Brompton Cemetery

Brompton Cemetery is located near Earl's Court in West Brompton, a part of the Borough of Kensington & Chelsea in west London, England. It is managed by The Royal Parks and is one of the Magnificent Seven. Established by Act of Parliament, it opened in 1840 and was originally known as the West of London and Westminster Cemetery. While the cemetery is still open for occasional new burials, today more people use it as a public park than as a place for mourning the dead.

History

The cemetery was opened as part of an initiative in the mid-19th century to provide seven large, modern cemeteries (sometimes called the 'Magnificent Seven') in a ring around the edge of London of which Highgate Cemetery was another example. The inner city cemeteries, mostly the graveyards attached to individual churches, had long been unable to cope with the number of burials and were seen as a hazard to health and an undignified way to treat the dead.

Brompton Cemetery was designed by Benjamin Baud and has at its centre a modest domed chapel (in the style of the basilica of St. Peter's in Rome) at it southern end, reached by long colonnades, and flanked by catacombs. The chapel is dated 1839. The site, previously market gardens, was bought from Lord Kensington and is 39 acres in area. The cemetery is designed to give the feel of a large open air cathedral. It is rectangular in shape with the north end pointing to the northwest and the south end to the southeast. It has a central “nave” which runs from Old Brompton Road towards the central colonnade and chapel. Below the colonnades are catacombs which were originally conceived as a cheaper alternative burial to having a plot in the grounds of the cemetery. Unfortunately, the catacombs were not a success and only about 500 of the many thousands of places in them were sold. There is also an entrance on the south side from the Fulham Road. The Metropolitan Interments Act 1850 gave the government powers to purchase commercial cemeteries. The shareholders of the cemetery were relieved to be able to sell their shares as the cost of building the cemetery had over run and they had seen little return on their investment.

It is listed as Grade II* in the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England and five of the individual monuments are listed as Grade II [ Leaflet entitled “Brompton Cemetery” issued by the Friends of Brompton Cemetery ] .

Beatrix Potter, who lived in "The Boltons" nearby, took the names of many of her animal characters from tombstones in the cemetery and it is said that Mr. McGregor's walled garden was based on the colonnades. Names on headstones included Mr. Nutkins, Mr. McGregor, a Tod (with that unusual single 'd' spelling), Jeremiah Fisher, Tommy Brock - and even a Peter Rabbett.

Brompton Cemetery has featured in a number of films, including "The Wisdom of Crocodiles" (starring Jude Law), "Crush" (Imelda Staunton and Andie MacDowell) and "Johnny English" (starring Rowan Atkinson); as well as being used as a location by photographers such as Bruce Weber (see "The Chop Suey Club").

Famous occupants

Famous occupants of the cemetery include:
* Tomasz Arciszewski - Polish socialist politician
* William Edward Ayrton - British physicist
* Samuel Baker - Explorer
* Sir Squire Bancroft - actor and theatre impresario
* Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh - Russian Orthodox émigré metropolitan archbishop and author
* Joseph Bonomi the Younger - sculptor, artist, Egyptologist and museum curator
* George Borrow - author, traveller and linguist
* Fanny Brawne - John Keats' muse
* Sir James Browne - engineer
* Francis Trevelyan Buckland - zoologist
* Henry James Byron - actor and dramatist
* William Martin Cafe - Indian Mutiny hero and VC recipient
* Marchesa Luisa Casati - infamous Italian muse, eccentric and patron of the arts
* John Graham Chambers - founder of the Amateur Athletic Association
* Henry Cole - founder of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal College of Music, the 1851 Great Exhibition and inventor of the Christmas card
* Robert Coombes - champion professional sculler
* Joseph Thomas Clover - pioneer of anaesthesia
* William Crookes - chemist and physicist
* Samuel Cunard - founder of the Cunard Line
* Charles Fremantle - founded the Swan River Colony (Western Australia)
* John William Godward - painter
* George Godwin - architect, journalist, and editor of The Builder magazine
* George Goldie - "founded" Nigeria
* Brian Glover - television and film actor
* Thomas Hancock, VC - Cpl 9th Lancers Indian Mutiny - unmarked
* Geraldine Jewsbury - writer
* William Claude Kirby - first chairman of Chelsea Football Club
* Constant Lambert - composer and conductor
* Percy E. Lambert - racing car driver
* Nat Langham - middleweight bare-knuckle fighter
* Henry Augustus Mears - founder of Chelsea Football Club
* Lionel Monckton – composer of Edwardian Musical Comedies
* Henrietta Moraes - writer, artist's model and muse to Francis Bacon
* Roderick Murchison - geologist, originator of the Silurian system
* Adelaide Neilson - English actress
* Emmeline Pankhurst - Britain's leading suffragette
* Sir John Lysaght Pennefather - British General and Knight of the Order of the Bath
* Percy Sinclair Pilcher - Inventor and pioneering aviator
* Valentine Cameron Prinsep - Pre-Raphaelite painter
* Blanche Roosevelt - American opera singer and author
* Tim Rose - American singer-songwriter
* William Howard Russell - Journalist and war correspondent for The Times
* Samuel Smiles - biographer and inventor of "self-help"
* John Snow - anaesthetist and epidemiologist, who demonstrated the link between cholera and infected water, and gave chloroform to Queen Victoria
* Fred Sullivan, Thomas Sullivan and Mary Clementina Sullivan - the brother, father and mother of Arthur Sullivan, composer of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. It was originally planned that Arthur would also be buried there until Queen Victoria insisted on his interment in St Paul's Cathedral.
* Richard Tauber - operatic tenor
* Ernest Thesiger - character actor in such films as "The Old Dark House" and "Bride of Frankenstein"
* Frederic Thesiger, 1st Baron Chelmsford - jurist and statesman
* Brandon Thomas - author of Charley's Aunt
* Frederic Augustus Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford - Commander-in-Chief in the Zulu War
* Charles Blacker Vignoles - an influential early railway engineer, and inventor of the Vignoles rail
* Richard Wadeson - VC recipient
* Edward Wadsworth - artist
* Thomas Attwood Walmisley - composer and organist.
* Sir Robert Warburton - Anglo-Indian soldier and administrator
* Reginald Alexander John Warneford - VC recipient
* Sir Philip Watts - British naval architect, designer of the Elswick cruiser and the HMS Dreadnought.
* Sir Andrew Scott Waugh - British army officer and surveyor, who named the highest mountain in the world after Sir George Everest
* Benjamin Nottingham Webster - actor, theatre manager and playwright.
* Sir Thomas Spencer Wells - surgeon to Queen Victoria, medical professor and president of the Royal College of Surgeons
* Sir William Fenwick Williams - general, pasha and governor
* John Wisden - cricketer and founder of "Wisden Cricketers' Almanack"
* Bennet Woodcroft - textile manufacturer, industrial archaeologist, pioneer of marine propulsion, prime mover in patent reform and the first clerk to the commissioners of patents
* Thomas Wright - antiquarian and writer
* Johannes Zukertort - chess master

The American Sioux Indian chief, Long Wolf, a veteran of the Sioux wars was buried here on June 13, 1892 having died age 59 of bronchial pneumonia while taking part in the European tour of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. He shared the grave with a 17 month old Indian girl named Star Ghost Dog believed to have fallen from her mother's arms while on horseback. 105 years later a British woman named Elizabeth Knight traced his family and campaigned with them to have his remains returned to the land of his birth. In 1997, Chief Long Wolf was finally moved to a new plot in the Wolf Creek Community Cemetery (ancestral burial ground of the Oglala Sioux tribe) at Pine Ridge, South Dakota.His great grandson John Black Feather said "Back then, they had burials at sea, they did ask his wife if she wanted to take him home and she figured that as soon as they hit the water they would throw him overboard, so that's why they left him here." [http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2005/05/10/brompton_cemetery_feature.shtml] [http://cgi.cnn.com/WORLD/9709/25/chief.long.wolf/] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1997/05/05/nwol05.html]

ee also

*List of famous cemeteries
*Royal Parks of London

References

Further reading

* Culbertson, Judi & Tom Randall, "Permanent Londoners: An Illustrated Guide to the Cemeteries of London". Post Mills, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1991.

External links

* [http://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/brompton_cemetery/about.cfm Brompton Cemetery] (Royal Parks website)
* [http://www.brompton.darkdestiny.co.uk/ Recent photos and information on Brompton Cemetery]