Kensal Green Cemetery
Kensal Green Cemetery, located in
Kensal Green,
London,
England, was incorporated in
1832 by The General Cemetery Company, and is the oldest of the '
Magnificent Seven' cemeteries still in operation. It is the only
Victorian cemetery established by an act of the
British Parliament with a mandate that its bodies 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 remains a memorial park. The General Cemetery Company constructed and runs the West London Crematorium within the grounds of Kensal Green Cemetery. More cremations than earth interments take place these days.
Whilst borrowing from the ideals established at
Père Lachaise in Paris some years before, the Kensal Green Cemetery project was used as a design and management basis for many cemetery projects throughout the British Empire of the time. In Australia for example
The Necropolis at
Brookwood 1868 and Picturesque
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. A garden style cemetery, Kensal Green is the oldest of seven private Victorian cemeteries located in the outskirts of London. Adjacent to Kensal Green is
St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery.
Interred at Kensal Green is Marigold Frances Churchill, the daughter of
Sir Winston Churchill and Lady Clementine who died from a fever in 1921 at age three. Also interred are two children of King
George III of the United Kingdom. They are
Princess Sophia, who desired to be buried at Kensal Green instead of
Windsor Castle, to be near her brother the
Duke of Sussex and Prince
Augustus Frederick,
Duke of Sussex, who also chose Kensal Green over
Windsor Castle. Some of the other notable interred here are:
*
Henry Ainley (1879-1945), actor
*
Thomas Allom, artist and architect
*
Charles Babbage, mathematician, computer scientist
*
James Barry (1795â€"1865), surgeon
*
George Birkbeck, doctor, academic and adult education pioneer
*
Charles Blondin, acrobat, tightrope-walker
*
Louis de la Bourdonnais, chess master
*
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, engineer
*
Marc Isambard Brunel, engineer
*
Wilkie Collins, author
*
Thomas Hood, poet, humorist, journalist
*
Philip Hardwick (1792-1870), architect
*
Philip Charles Hardwick (1822-1892), architect
*
Fanny Kemble, actor, poet
*
Alexander McDonnell, chess master
*
Kitty Melrose, actress
*
Ras Andargachew Messai (1902-1981),
Ethiopian ruler
*
John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877), American historian
*
Cuthbert Ottaway (1850-1878), first
England international football captain
*
Robert Owen (memorial) (1771-1858), industrialist and major social reformer
*John Shaw Junior, architect (1803-1870) Brother in law of Philip Hardwick listed above
*Sir
William Siemens (1823–1883), industrialist
*
William Henry Smith, businessman
*
William Makepeace Thackeray, writer
*
Therese Tietjens, famous opera singer
*
Anthony Trollope, novelist
*
William Vincent Wallace (1812-1865), composer
*
John William Waterhouse (1849-1917), artist
At the centre is All Souls' Chapel, containing several tombs as well. There is also a
catacomb currently not maintained.
See also:
List of famous cemeteries*
Google Map*
Friends of the Cemetery*
54 high-quality Kensal Green photos (London Cemetery Project): no caption
*
Tourist webpage: a dozen medium-quality photos and some trivia
*
Official Siobhan Fahey website: navigable chapel based on about 50 real photos of the chapel, but where there are doors, some are replaced with sky, others with information pages about Fahey. Nevertheless, it offers high quality photos of the interior of the chapel unfound elsewhere on-line. (See also
Siobhan Fahey.)
*
London's Victorian Garden Cemeteries*
Website in memory of the Hardwick & Shaw family of London.
