London Necropolis railway station
Encyclopedia
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 graveyard
s and cemeteries
. It aimed to use the recently-developed technology of the railway to move as many burials as possible to the newly-built Brookwood Cemetery
in Brookwood, Surrey
. This location was within easy travelling distance of London, but distant enough that the dead could not pose any risk to public hygiene.
Although it had its own branch line into Brookwood Cemetery, most of the route of the London Necropolis Railway ran on the existing London and South Western Railway
(LSWR). Consequently, a site was selected in Waterloo
, near the LSWR's recently-opened London terminus at Waterloo Bridge station (now London Waterloo). The building was specifically designed for the use of mourners. It had many private waiting rooms, which could also be used to hold funeral services, and a hydraulic lift to raise coffins to platform level. Existing railway arches were used for the storage of bodies.
In 1899 the location of the terminus was blocking the expansion of Waterloo station. After much negotiation, the LSWR reached agreement with the London Necropolis Company
, the owners of the cemetery and the railway: in return for the existing site, the LSWR re-equipped the London Necropolis Railway and supplied it with a new station on Westminster Bridge Road
. This new building was designed to contrast with other funeral directors' premises by being as attractive as possible. In 1902 the railway moved into the new building, and the earlier station was demolished.
On 16 April 1941 the station was heavily damaged in an air raid
. Much of the building was destroyed and the tracks to the station were rendered unusable. Although some funeral trains continued to run from nearby Waterloo station, the London terminus was never used again. Following the end of the war the London Necropolis Company decided that reopening the London Necropolis Railway was not financially worthwhile, and the surviving part of the station building was sold as office space. This remnant remains intact, and relatively unaltered since its opening.
s remained unchanged at approximately 300 acres (0.5 sq mi; 1.2 km2), spread across around 200 small sites. Even relatively fresh graves had to be exhumed to free up space for new burials, their contents being unearthed and scattered. Decaying corpses contaminated the water supply, and the city suffered regular epidemics of cholera
, smallpox
, measles
and typhoid. 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. In 1848–49 a cholera epidemic
killed 14,601 people in London and overwhelmed the burial system completely.
In the wake of public concerns following the cholera epidemics and the findings of a 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.
near Woking
, Surrey
, to be called Brookwood Cemetery
or the London Necropolis.
At this distance, the land would be far beyond the maximum anticipated size of the city's growth, greatly reducing any potential hazards. 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. Although the Brookwood site was a long distance from London, Broun and Sprye argued that the speed of 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.
On 30 June 1852 the promoters of the Brookwood scheme were given Parliamentary consent to proceed, and the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company (LNC) was formed. The former Woking Common, owned by the Earl of Onslow at Brookwood 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 detail of how the funeral trains were to operate.
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 London Necropolis Railway
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 Sir Richard Broun. Its proximity to the River 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 meant that the area was easily accessed from both north and south of the river by road. 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. The LNC also contemplated taking over the LSWR's former terminus at Nine Elms railway station
(which following the 1848 opening of the much more convenient Waterloo Bridge station was used only for goods traffic, chartered trains taking migrants to North America, and the private trains of the royal family) as either the main or a secondary terminus. Despite objections from local residents concerned about the effects of potentially large numbers of dead bodies being stored in a largely residential area, in March 1854 the LNC settled on a single terminus in Waterloo and purchased a plot of land between Westminster Bridge Road
and York Street
(now Leake Street) for the site.
Architect William Tite
and engineer William Cubitt
drew up a design for a station, which was approved in June 1854. The station was completed in October 1854, at a total construction cost of £23,231 14s 4d
(about £ in terms of spending power). On 13 November 1854 the first train left London for the new London Necropolis.
Tite and Cubitt's design was based around a three-storey main building, separated from the LSWR's main viaduct by a private access road beneath the LNC's twin rail lines. The private access road was intended to allow mourners to arrive and leave discreetly, and to avoid the need for hearses to stop in the public road. The ground floor contained a grand entrance hall and staircase for mourners attending first and second class funerals, a smaller entrance hall and staircase for those attending lower classes of funeral, and two mortuaries which occupied the majority of the floor. A large room adjacent to the mortuary held a reserve stock of around 300 coffins. The first floor held the LNC's boardroom, the LNC's funerary workshops
, a series of separate waiting rooms for those attending second and third class funerals, and the building's main toilets. The second floor, level with the LSWR railway line, held the train shed covering the two private rail lines and the single platform at which the trains stopped, eight or nine waiting rooms for first class mourners, and further toilets for their use. A steam-powered lift carried coffins from the lower floors to the platform level. A glass roof was positioned in order that no shadow be cast on the hearse carriage waiting at the platform at the time the trains were scheduled to depart, and the western wall was windowless to avoid passengers using the LSWR station being able to see into the Necropolis station. Glass panels inset between the two rail lines allowed sunlight through to the private access road below. Unlike most railway stations of the period, the designs of the first, second and third class waiting rooms were largely identical with only superficial differences.
Although the original terminus did not have its own chapel, on some occasions mourners would not be able or willing to make the journey to a ceremony at Brookwood but for personal or religious reasons were unable to hold the funeral service in a London church. On these occasions one of the waiting rooms would be used as a makeshift funeral chapel. One of the more notable funerals to be held at the terminus was that of Friedrich Engels
, co-creator (with Karl Marx
) of modern communism
, who died in London on 5 August 1895. Engels had expressed a wish to be cremated and his ashes scattered at sea, but there was no crematorium near London. The LNC had an arrangement with Woking Crematorium
, by which Necropolis Railway stations and trains could be used by mourners attending cremations at Woking. For Engels's funeral on 10 August 1895 around 150 people attended a morning service in a waiting room at the LNC terminus. Although the cremation was scheduled for 1:15 pm formalities with the death certificate
delayed the departure, and the special train did not arrive at the cemetery's North station (the station serving the part of the cemetery reserved for non-Anglicans) until after 4:00 pm. The majority of the mourners remained at North station in the cemetery, and only 12 mourners accompanied the coffin to Woking; as the service had already been held in London, on arrival at Woking, Engels's body was transferred straight from the hearse to the furnace. Engels's ashes (cremated remains) were recovered from the furnace and transferred to an unrecorded location in Brookwood Cemetery, and 17 days later removed from the cemetery and scattered from Beachy Head
(in East Sussex).
In 1874, with Waterloo Bridge station becoming extremely busy, the LSWR attempted to take over one of the LNC's two rail lines. An 1875 agreement between the LSWR and LNC permitted the LSWR to take over the westernmost track (that not served by the platform), in return for improved terms on the lease of the land currently leased by the LNC from the LSWR, and the LSWR taking over the maintenance of the structure supporting the LNC lines. In 1876 and 1877 the roof and western wall of the LNC train shed were demolished and replaced with a cantilever
ed awning over the single platform; the platform was extended to compensate for the loss of the second line.
supporting the gantry to rest on the LNC's platform, while reserving the right to demand the gantry be removed. At this time the LSWR also leased a small plot of land west of the Westminster Bridge Road entrance to serve as the site of new offices for the LNC, designed by Cyril Bazett Tubbs.
As the site of the Necropolis station had been intentionally chosen to abut the arches of the LSWR's viaduct, it acted as an obstacle to any increase in the number of lines serving Waterloo station. Urban growth in the area of what is now south west London, through which trains from Waterloo ran, led to congestion at the station, only slightly alleviated by the LSWR's 1877 takeover of the western LNC track. In the 1890s the situation became untenable, and the LSWR began to investigate the possibility of repositioning the LNC station to permit the expansion of the mainline terminus.
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, but with a number of conditions attached. The LSWR was to allow the LNC control of the design of the new station, lease the new station to the LNC for a token rent in perpetuity
, provide new rolling stock, remove any limit on the number of passengers using the Necropolis service, and provide the free carriage of machinery and equipment to be used in the cemetery. The LNC had an extremely strong negotiating position as their existing site was crucial to any expansion of Waterloo station, and in addition they had the legal right to demand the removal of the stanchion supporting Waterloo's signal gantry. Although the LSWR was extremely unhappy at what they considered excessive demands, they had no choice but to comply. 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
.
inspected the new building and expressed concerns over the safety of the arrangements for trains entering the station from the main line, which entailed crossing the LSWR's multiple tracks. He was also unhappy about the newly-installed passenger lifts and the unfinished nature of the passenger terminus, but nonetheless approved the limited use of the new station for funeral trains. Soon after the transfer of LNC services to the new building the LSWR viaduct was widened to serve a greatly enlarged Waterloo station, destroying all traces of the original LNC terminus.
The new building, also designed by Cyril Bazett Tubbs, was designed for attractiveness and modernity to contrast with the traditional gloomy decor associated with the funeral industry. A narrow four-storey office building stood at 188 Westminster Bridge Road. The ground floor was taken up by a large arch leading to a waiting room, an office for general enquiries, and the long driveway leading to the station itself; above this were the LNC's offices and boardrooms.
First class mourners entered through the driveway under the office building which turned sharply left to run beneath a glass canopy parallel to Westminster Bridge Road; this stretch was faced with glazed white brick and lined with palm and bay
trees. The driveway ran past mortuaries and storerooms to the lifts and stairs to the platforms, and also to a secondary entrance on Newnham Terrace (off Hercules Road
). Above the mortuaries and storerooms were the LNC's workshops. Lifts and an elaborate wrought-iron staircase led from the lower two floors to platform level on the second floor. This upper level housed a sumptuous oak-panelled Chapelle Ardente
, intended for mourners unable to make the journey to Brookwood to pay their respects to the deceased. A short and wide pathway led to the first class platform, lined with waiting rooms and a ticket office; the first class platform was equipped with five separate waiting rooms to keep mourners from different funeral parties separate.
A glass screen separated the first class platform and circulating area from the platform and circulating area for third class passengers. The third class section was entered from the secondary entrance in Newnham Terrace, and was more sparsely furnished and not equipped with lifts. From the Newnham Terrace entrance a staircase led to a single communal waiting room on the first floor, and to the third class platform on the second floor, much shorter than the first class platform.
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 the Chapelle Ardente at 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 (where the branch line into the cemetery left the main LSWR line) at 12.25 pm (12.20 pm on Sundays).
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 the Waterloo terminus, 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.
During the night of 16–17 April 1941, in one of the last major air raids on London, bombs repeatedly fell on the Waterloo area, and the LNC's good fortune in avoiding damage to their facilities finally ran out. In the early stages of the air raid the rolling stock stored in the Necropolis siding was burned, and the railway arch connecting the main line to the Necropolis terminus was damaged, although the terminal building itself remained unscathed.
At 10.30 pm multiple incendiary devices and high explosive bombs struck the central section of the terminus building. While the office building and platforms survived, the workshops, driveway and Chapelle Ardente were destroyed, along with the third class waiting room. The Divisional Engineer of the Southern Railway
(SR, which had absorbed the LSWR in the 1923 restructuring of Britain's railways
) inspected the damage at 2.00 pm on 17 April, and his report read simply "Necropolis and buildings demolished".
On 11 May 1941 the station was officially declared closed. The last recorded funeral carried on the London Necropolis Railway was that of Chelsea Pensioner
Edward Irish (1868–1941), buried on 11 April 1941. The SR offered the LNC the temporary use of platform 11 or 12 of Waterloo station to allow the 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 over the SR's fast and frequent services to their own Brookwood railway station
. The LNC attempted to negotiate a deal by which bona fide 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.
Although the original promoters of the scheme had envisaged Brookwood Cemetery becoming London's main or only cemetery, the scheme had never been as popular as they had hoped. In the original proposal, 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, the great majority of which would have utilised the railway. In reality at the time the last train ran on 11 April 1941, almost 87 years after opening, only 203,041 people had been buried in the cemetery. Before the outbreak of hostilities increased use of motorised road transport had damaged the profitability of the railway for both the LNC and the SR. 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.
With most of the LNC's business being 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.
Waterloo, 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...
, which served successively as the London terminus of 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...
. The London Necropolis Railway was opened in 1854 as a reaction to severe overcrowding in London's existing graveyard
Graveyard
A graveyard is any place set aside for long-term burial of the dead, with or without monuments such as headstones...
s and 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...
. It aimed to use the recently-developed technology of the railway to move as many burials as possible to the newly-built 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:...
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 ....
. This location was within easy travelling distance of London, but distant enough that the dead could not pose any risk to public hygiene.
Although it had its own branch line into Brookwood Cemetery, most of the route of the London Necropolis Railway ran on the existing 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). Consequently, a site was selected in Waterloo
Waterloo, 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...
, near the LSWR's recently-opened London terminus at Waterloo Bridge station (now London Waterloo). The building was specifically designed for the use of mourners. It had many private waiting rooms, which could also be used to hold funeral services, and a hydraulic lift to raise coffins to platform level. Existing railway arches were used for the storage of bodies.
In 1899 the location of the terminus was blocking the expansion of Waterloo station. After much negotiation, the LSWR reached agreement with the London Necropolis Company
London Necropolis Company
The London Necropolis Company , 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...
, the owners of the cemetery and the railway: in return for the existing site, the LSWR re-equipped the London Necropolis Railway and supplied it with a new station on 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....
. This new building was designed to contrast with other funeral directors' premises by being as attractive as possible. In 1902 the railway moved into the new building, and the earlier station was demolished.
On 16 April 1941 the station was heavily damaged in an air raid
Air raid
Air raid refers to an attack by aircraft. See strategic bombing or the smaller-scale airstrike.Air raid may also refer to:*Air Raid , by the improvisational collective Air...
. Much of the building was destroyed and the tracks to the station were rendered unusable. Although some funeral trains continued to run from nearby Waterloo station, the London terminus was never used again. Following the end of the war the London Necropolis Company decided that reopening the London Necropolis Railway was not financially worthwhile, and the surviving part of the station building was sold as office space. This remnant remains intact, and relatively unaltered since its opening.
Background
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. 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. Despite the rapid growth in population, the amount of land set aside for use as graveyardGraveyard
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 acres (0.5 sq mi; 1.2 km2), spread across around 200 small sites. Even relatively fresh graves had to be exhumed to free up space for new burials, their contents being unearthed and scattered. 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. 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. In 1848–49 a cholera epidemic
Epidemic
In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...
killed 14,601 people in London and overwhelmed the burial system completely.
In the wake of public concerns following the cholera epidemics and the findings of a 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.
London Necropolis Company
Sir Richard Broun and Richard Sprye proposed to use the emerging technology of mechanised land transport to solve the problem of London's dead. Broun and Sypre 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 anticipated size of the city's growth, greatly reducing any potential hazards. 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. Although the Brookwood site was a long distance from London, Broun and Sprye argued that the speed of 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.
On 30 June 1852 the promoters of the Brookwood scheme were given Parliamentary consent to proceed, and the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company (LNC) was formed. The former Woking Common, owned by the Earl of Onslow at Brookwood 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 detail of how the funeral trains were to operate.
On 7 November 1854 the new cemetery opened and the southern Anglican 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 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...
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.
First station (1854–1902)
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 Sir Richard Broun. Its proximity to the River Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...
meant that bodies could be cheaply transported to the terminus by water from much of London, while being situated near three major Thames bridges meant that the area was easily accessed from both north and south of the river by road. The arches of the huge brick viaduct
Viaduct
A viaduct is a bridge composed of several small spans. The term viaduct is derived from the Latin via for road and ducere to lead something. However, the Ancient Romans did not use that term per se; it is a modern derivation from an analogy with aqueduct. Like the Roman aqueducts, many early...
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. The LNC also contemplated taking over the LSWR's former terminus at Nine Elms railway station
Nine Elms railway station
Nine Elms Railway Station in the London district of Battersea was opened on 21 May 1838 as the London terminus of the London & Southampton Railway which on the same day became the London and South Western Railway. The building in the neo-classical style was designed by Sir William Tite...
(which following the 1848 opening of the much more convenient Waterloo Bridge station was used only for goods traffic, chartered trains taking migrants to North America, and the private trains of the royal family) as either the main or a secondary terminus. Despite objections from local residents concerned about the effects of potentially large numbers of dead bodies being stored in a largely residential area, in March 1854 the LNC settled on a single terminus in Waterloo and 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) for the site.
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. The station was completed in October 1854, at a total construction cost of £23,231 14s 4d
Penny (British pre-decimal coin)
The penny of the Kingdom of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, was in circulation from the early 18th century until February 1971, Decimal Day....
(about £ in terms of spending power). On 13 November 1854 the first train left London for the new London Necropolis.
Tite and Cubitt's design was based around a three-storey main building, separated from the LSWR's main viaduct by a private access road beneath the LNC's twin rail lines. The private access road was intended to allow mourners to arrive and leave discreetly, and to avoid the need for hearses to stop in the public road. The ground floor contained a grand entrance hall and staircase for mourners attending first and second class funerals, a smaller entrance hall and staircase for those attending lower classes of funeral, and two mortuaries which occupied the majority of the floor. A large room adjacent to the mortuary held a reserve stock of around 300 coffins. The first floor held the LNC's boardroom, the LNC's funerary workshops
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...
, a series of separate waiting rooms for those attending second and third class funerals, and the building's main toilets. The second floor, level with the LSWR railway line, held the train shed covering the two private rail lines and the single platform at which the trains stopped, eight or nine waiting rooms for first class mourners, and further toilets for their use. A steam-powered lift carried coffins from the lower floors to the platform level. A glass roof was positioned in order that no shadow be cast on the hearse carriage waiting at the platform at the time the trains were scheduled to depart, and the western wall was windowless to avoid passengers using the LSWR station being able to see into the Necropolis station. Glass panels inset between the two rail lines allowed sunlight through to the private access road below. Unlike most railway stations of the period, the designs of the first, second and third class waiting rooms were largely identical with only superficial differences.
Although the original terminus did not have its own chapel, on some occasions mourners would not be able or willing to make the journey to a ceremony at Brookwood but for personal or religious reasons were unable to hold the funeral service in a London church. On these occasions one of the waiting rooms would be used as a makeshift funeral chapel. One of the more notable funerals to be held at the terminus was that of Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
, co-creator (with Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
) of modern communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, who died in London on 5 August 1895. Engels had expressed a wish to be cremated and his ashes scattered at sea, but there was no crematorium near London. The LNC had an arrangement with 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 which Necropolis Railway stations and trains could be used by mourners attending cremations at Woking. For Engels's funeral on 10 August 1895 around 150 people attended a morning service in a waiting room at the LNC terminus. Although the cremation was scheduled for 1:15 pm formalities with the death certificate
Death certificate
The phrase death certificate can describe either a document issued by a medical practitioner certifying the deceased state of a person or popularly to a document issued by a person such as a registrar of vital statistics that declares the date, location and cause of a person's death as later...
delayed the departure, and the special train did not arrive at the cemetery's North station (the station serving the part of the cemetery reserved for non-Anglicans) until after 4:00 pm. The majority of the mourners remained at North station in the cemetery, and only 12 mourners accompanied the coffin to Woking; as the service had already been held in London, on arrival at Woking, Engels's body was transferred straight from the hearse to the furnace. Engels's ashes (cremated remains) were recovered from the furnace and transferred to an unrecorded location in Brookwood Cemetery, and 17 days later removed from the cemetery and scattered from Beachy Head
Beachy Head
Beachy Head is a chalk headland on the south coast of England, close to the town of Eastbourne in the county of East Sussex, immediately east of the Seven Sisters. The cliff there is the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain, rising to 162 m above sea level. The peak allows views of the south...
(in East Sussex).
In 1874, with Waterloo Bridge station becoming extremely busy, the LSWR attempted to take over one of the LNC's two rail lines. An 1875 agreement between the LSWR and LNC permitted the LSWR to take over the westernmost track (that not served by the platform), in return for improved terms on the lease of the land currently leased by the LNC from the LSWR, and the LSWR taking over the maintenance of the structure supporting the LNC lines. In 1876 and 1877 the roof and western wall of the LNC train shed were demolished and replaced with a cantilever
Cantilever
A cantilever is a beam anchored at only one end. The beam carries the load to the support where it is resisted by moment and shear stress. Cantilever construction allows for overhanging structures without external bracing. Cantilevers can also be constructed with trusses or slabs.This is in...
ed awning over the single platform; the platform was extended to compensate for the loss of the second line.
Waterloo expansion proposal
In 1889 Waterloo Station (renamed from Waterloo Bridge station in 1886) was equipped with new signals, which required a gantry spanning all the lines into the station. In return for the LSWR cladding the LNC's entrance on Westminster Bridge Road with white glazed brick, the LNC gave consent for the stanchionStanchion
A stanchion is an upright bar or post, often providing support for some other object.* An architectural term applied to the upright iron bars in windows that pass through the eyes of the saddle bars or horizontal irons to steady the leadlight. A stanchion is an upright bar or post, often...
supporting the gantry to rest on the LNC's platform, while reserving the right to demand the gantry be removed. At this time the LSWR also leased a small plot of land west of the Westminster Bridge Road entrance to serve as the site of new offices for the LNC, designed by Cyril Bazett Tubbs.
As the site of the Necropolis station had been intentionally chosen to abut the arches of the LSWR's viaduct, it acted as an obstacle to any increase in the number of lines serving Waterloo station. Urban growth in the area of what is now south west London, through which trains from Waterloo ran, led to congestion at the station, only slightly alleviated by the LSWR's 1877 takeover of the western LNC track. In the 1890s the situation became untenable, and the LSWR began to investigate the possibility of repositioning the LNC station to permit the expansion of the mainline terminus.
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, but with a number of conditions attached. The LSWR was to allow the LNC control of the design of the new station, lease the new station to the LNC for a token rent in perpetuity
Perpetuity
A perpetuity is an annuity that has no end, or a stream of cash payments that continues forever. There are few actual perpetuities in existence...
, provide new rolling stock, remove any limit on the number of passengers using the Necropolis service, and provide the free carriage of machinery and equipment to be used in the cemetery. The LNC had an extremely strong negotiating position as their existing site was crucial to any expansion of Waterloo station, and in addition they had the legal right to demand the removal of the stanchion supporting Waterloo's signal gantry. Although the LSWR was extremely unhappy at what they considered excessive demands, they had no choice but to comply. 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....
.
Second station (1902–1941)
The site for the replacement terminus was identified in 1896, and bought by the LSWR in 1899 for £5,500 (about £ in terms of consumer spending power). South of the existing station and on the opposite side of Westminster Bridge Road, its main entrance was at 188 Westminster Bridge Road. The site was roughly S-shaped: the entrance from Westminster Bridge Road led to a strip of land at a right angle to the entrance and running behind existing buildings on Westminster Bridge Road. This in turn led to the location identified for the two new rail lines, at a right angle to the central strip (i.e. parallel to the entrance). Work on the new station began in the summer of 1900, and was completed on 8 February 1902 at a total construction cost to the LSWR of £43,494 (about £ in terms of consumer spending power) excluding the cost of the land. While construction was underway the original terminus remained in use, although the LSWR was granted running rights through the station. On 23 February Major J. W. Pringle of the Board of TradeBoard of Trade
The Board of Trade is a committee of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, originating as a committee of inquiry in the 17th century and evolving gradually into a government department with a diverse range of functions...
inspected the new building and expressed concerns over the safety of the arrangements for trains entering the station from the main line, which entailed crossing the LSWR's multiple tracks. He was also unhappy about the newly-installed passenger lifts and the unfinished nature of the passenger terminus, but nonetheless approved the limited use of the new station for funeral trains. Soon after the transfer of LNC services to the new building the LSWR viaduct was widened to serve a greatly enlarged Waterloo station, destroying all traces of the original LNC terminus.
The new building, also designed by Cyril Bazett Tubbs, was designed for attractiveness and modernity to contrast with the traditional gloomy decor associated with the funeral industry. A narrow four-storey office building stood at 188 Westminster Bridge Road. The ground floor was taken up by a large arch leading to a waiting room, an office for general enquiries, and the long driveway leading to the station itself; above this were the LNC's offices and boardrooms.
First class mourners entered through the driveway under the office building which turned sharply left to run beneath a glass canopy parallel to Westminster Bridge Road; this stretch was faced with glazed white brick and lined with palm and 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...
trees. The driveway ran past mortuaries and storerooms to the lifts and stairs to the platforms, and also to a secondary entrance on Newnham Terrace (off Hercules Road
Hercules Road
Hercules Road runs north from Lambeth Road near Lambeth Palace, on the site of Penlington Place, in the London Borough of Lambeth, south London, England....
). Above the mortuaries and storerooms were the LNC's workshops. Lifts and an elaborate wrought-iron staircase led from the lower two floors to platform level on the second floor. This upper level housed a sumptuous oak-panelled Chapelle Ardente
Chapelle 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...
, intended for mourners unable to make the journey to Brookwood to pay their respects to the deceased. A short and wide pathway led to the first class platform, lined with waiting rooms and a ticket office; the first class platform was equipped with five separate waiting rooms to keep mourners from different funeral parties separate.
A glass screen separated the first class platform and circulating area from the platform and circulating area for third class passengers. The third class section was entered from the secondary entrance in Newnham Terrace, and was more sparsely furnished and not equipped with lifts. From the Newnham Terrace entrance a staircase led to a single communal waiting room on the first floor, and to the third class platform on the second floor, much shorter than the first class platform.
Operations
The London Necropolis Company offered three classes of funerals. A first class funeral allowed the person buying the funeral to select the grave site of their choice anywhere in the cemetery; at the time of opening, first class prices began at £2 10s (about £ in terms) for a basic 9 foot plot 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 parish 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.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 the Chapelle Ardente at 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 (where the branch line into the cemetery left the main LSWR line) at 12.25 pm (12.20 pm on Sundays).
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 the Waterloo terminus, 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.
Destruction
During the Second World War Waterloo station and the nearby Thames bridges were a significant target for Axis bombing, and there were several near-misses on the Necropolis 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, and services generally continued as normal.During the night of 16–17 April 1941, in one of the last major air raids on London, bombs repeatedly fell on the Waterloo area, and the LNC's good fortune in avoiding damage to their facilities finally ran out. In the early stages of the air raid the rolling stock stored in the Necropolis siding was burned, and the railway arch connecting the main line to the Necropolis terminus was damaged, although the terminal building itself remained unscathed.
At 10.30 pm multiple incendiary devices and high explosive bombs struck the central section of the terminus building. While the office building and platforms survived, the workshops, driveway and Chapelle Ardente were destroyed, along with the third class waiting room. The Divisional Engineer of 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 the 1923 restructuring of Britain's railways
Railways Act 1921
The Railways Act 1921, also known as the Grouping Act, was an enactment by the British government of David Lloyd George intended to stem the losses being made by many of the country's 120 railway companies, move the railways away from internal competition, and to retain some of the benefits which...
) inspected the damage at 2.00 pm on 17 April, and his report read simply "Necropolis and buildings demolished".
On 11 May 1941 the station was officially declared closed. The last recorded funeral carried on the London Necropolis Railway was that of Chelsea Pensioner
Chelsea pensioner
A Chelsea pensioner is an in-pensioner at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a retirement home and nursing home for former members of the British Army located in Chelsea, London...
Edward Irish (1868–1941), buried on 11 April 1941. The SR offered the LNC the temporary use of platform 11 or 12 of Waterloo station to allow the 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 over the SR's fast and frequent services to their own 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...
. The LNC attempted to negotiate a deal by which bona fide 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.
Closure
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 the original promoters of the scheme had envisaged Brookwood Cemetery becoming London's main or only cemetery, the scheme had never been as popular as they had hoped. In the original proposal, 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, the great majority of which would have utilised the railway. In reality at the time the last train ran on 11 April 1941, almost 87 years after opening, only 203,041 people had been buried in the cemetery. Before the outbreak of hostilities increased use of motorised road transport had damaged the profitability of the railway for both the LNC and the SR. 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.
With most of the LNC's business being 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.
The site today
The site of the first terminus was cleared during the expansion of the viaduct into Waterloo in the early 20th century, and no trace of it remains. Most of the site of the second station was sold by the LNC and built over with new office developments in the years following the end of the Second World War, but the office building on Westminster Bridge Road, over the former entrance to the station driveway, remains relatively unaltered externally although the words "London Necropolis" carved into the stone above the driveway have been covered. Refurbishments and cleaning in the 1980s restored the facade of the building to an appearance similar to that of the time of its building. Other than iron columns in Newnham Terrace which once supported the Necropolis Railway tracks, and a surviving section of the internal driveway used as a car park, the Westminster Bridge Road building is the only surviving part of the London Necropolis Railway in London.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