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West Norwood Cemetery
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West Norwood Cemetery is a cemetery in West Norwood in the London Borough of Lambeth in London, England.
By 2000 there had been 164,000 burials in 42,000 plots, plus 34,000 cremations and several thousand interments in its catacombs (see also Catacombs of London).
The cemetery features 66 Grade II and Grade II* listed buildings and structures, including a dedicated Greek Orthodox section with 17 listed mausoleums and monuments. It is one of the Magnificent Seven metropolitan lawn cemeteries of the Victorian era, and its extensive Gothic Revival architecture qualifies it as one of the significant cemeteries in Europe.
Lambeth have recognised it as a site of nature conservation value within the Borough in addition to its outstanding value as a site of national historic and cultural interest.
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Encyclopedia
West Norwood Cemetery is a cemetery in West Norwood in the London Borough of Lambeth in London, England.
By 2000 there had been 164,000 burials in 42,000 plots, plus 34,000 cremations and several thousand interments in its catacombs (see also Catacombs of London).
The cemetery features 66 Grade II and Grade II* listed buildings and structures, including a dedicated Greek Orthodox section with 17 listed mausoleums and monuments. It is one of the Magnificent Seven metropolitan lawn cemeteries of the Victorian era, and its extensive Gothic Revival architecture qualifies it as one of the significant cemeteries in Europe.
Lambeth have recognised it as a site of nature conservation value within the Borough in addition to its outstanding value as a site of national historic and cultural interest. English Heritage have placed it on the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens, describing it as the first all-Gothic cemetery.
Although the crematorium is open for normal services all the burial plots have been allocated and hence it is closed to new burials, under current burial legislation.
Site
The main entrance is where Norwood Road forks into Norwood High Street and Knights' Hill.
The entrance gate is set within railings, recently repainted a historically accurate brown. Railings were kept high in order to dispel fears of body snatchers.
There is second entrance nearby, normally kept locked, which is close to West Norwood railway station. Special funereal services could unload at the side entrance of the railway station in order to make the short journey down the hill to this entrance.
A War Memorial stands between the main gate and the inner gate. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission lists 136 Commonwealth burials of the Great War and 52 of World War II, plus 18 cremations. There is also 1 Belgian war burial here. There are also many Anglo-Indian Army officers buried in various parts of the cemetery, and Spencer John Bent, Victoria Cross recipient for action in World War I commemorated in a rose garden.
It is a mixture of cleared, manicured, and mature landscaping, and includes a crematorium, memorial gardens, columbarium, recordia, chapel, vaults and crypts on top of a gently rolling hill, with views across South London. The plots on the central higher ground were originally sold as prime locations and are the site of some of the grander Anglican monuments and mausoleums, while the Greek Orthodox cemetery in the North East contains an incredible density of neoclassical architecture. Many of these mausolea are listed, such as the Grade II mausoleum for Sir Henry Doulton's family, constructed appropriately of pottery and terrcotta. As a contrast, just a few yards to the west of the crematorium is the very simple headstone to Isabella Mary Mayson Beeton, aka Mrs Beeton, the Victorian cookery writer.
History
In 1830 George Frederick Carden, editor of The Penny Magazine, successfully petitioned Parliament about the parlous state of London's over-full church burial yards. In response they passed a number of laws that effectively halted burials in London's churchyards, moving them 'to places where they would be less prejudicial to the health of the inhabitants'.
In 1836 a specific Parliamentary statute enabled the South Metropolitan Cemetery Company to purchase land from the estate of the late Lord Thurlow in what was then called Lower Norwood and create the second of the 'Magnificent Seven' cemeteries.
Architect William Tite was a director of the cemetery company and designed the landscaping, some monuments, and was eventually interred there himself.
The new cemetery was consecrated by the Bishop of Winchester on 7 December 1837, receiving its first burial soon after, and was the first cemetery in the UK to be designed in the new Gothic style. It offered a rural setting in open countryside, as it lay outside London at that time. Its design and location attracted the attention of wealthy - and not so wealthy - Victorians, who commissioned many fine mausoleums and memorials for their burial plots and vaults.
The cemetery was built on the site of the ancient Great North Wood, from which Norwood took its name. Although many trees had been cleared, a number of mature specimens were included in Tite's original landscaping. A tree survey of the cemetery in 2005 identified one oak which is thought to date from 1540-1640. Fourteen more oaks, a maple and an ash tree were identified that predate the foundation of the cemetery in 1836. In the first years of the cemetery's operation, these were joined by coniferous trees and evergreen holm oaks.
The site originally included two Gothic chapels at the crest of the hill, but these were badly damaged by bombing during World War II. The Dissenter's chapel was rebuilt as a Crematorium while the Episcopal chapel was levelled, to be replaced by a memorial garden over its crypt.
In 1842 a section of the cemetery was acquired by London's Greek community for a Greek Orthodox cemetery, and this soon filled with many fine monuments and large mausoleums. Grade II*-listed St Stephen's Chapel within the Greek section is attributed to architect John Oldrid Scott.
Another section in the south-east corner was acquired by St Mary-at-Hill in the City of London for its own parish burials.
Between 1978 and 1993 the cemetery achieved several levels of official recognition by being included in the West Norwood Conservation Area, while the entrance arch, the fine railings and 64 monuments were listed as Grade II and II* - more listed monuments than any other cemetery.
However, space for new burials ran out in the inter-war years, and, deprived of this regular source of income, the cemetery company was unable to properly afford its upkeep. Lambeth Council compulsorily purchased the cemetery in 1965, and controversially claimed ownership over existing graves. Lambeth changed some of the character of the grounds through "lawn conversion", removing at least 10,000 monuments (including some of the listed monuments) and restarted new burials by re-using plots.
Southwark Diocesan Consistory Court cases in 1991 and 1995 found this to be illegal and brought about the cessation of new burials, and forced the restoration of a handful of the damaged or removed monuments. In addition it required Lambeth to publish an index of cleared plots so that the current entitled owners can request restitution.
As a consequence of the courts' findings Lambeth now operates the cemetery in accordance with a scheme of management under the joint control of all interested parties that includes Lambeth, the Diocese, the local Friends of West Norwood Cemetery and conservation bodies such as English Heritage.
Notable interments
More than 200 people in the cemetery are recorded in the Dictionary of National Biography. The Friends of West Norwood Cemetery have recorded and compiled biographies for many more of these with:
- a large number of inventors, engineers, architects, and builders, such as Sir Hiram Maxim, inventor of the automatic machine gun, Sir Henry Bessemer, engineer and inventor of the famous steel process, James Henry Greathead who tunnelled much of the London Underground, William Burges and Sir William Tite, gothic architects
- many artists and entertainers, including: David Roberts, artist, William Collingwood Smith, painter, Joseph Barnby, composer and resident conductor at the Royal Albert Hall, Katti Lanner, ballet dancer, and actors E. J. Lonnen, Patsy Smart, and Mary Brough.
There are also the 'Great and the Good' of the time, such as Sir Henry Tate, sugar magnate and founder of London's Tate Gallery, Paul Julius Baron von Reuter, founder of the news agency, and the Revd. Charles Spurgeon, Baptist preacher, to name but a few.
The Cypriot and Greek diaspora is well represented, including the Ralli family, Panayis Vagliano, Rodocanachi family, and Princess Eugenie Palaeologue
Cemeteries nearby
External links
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- (London Cemetery Project)
- Description of cemetery given to Parliament by the Friends
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- incl.
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