road, an agreement on 13 May 1946 allowed the LNC to make use of SR services from Waterloo to Brookwood station for funerals, subject to the condition that should the service be heavily used the SR (British Railways after 1948) reserved the right to restrict the number of funeral parties on any given train. Although one of the LNC's hearse carriages had survived the bombing it is unlikely that this was ever used, and coffins were carried in the luggage space of the SR's coaches. Coffins would either be shipped to Brookwood ahead of the funeral party and transported by road to one of the mortuaries at the disused cemetery stations, or travel on the same SR train as the funeral party to Brookwood and be transported from Brookwood station to the burial site or chapel by road.
Although the LNC proposed to convert the cemetery branch line into a grand avenue running from Brookwood station through the cemetery, this never took place. The rails and sleepers of the branch were removed in around 1947, and the trackbed became a dirt road and footpath. The run-around loop and stub of the branch line west of Brookwood station remained operational as sidings, before being dismantled on 30 November 1964. After the closure of the branch line the buildings of the two cemetery stations remained open as refreshment kiosks, and were renamed North Bar and South Bar. On the retirement in 1956 of a Mr and Mrs Dendy, who operated North Bar from 1948–56 and lived in the station apartment, North station was abandoned, and demolished in the 1960s owing to dry rot
Dry rot
Dry rot refers to a type of wood decay caused by certain types of fungi, also known as True Dry Rot, that digests parts of the wood which give the wood strength and stiffness...
. South Bar continued to operate as a refreshment kiosk.
End of LNC independence
After 1945 cremation, up to that time an uncommon practice, became increasingly popular in Britain. In 1946 the LNC obtained consent to build their own crematorium on a section of the Nonconformist cemetery which had been set aside for pauper burials, but chose not to proceed. Instead, in 1945 the LNC began the construction of the Glades of Remembrance, a wooded area dedicated to the burial of cremated remains. These were dedicated by Henry CampbellHenry Campbell
Henry Colville Montgomery Campbell MC KCVO PC was a Church of England clergyman and Bishop of London from 1956–1961.-Early life and career:...
, Bishop of Guildford
Bishop of Guildford
The Bishop of Guildford is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Guildford in the Province of Canterbury.The title was first created as a suffragan see in the Diocese of Winchester in 1874. The suffragan bishop of Guildford assisted the Bishop of Winchester in overseeing the diocese...
in 1950. Intentionally designed for informality, traditional gravestones and memorials were prohibited, and burials were marked only by small 2 to 3 in (5.1 to 7.6 cm) stones.
Although at its founding the LNC had hoped to handle 50,000 burials per year and even without being granted a monopoly on London burials had planned for 10,000 per year, Brookwood Cemetery was never as popular as hoped. At the time of the railway's closure only 203,041 burials had been conducted, and the rate was steadily falling; on the LNC's 150th anniversary in November 1994, a total of 231,730 burials had been conducted. Even with the unusually large individual 9 foot grave sites offered by the LNC for even the cheapest burials, the site had been planned to accommodate 5,000,000 burials, and much of the land was empty.
Despite the decline in burials from an already low level, rising land values in the post war years meant that the LNC was a valuable and successful company. In the 1940s it bought out a number of other firms of funeral directors, particularly those catering for the expanding and prosperous suburbs of south west London within easy reach of Brookwood by road. The LNC continued to lobby the SR and its 1948 successor British Railways until the 1950s on the matter of cheap fares for visitors to the cemetery, but were unable to come to any agreement. In 1957 the Southern Region of British Railways
Southern Region of British Railways
The Southern Region was a region of British Railways from 1948. The region ceased to be an operating unit in its own right in the 1980s and was wound up at the end of 1992. The region covered south London, southern England and the south coast, including the busy commuter belt areas of Kent, Sussex...
considered allowing the LNC to sell discounted fares of 7s 6d (compared to the standard rate of 9s 4d) for return tickets for same-day travel from London to Brookwood and back. By this time most visitors to the cemetery were travelling by road. The LNC felt that the relatively minor difference between the fares would not be sufficient to attract visitors back to the railway, and the proposal was abandoned.
Owing to Henry Drummond's concerns in 1852 that the LNC was a front for land speculation, the sale of LNC-owned land for building had been expressly forbidden by the Act of Parliament establishing the LNC, and consequently much of the land not in use for burials remained undeveloped, aside from the land sold in the 1850s and 1860s, and the areas sold by Cyril Tubbs.
By the 1950s, with the area around Woking by this time heavily populated, rental income from the LNC's land holdings was an extremely valuable asset, and in May 1955 the Alliance Property Company launched a hostile takeover bid with the aim of using the cemetery's land for property development. The bid failed, but prompted the LNC to secure the passing of the London Necropolis Act 1956, allowing the sale of all remaining surplus land. A new company, the Brookwood Estates Realisation Company, was founded to oversee the disposal of the remaining unsold lands as well as the cemetery reserve, finally formally recognising that Brookwood Cemetery would never expand beyond its original boundaries.
The former South station was near the A322 road making it one of the most easily accessed parts of the cemetery once the railway had closed, and the land surrounding it was now redundant. As part of the London Necropolis Act 1956 the LNC obtained Parliamentary consent to convert the disused Anglican chapel of 1854 into a crematorium, using a newer chapel built by Cyril Tubbs in 1908–09 for funeral services and the station building for coffin storage and as a refreshment room for those attending cremations. Suffering cash flow problems and distracted by the hostile takeover bid, the LNC management never proceeded with the scheme.
Repeated takeover bids from various companies were unsuccessfully attempted in 1956 and 1957, until in December 1957 Alliance Property announced that it controlled a majority of the shares of the Brookwood Estates Realisation Company. In January 1959 Alliance Property announced the successful takeover of the London Necropolis Company itself, bringing over a century of independence to an end.
After the takeover
Historically the LNC had invested much of its income from burials and fares, and used the dividends from these investments to pay for cemetery upkeep. Although Alliance Property kept the name "London Necropolis Company" for its funeral business, it was a property developer with no interest in the funeral industry, and saw little reason to spend large amounts maintaining the cemetery, proceeding with the proposed crematorium, or promoting new burials of bodies or cremated remains. The rising popularity of cremation meant the rate of burials was at a historic low, while the Victorian character of the cemetery had fallen out of fashion. The income from burials was insufficient to maintain the cemetery grounds, and the cemetery began to revert to wilderness. Over the course of the 1960s most undertaking work at Brookwood came to an end.After Alliance Property's land sales, the London Necropolis Company had been reduced to Brookwood Cemetery itself and Frederick W. Paine, a Kingston-upon-Thames firm of funeral directors which had been bought by the LNC in 1947. In 1970 Alliance Property sold the LNC to Cornwall Property (Holdings) Ltd. The following year Cornwall Property sold it on to the Great Southern Group, the owners of Streatham Park Cemetery, South London Crematorium and a chain of funeral directors in central London.
The Great Southern Group dismantled much of what remained of the company. Frederick W. Paine was detached from the LNC, along with the specialist division overseeing the exhumation and relocation of existing burial grounds to allow property development on formerly consecrated sites. All that remained of the LNC was Brookwood Cemetery itself, by this time moribund and becoming heavily overgrown. Considered virtually worthless, Great Southern sold the LNC to property speculators Maximilian Investments in July 1973 for £400,000.
Legacy
As Alliance Property and the Great Southern Group had between them stripped all assets other than the cemetery itself and development within the cemetery was prohibited, the LNC had little apparent value. However, Maximilian Investments secured passage of the Brookwood Cemetery Act 1975, authorising them to sell land within the operational area of the cemetery. The former Superintendent's office housing the LNC's offices, near the level crossing where the Necropolis Railway had passed between the northern and southern cemeteries, was sold for office development. Following the sale the offices of the LNC, renamed Brookwood Cemetery Ltd at this time, were moved into a small former caretaker's lodge. With little storage space in the new makeshift offices, the majority of the LNC's records were destroyed during the move. Tracts of land within the cemetery were sold to various religious groups and to wealthy families for use as private burial grounds, and a tract of unused land south of the Glades of Remembrance was sold to Woking Clay Pigeon Club. The masonry works remained operational until the early 1980s, although not under LNC management after the early 1960s, and were then converted into office buildings and named Stonemason's Court.Although the Act of 1975 had specified that a portion of the profits from land sales be used to maintain the remaining cemetery, little restoration work was done and the cemetery continued to revert to wilderness. With the new owners of the land interested only in redeveloping those parts of the cemetery not currently in use, the cemetery itself sank further into neglect.
The last operators of the refreshment kiosk in the former South station retired in the late 1960s and from then on the station building was used as a cemetery storeroom. Around half the building was destroyed by fire in September 1972. The building was popular with railway and architectural enthusiasts as a distinctive piece of Victorian railway architecture, but despite a lobbying campaign to preserve the surviving sections of the station the remaining buildings (other than the platform itself) were demolished shortly afterwards. By the time of its demolition the "temporary" structure was 118 years old. In 1982 as part of the programme of land sales the station site, the two derelict Anglican chapels and 5 acres (20,234.3 m²) of land around it were sold to the St. Edward Brotherhood, an order of Russian Orthodox monks. The Brotherhood set about restoring the chapels for religious use. The original 1854 chapel is used as a visitor's centre and living quarters for the monastery, while the larger Anglican chapel built by Cyril Tubbs in 1908–09 immediately north of the station is now the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Edward the Martyr, and houses the relics and shrine of Edward the Martyr
Edward the Martyr
Edward the Martyr was king of the English from 975 until he was murdered in 978. Edward was the eldest son of King Edgar, but not his father's acknowledged heir...
, king of England from 975–978 AD. The main monastery has been built on the site of the former station building, while the platform itself remains intact and now marks the boundary of the monastic enclosure.
In March 1985 the company was bought by Ramadan Güney
Ramadan Güney
Ramadan Hüseyin Güney was a British-Turkish Cypriot businessman and politician. He was the owner of Brookwood Cemetery, the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom, with the aim of establishing a Turkish cemetery...
, whose family still owns the cemetery as of 2011. The Guney family embarked on a programme of building links with London's mosques to encourage new burials in the cemetery. Guney began a slow programme of clearing the overgrown sections of the cemetery and restoring significant memorials. The Guney family's efforts to attract new custom have been successful, to the extent that some of the lands sold off in the 1970s have now been repurchased by the cemetery. In June 1989 the cemetery was designated a Conservation Area
Conservation Area (United Kingdom)
In the United Kingdom, the term Conservation Area nearly always applies to an area considered worthy of preservation or enhancement because of its special architectural or historic interest, "the character or appearance of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance," as required by the Planning ...
, and subsequently was declared a Site of Special Scientific Interest
Site of Special Scientific Interest
A Site of Special Scientific Interest is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom. SSSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in Great Britain are based upon...
. In 1992 the Brookwood Cemetery Society was formed to improve awareness of the cemetery; the Society holds open days, guided walks and other events, restores damaged memorials, and maintains and improves the signage within the cemetery.
While it was never as successful as planned, the London Necropolis Company had a significant impact on the funeral industry, and the principles established by the LNC influenced the design of many other cemeteries worldwide. The village of Brookwood has grown on the northern (non-cemetery) side of the LSWR railway line, focused on the 1864 railway station which remains heavily used both by commuters and by visitors to the cemetery. Brookwood Cemetery remains the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in the world. Although not the world's only dedicated funeral railway line, the London Necropolis Railway was the first, the longest lasting and by far the best known. While the growth of the part of Surrey around the cemetery was heavily influenced by the LNC, some iron columns in Newnham Terrace SW1 which once supported the Necropolis Railway viaduct and the LNC's surviving office building at 121 Westminster Bridge Road are the only surviving London Necropolis Company structures in London itself.
External links
- Brookwood Park Ltd, successor to the London Necropolis Company
- Brookwood Cemetery Society, a group dedicated to the preservation and documentation of the cemetery
- Saint Edward Brotherhood, owners of the former South station site