Brookwood Cemetery

Brookwood Cemetery was conceived by the London Necropolis Company (LNC) in 1849 to house London's deceased, at a time when the capital was finding it difficult to accommodate its increasing population, of living and dead. The cemetery is said to have been landscaped by architect William Tite, but this is disputed.[9]

In 1854, Brookwood was the largest cemetery in the world (it is no longer). Its initial owner incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1852, Brookwood Cemetery (apart from its northern section, reserved for Nonconformists) was consecrated by Charles Sumner, Bishop of Winchester, on 7 November 1854 and opened to the public on 13 November 1854 when its first burials took place.

The layout of Brookwood Cemetery and the railway lines serving it at the time of its opening. (Based on a map in Clarke (2006), p. 14)

Brookwood originally was accessible by rail from a special station – the London Necropolis railway station – next to Waterloo station in Central London. Trains had passenger carriages reserved for different classes and other carriages for coffins (also for different classes), and ran into the cemetery on a dedicated branch from the adjoining South Western Main Line – there was a junction just to the west of Brookwood station. From there, passengers and coffins were transported by horse-drawn vehicles. The original London Necropolis station was relocated in 1902 but its successor was demolished after suffering bomb damage during World War II.

Third class coffin ticket, issued between April–September 1925.[10]

There were two stations in the cemetery: North for non-conformists and South for Anglicans. Their platforms still exist along the path called Railway Avenue. For visitors wishing to use the South Western Main Line, Brookwood station has provided direct access since June 1864. A very short piece of commemorative track, with signpost and plaque, purposefully gives way to a grass field and recollects the old final stage of the journey of the deceased.

The LNC offered three classes of funerals:

• A first class funeral allowed buyers to select the grave site of their choice anywhere in the cemetery. The LNC charged extra for burials in some designated special sites.[11] At the time of opening prices began at £2 10s (about £236 in 2021 terms) for a basic 9-by-4-foot (2.7 m × 1.2 m) with no special coffin specifications.[12][11] 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 £95 in 2021 terms) and allowed some control over the burial location.[13] The right to erect a permanent memorial cost an additional 10 shillings (about £47 in 2021 terms); if a permanent memorial was not erected the LNC reserved the right to re-use the grave in future.[12][11]
• 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.[13] (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.)[14] 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.[15]

The monument to Sir Henry Goldfinch is the earliest in the cemetery

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.[16] 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.[15][17]

While the majority of burials conducted by the LNC (around 80%) were pauper funerals on behalf of London parishes,[14] 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.[18] 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".[19]

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.[20] The Nonconformist cemetery also includes a Parsee burial ground established in 1862, which as of 2011 remained the only Zoroastrian burial ground in Europe.[21] Dedicated sections in the Anglican cemetery were also reserved for burials from those parishes which had made burial arrangements with the LNC.[22]

The first burial was of the stillborn twins of a Mr and Mrs Hore of Ewer Street, Southwark Borough.[23] The Hore twins, along with the other burials on the first day, were pauper funerals and buried in unmarked graves.[23] The first burial at Brookwood with a permanent memorial was that of Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Goldfinch, buried on 25 November 1854, the 26th person to be buried in the cemetery.[24] The first permanent memorial erected in the Nonconformist section of the cemetery was that of Charles Milligan Hogg, son of botanist Robert Hogg, buried on 12 December 1854.[25] Goldfinch and Hogg's graves are not the oldest monuments in the cemetery, as on occasion gravestones were relocated and re-erected during the relocation of existing burial grounds to Brookwood.[26]

The rate of burials was much lower than anticipated by the London Necropolis Company and around 80% of graves are unmarked, making Brookwood distinctively uncluttered when compared to other cemeteries.

Over 235,000 people have been buried there.

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.[27] 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, which uncovered at least 7,950 bodies.[27] 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.[26]

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. Churches whose graves were relocated included:

• All-Hallows-the-Less (destroyed in the Great Fire of London, remains removed 1896)
• St Antholin, Budge Row (demolished 1875)
• All-Hallows-the-Great (demolished 1894)
• St Michael Wood Street (demolished 1897)
• St Mildred, Bread Street (remains removed 1898, church destroyed in London Blitz 1941)
• St George Botolph Lane (demolished 1904)
• St Marylebone Parish Church (remains from crypt removed 1987)

In 1878 the LNC sold an isolated piece of its land at Brookwood, close to St John's village, to the Cremation Society of Great Britain, on which they built Woking Crematorium, the first in Britain, in 1879.[28] 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.[29]

Brookwood Columbarium, built as a mausoleum for Lord Cadogan but converted in 1910 for the storage of cremation urns

After 1945 cremation, up to that time an uncommon practice, became increasingly popular in Britain.[30] 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.[31] Instead, in 1945 the LNC began the construction of the Glades of Remembrance, a wooded area dedicated to the burial of cremated remains.[31] These were dedicated by Henry Montgomery Campbell, Bishop of Guildford in 1950.[31][note 1] Intentionally designed for informality, traditional gravestones and memorials were prohibited, and burials were marked only by small 2-to-3-inch (5.1 to 7.6 cm) stones.[32]

In the next decade the cemetery came closest to having its own crematorium. Following the closure of the two Brookwood railway stations, the land surrounding the site of South station and the station's two Anglican chapels was redundant. As part of the London Necropolis Act 1956 the LNC obtained Parliamentary consent to convert the disused original Anglican chapel into a crematorium, using the newer chapel for funeral services and the station building for coffin storage and as a refreshment room for those attending cremations.[33] Suffering cash flow problems and distracted by a succession of hostile takeover bids, the LNC management never proceeded with the scheme and the buildings fell into disuse.[33] The station building was demolished after being damaged by a fire in 1972, although the platform remained intact.[34]

With the ambition for it 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.[23] 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.[35][23]

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.[22] Robert Donald, the owner of an arboretum near Woking, was contracted to supply the trees and shrubs for the cemetery.[36] 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.[22] As well as the giant sequoias (also known as Wellingtonia after the recently deceased Duke of Wellington), 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.[22]

In later years the original planting of the cemetery was supplemented by numerous other tree species planted by the LNC, as well as many plants planted by mourners at burial sites and around mausolea. Between the end of LNC independence in 1959 and the cemetery's purchase by Ramadan Guney in 1985 cemetery maintenance was drastically reduced, and the spread of various plant types caused many of the non-military sections of the cemetery to revert to wilderness in this period.[37]

In August 1914, on the outbreak of the First World War, the LNC offered to donate to the War Office 1 acre (4,000 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.[29] This purpose built cemetery came to accommodate further dead from World War II.

In the meantime, 141 Commonwealth service personnel were buried from London in scattered graves throughout the cemetery, apart from a small Nurses' Plot in St Peter's Avenue in the Westminster field (where are buried nurses from Millbank Military Hospital) and an Indian plot (including one unidentified soldier) in the North-West corner.[38]

In World War II 51 Commonwealth service personnel were buried in the civilian cemetery, where there are also buried five foreign national servicemen whose graves the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) additionally care for.[38] A military memorial to the missing from that war was built in 1958 by the CWGC.

Memorialised here too came to be Edward the Martyr,[39] King of England, whose relics are kept nearby in St Edward the Martyr Orthodox Church.

The London Necropolis Company was taken over by Alliance Property in 1959[40] and the company was gradually divested of land and investments until by 1973, the cemetery was an independent entity. The cemetery changed hands between various development companies in the 1970s, during which time the cemetery maintenance was neglected: 1970 Cornwall Property (Holdings) Ltd, 1971 Great Southern Group, 1973 Maximillian Investments.[41] Maximillian investments secured the passing of the Brookwood Cemetery Act 1975 which authorised them to sell unused parts of the cemetery [42] and a few areas were sold for development.

In 1985, Ramadan Güney acquired Brookwood Cemetery from the owner Mr D.J.T. Dally, who was previously the cemetery manager .[7] The purchase evolved from Güney's role as Chairman of the UK Turkish Islamic Trust, which wanted suitable burial facilities for its members.[6] The Brookwood Cemetery Society was founded in 1992 to organise events, promote the site's history and support restoration work. After Güney's death in 2006 he was buried in the cemetery and ownership passed to his children (by his late wife) and operated by his son Erkin, a director at the cemetery for almost 30 years. Diane Holliday, Güney's partner of 6 years, was "frozen out" from the operating company and then dismissed.[4] In 2011, the inheritance of the cemetery was successfully challenged by Diane Holliday and her adult son Kevin.[5] This decision was upheld by the High Court on appeal in 2012.[4] In 2014, Diane Holliday sold the cemetery to Woking Council.[3]