Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: London (21 page)

Dr John Snow

S
ome of London’s most striking monuments are to be found in its cemeteries, many of which date from the early 19th century when London’s churches could no longer accommodate further burials in their graveyards. As a result it was decided to build seven cemeteries around London: at Kensal Green (opened in 1832); West Norwood (1837); Highgate (1839); Abney Park, Nunhead and Brompton (1840); and Tower Hamlets (1841). They became known as the ‘Magnificent Seven’. They were built by entrepreneurs who recognised that profits could be made from providing dignified burials for London’s rapidly expanding population. Kensal Green Cemetery, which spans the borders of the London boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea is older than Brookwood. It contains about 250,000 graves including those of Charles Babbage, mathematician and computer pioneer; Isambard Kingdom Brunel; and Marigold Frances Churchill, the daughter of Winston Churchill who died in 1921 aged three, the charming little monument to her by Eric Gill being Grade II listed in 2001. West Norwood, which is regarded by connoisseurs as having the finest monumental architecture of all London’s cemeteries, has the graves of Paul Julius von Reuter who founded the famous news agency; Henry Tate the sugar magnate who funded the Tate Gallery; and Dr William Marsden who founded the Royal Free and Royal Marsden Hospitals.

West Norwood cemetery

Of the Magnificent Seven Highgate is probably the most famous simply because it contains the grave of Karl Marx though he shares the cemetery with the scientist Michael Faraday, the cricketer Frederick Lillywhite and Tom Sayers, the last bare-knuckle fighter, whose funeral was attended by 100,000 people and also by his huge dog whose effigy is carved on his tomb. Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington was particularly favoured by dissenters as it was built on land which had been the home of Isaac Watts, non-conformist hymn-writer, whose statue is a prominent feature in the grounds. It also contains the graves of William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, his wife Catherine and of many Quakers who were active in the anti-slavery movement. Nunhead Cemetery in the borough of Southwark is the least well known of the Magnificent Seven and holds the grave of the bus pioneer Thomas Tilling, while beautiful Brompton Cemetery near Earl’s Court is now managed by the Royal Parks and holds the graves of Sir Henry Cole (the driving force behind the 1851 Great Exhibition); shipping magnate Samuel Cunard; the militant suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst; and the journalist Bernard Levin. The last of the Magnificent Seven to be built, Tower Hamlets Cemetery is near Mile End station. Closed to burials since 1966 it is now a nature reserve and has acquired for this purpose the adjacent and indelicately named Scrapyard Meadow! The graves are mostly those of local residents including victims of London’s last cholera epidemic which devastated a small area of Mile End in 1866, together with that of a local doctor, Rees Ralph Llewellyn, who carried out the autopsy on Mary Ann Nichols, the first victim of Jack the Ripper. It also contains the graves of victims of the wartime Bethnal Green disaster.

The cemetery of Friends

Bunhill Fields cemetery, off the City Road in London, is not one of the Magnificent Seven but was used to bury cartloads of bones from St Paul’s churchyard as early as 1549. In 1665 the Corporation of London enclosed the cemetery with a wall, intending to use it as a burial ground for victims of the Great Plague though it appears to have been used for ordinary burials too. The last burial was in 1854 but in the meantime it became popular with Non-conformists and was known as ‘The Cemetery of Puritan England’. John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, William Blake, the mother of the Methodist John Wesley and two members of the Cromwell family are buried here. The adjoining burial ground was purchased by Quakers in 1661, the first land they owned in London. It contains thousands of Quaker graves including that of the founder of the movement, George Fox.

A memorial to the victims of the Bethnal Green Disaster

John Winfield

kjetilbjornsrud

John Salmon

Chris O

Gordon Joly

Stephen Henley

Dominique

Stephen Halliday

Mike Peel
(
www.mikepeel.net
)

Mikey

Danny Robinson,

Kevin Gordon

John Salmon

Christine Matthews

Hywel Williams

Mike Quinn

MasterofHisOwnDomain,

Peter Benton

Anders Thirsgaard Rasmussen

Rob Farrow

Rosalind Mitchell

Lonpicman,

John Salmon

Ester Inbar

Oxyman

Colin Smith

Stephen Richards

Stephen Mckay