Kensal Green Cemetery

Kensal Green Cemetery
Kensal Green Cemetery view December 2005.jpg
Details
Year established 1832
Location Kensal Green, London
Country England
Size 72 acres (29 ha)
Number of graves 65,000+
Number of interments 250,000
Website Official website

Kensal Green Cemetery is a cemetery in Kensal Green, in the west of London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Inspired by the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and founded by the barrister George Frederick Carden, Kensal Green Cemetery was opened in 1833 and comprises 72 acres of beautiful grounds including two conservation areas and an adjoining canal. Kensal Green Cemetery is home to at least 33 species of bird and other wildlife. This distinctive cemetery has a host of different of memorials ranging from large mausoleums housing the rich and famous to many distinctive smaller graves and even includes special areas dedicated to the very young. With three chapels catering for people of all faiths and social standing, the General Cemetery Company has provided a haven in the heart London for 180 years for its inhabitants to remember their loved one in a tranquil and dignified environment.[1] 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 Kensal Green."[2]

Location

The cemetery is located in the London Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, and its main entrance is located on Harrow Road (near to the junction with Ladbroke Grove and Chamberlayne Road). The cemetery can also be entered through the West Gate (near the junction with Greyhound Road), which is also the entrance to the West London Crematorium (owned and operated by the same company that owns and operates Kensal Green Cemetery) and St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery, which are in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. The cemetery lies between Harrow Road and the Grand Union Canal.

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History and description

Founded as the General Cemetery of All Souls, Kensal Green, the cemetery was incorporated in 1832 (the year that profit-making cemeteries became legal[3]) as a private company. It was the first of the 'Magnificent Seven' garden-style cemeteries in London. Kensal Green Cemetery was consecrated on 24 January 1833 by the Bishop of London. The Church of England was allotted 39 acres and the remaining 15, clearly separated, were given over to Dissenters, a distinction deemed crucial at the time. Originally there was a division between the Dissenters’ part of the cemetery and the Anglican section. This took the form of a ‘sunk fence’ from the canal to the gate piers on the path. There were also decorative iron gates. The small area designated for non-Anglican burials is approximately oval in shape and was formerly made prominent by a wider central axis path that terminated with the neo-classical chapel with curved colonnades. The Anglican Chapel dominates the western section of the cemetery, being raised on a terrace beneath which is an extensive catacomb; there is a hydraulic catafalque for lowering coffins into the catacomb.[4]

The cemetery received its first funeral in January 1833. It is still in operation today; burials and cremations take place daily, although cremations are now more common than interments. Kensal Green Cemetery is still run by the General Cemetery Company under its original Act of Parliament. This mandates that bodies there may not be exhumed and cremated or the land sold for development. Once the cemetery has exhausted all its interment space and can no longer function as a cemetery, the mandate requires that it shall remain a memorial park. The General Cemetery Company constructed and runs the West London Crematorium within the grounds of Kensal Green Cemetery.

While borrowing from the ideals established at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris some years before, Kensal Green Cemetery contributed to the design and management basis for many cemetery projects throughout the British Empire of the time. In Australia, for example, The Necropolis at Rookwood (1868) and Waverley Cemetery (1877), both in Sydney, are noted for their use of the "gardenesque" landscape qualities and importantly self-sustaining management structures championed by the General Cemetery Company.

The cemetery is the burial site of approximately 250,000 individuals in 65,000 graves, including upwards of 500 members of the British nobility and 550 people listed in the Dictionary of National Biography. Many monuments, particularly the larger ones, lean precariously as they have settled over time on the underlying London clay.

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Notable structures

Many buildings and structures within Kensal Green are listed. The Anglican Chapel is listed grade I, while the non-conformist Mortuary Chapel, colonnade/catacomb and perimeter walls and railings are listed grade II or II*. Of the many tombs, memorials and mausoleums, eight are listed grade II*. The Anglican Chapel is at the centre of the cemetery, and contains several tombs. Under the chapel is a catacomb, one of the few in London. The catacomb is currently not maintained but can be visited as part of a guided tour. It still has a working coffin-lift or catafalque, restored by the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery in 1997.

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The catacombs

Kensal Green Cemetery is distinguished by three catacombs for the deposit of lead-sealed, triple-shelled coffins and cremated remains. Catacomb A, beneath the North Terrace Colonnade is now sealed. Catacomb Z, beneath the Dissenters' Chapel at the eastern end of the cemetery, suffered significant bomb damage during World War II, and is also closed to further deposits. Catacomb B, beneath the Anglican Chapel in the centre of the cemetery, has space for some 4000 deposits, and still offers both private loculi and shelves or vaults for family groups. The catacomb extends under the entire footprint of the chapel and its colonnades. There are six aisles, within which each vault is also numbered, running consecutively to number 216 at the south-western end of aisle 6.

Interment within the catacombs of Kensal Green has always been more expensive and prestigious than burial in a simple plot in the grounds of the cemetery, although less costly than a brick-lined grave or mausoleum. Without the further expense and responsibility of a monument above the grave, the catacombs have afforded a secure, dignified and exclusive resting place for the well-to-do, particularly the unmarried, the childless and young children of those without family plots or mausolea elsewhere.[5]

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War Graves

The cemetery contains the graves of 473 Commonwealth service personnel of the First World War - half of whom form a war graves plot in the south-west corner, the remainder in small groups or individual graves scattered throughout the grounds - and 51 of the Second who are all dispersed. In the First World War plot, at Section 213, a Screen Wall memorial lists casualties of both World Wars whose graves could not be marked by headstones, besides 5 servicemen who were cremated at Kensal Green Crematorium.[6] The highest ranking person commemorated by the CWGC to be buried here is General Sir Charles Douglas (1850-1914), Chief of the Imperial General Staff at outbreak of the First World War.[7]

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Notable burials

Monuments and chapel at Kensal Green Cemetery

The cemetery is remarkable for the number of Fellows of the Royal Society who are buried there, of whom the following is a small sample:

Royal burials

Notable cremations

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See also

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References

Records held at Kensal Green Cemetery

  1. ^ http://www.kensalgreencemetery.com/
  2. ^ . It is still in operation. Chesterton, Gilbert Keith (1914). "The Rolling English Road". The Flying Inn. 
  3. ^ Cemeteries Act 1832
  4. ^ http://www.kensalgreencemetery.com/cemetery/index4.html
  5. ^ http://www.kensalgreen.co.uk/
  6. ^ [1] CWGC Cemetery Report.
  7. ^ [2] CWGC Debt of Honour Register.
  8. ^ Remembering Frederick Scott Archer BBC article, 27 April 2010
  9. ^  Boase, George Clement (1896). "Quin, Frederic Hervey Foster". In Sidney Lee. Dictionary of National Biography 47. London: Smith, Elder & Co. "… and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery on 28 Nov." 
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External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Kensal Green Cemetery

Coordinates: 51°31′43″N 0°13′27″W / 51.5286°N 0.2241°W / 51.5286; -0.2241

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Last modified on 6 May 2013, at 17:07