Kensal Green Cemetery

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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. Inspired by the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and founded in 1833 by the barrister George Frederick Carden, Kensal Green Cemetery comprises of 72 acres of beautiful grounds including two conservation areas and an adjoining canal. Kensal Green Cemetery is home to 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 have provided a haven in the heart London for over 170 years for its inhabitants 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]

Contents

[edit] Location

The cemetery is located in the London Borough of Kensington & Chelsea and the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, and its main entrance is located on Harrow Road (near 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. The cemetery lies between Harrow Road and the Grand Union Canal.

[edit] 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 and is the first and therefore oldest of the 'Magnificent Seven' cemeteries. 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 and there is a hydraulic catafalque for lowering coffins into the catacomb. [4]

The cemetery received its first funeral in January 1833, and it is still in operation today with burials and cremations taking place daily. Although more cremations than earth interments take place these days. 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 remains a memorial park. The General Cemetery Company constructed and runs the West London Crematorium within the grounds of Kensal Green Cemetery.

Whilst 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. A garden style cemetery, Kensal Green is the oldest of seven private Victorian cemeteries located in the outskirts of London. Adjacent to Kensal Green Cemetery is St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery.

Many monuments, particularly the larger ones, lean precariously as they have settled over time on the underlying London clay.

[edit] 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 1997.

[edit] 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 interments. 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]

[edit] Notable burials

Monuments and chapel at Kensal Green 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 (the monument by Eric Gill was listed Grade II in 2001).

[edit] Other notable burials

[edit] Royal burials

[edit] Notable Cremation

[edit] See also

[edit] 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. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Rolling_English_Road. 
  3. ^ Cemeteries Act 1832
  4. ^ http://www.kensalgreencemetery.com/cemetery/index4.html
  5. ^ http://www.kensalgreen.co.uk/
  6. ^ Remembering Frederick Scott Archer BBC article, 27 April 2010
  7. ^  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." 

[edit] 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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