1 121 Westminster Bridge Road

We start at a train station that most people don’t even know exists. You can’t go in to the station anymore, but the frontage of the building is still intact. 

It’s a grand building – red bricks, fine stonework and a large archway at street level. Peer in through the archway and you’ll spot elegant Victorian tilework on the walls, and a pair of handsome lamps flanking a door to the left. Look up at the front of the building, and you’ll see a plain band of stone just below the four pillars at first-floor height. Behind that new strip of stone are two words, now hidden from sight: LONDON NECROPOLIS.

You’re standing in front of the grand solution to the ‘corpse crisis’. This is the First Class entrance for mourners accessing the London Necropolis Railway.

This railway company was created exclusively to transport corpses (and grieving loved ones) out to a cemetery in Surrey large enough to give a decent burial to all of London’s dead, without ever running out of space. More than 200,000 bodies began their journey to the ‘largest and most beautiful’ cemetery in Great Britain from this very spot.  

Images:

Old frontage of Necropolis Railway station © Mary-Ann Ochota

First class passenger entrance © Mary-Ann Ochota

2 Newnham Terrace

Down this unassuming dead-end street is an overlooked part of London’s history…

Amongst the signage of modern businesses, look out for the large, white-painted, cast-iron pillars. They are supporting a level above your head. This upper level was the platform from which coffins and mourners were loaded on to the Necropolis Railway trains. The street level, where you’re standing, was once home to waiting rooms for grieving families and railway storage yards.

The first funeral train ran on 13^th November 1854, and continued to run for nearly 90 years until the station was bombed on 17^th April 1941 during World War Two. After the war, the Necropolis Railway was never repaired, leaving this section stranded above the street, mostly forgotten.  

Although the Necropolis Railway had its own station entrance (at 121 Westminster Bridge Road), the funeral trains would then join the regular London-Woking mainline at a junction just outside Waterloo station. That’s where our journey continues. 

Images:

Pillars supporting platform of the old Necropolis Railway © Mary-Ann Ochota

The Necropolis Railway after WW2 bombing

3 On the train

Today’s modern commuter trains run along the same line as the Necropolis trains did. Imagine what it might have been like for the groups of mourners who escorted their loved ones on their final journey. Brookwood is more than 25 miles (40km) from central London, and for the poorer people living in the large, sprawling, dirty metropolis of the 1800s, this may have been one of the few times they were able to head into the countryside.

Some people opposed the Necropolis railway scheme. They thought that the noise and speed of the railway was incompatible with a solemn funeral occasion and that it would be upsetting for upper-class mourners to share a train with paupers and less respectable folk heading out to bury their dead. There was also concern that piles of bodies loaded on trains might cause additional public health risks.

Advocates of the scheme thought that the railway journey might help mourners come to terms with the death of a loved one, and that they’d find solace in the green landscapes they passed through en route. Careful management of the trains would mean that different ‘types’ of people – both living and dead – would be kept appropriately separate. Victorian Britain was a very hierarchical society. 

Images:

A third class ticket to Brookwood

The leafy, green landscapes of Brookwood  © Scott Wylie, Flickr CC

4 Cemetery branch line

On the right of the footpath just outside the station building, see if you can spot a short stretch of railway track behind a mesh fence.

It commemorates the old Brookwood Cemetery branch line, which ran from the mainline station (where you just got off) to two stations within the cemetery. The funeral trains from Waterloo would first stop at Brookwood, then be shunted backwards to reach the cemetery stations – the North Station for Non-Conformists, the South Station for Anglicans. 

Non-conformists were those who did not belong to the established church including Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and Quakers.

Images:

Welcome to Brookwood © Mary-Ann Ochota

Railway Avenue and gold-topped mausoleum © Mary-Ann Ochota

5 Long Avenue, Brookwood Cemetery

“An area of ground so distant as to be beyond any possible future extension of the Capital…a last home and bed of rest where the ashes of the high and low, the mighty and the weak, the learned and the ignorant, the wicked and the good, the idle and the industrious, in one vast co-mingled heap may repose together.” Sir Richard Broun (originator of the London Necropolis Railway) 

The plan was to make Brookwood feel like a place of perpetual life, so evergreen plants were selected, including the giant sequoia and redwood trees, rhododendron, azalea and magnolia.When it was first opened to the public in 1854, Brookwood was the largest cemetery in the world, with space to accommodate 5.8 million individual graves in a single layer, and ultimately upwards of 28 million people including family graves and pauper graves.

The original hopes for Brookwood as London’s premier burial ground were never fully realised. Financial and political mismanagement meant the London Necropolis Company struggled from the beginning, and demand wasn’t as high as forecast – investors hoped for 50,000 burials a year, yet only 235,000 people have been buried at Brookwood so far. Over the years, areas of the cemetery were neglected and have only recently been cleared and restored.

Do you think it gives the Necropolis a feel of rural serenity, or a spooky otherworldliness?

The Northern section of the cemetery was for Non-Conformist Christians as well as Jews, Catholics, Parsees and other specific groups of people. You’ll find plots dedicated to actors (the cemetery was open on Sundays, which meant that actors could attend a funeral without missing a performance), the Oddfellows Friendly Society and the Parsee Zoroastrian burial ground.

Look out for Muslim burial areas, where cut flowers are forbidden and heaped earth is left uncovered above the grave (for many Muslims, erecting any structure over a grave is considered to be forbidden by God). Keep an eye out too for intricate Victorian and Edwardian Christian headstones depicting angels, Celtic patterned crosses and leaded lettering. Please bear in mind this is a place of reverence for many people, and move around the cemetery appropriately. 

Images:

Redwoods and gravestones © Mary-Ann Ochota

Angel statue © Will Jackson, Flickr CCL

6 Grassy fields either side of Railway Avenue

As you walk through Brookwood, you’ll notice how empty areas of it seem, compared to other cemeteries. This is due to two things – firstly, far fewer people were buried here than was initially planned, secondly, around two thirds of the burials at Brookwood are unmarked graves. These were ‘Third Class’ or pauper burials, paid for by the parishes of London. Each body was laid to rest in an individual grave, but the family were not entitled to erect any memorials.

If you look out across a seemingly empty part of the cemetery, but notice that it’s quite uneven, it’s likely that it has unmarked graves below, and is the resting place of thousands of poor Londoners. Look out too for patches of nettles – they grow on disturbed soil with high levels of decomposed organic material (like corpses).

Images:

Engraving showing the layout of Brookwood cemetery

Bumpy grass showing unmarked graves © Mary-Ann Ochota

7 Monastery

This is the church of St Edward the Martyr. St Edward was an Anglo-Saxon king of England who became king at the age of sixteen, but was murdered three years later. His remains were buried at Shaftesbury Abbey, Dorset in the 11^th Century, and remained there until the 1930s when they were rediscovered during an archaeological dig. The site's owner insisted that his remains be recognised as holy relics, that a shrine be built, and the Saint’s feast day celebrated. The Russian Orthodox Church honoured these terms, and the bones were enshrined here in 1984.

If the church door is locked, you can ring the bell and ask to visit. The walls are adorned with icons of saints, twinkling gold in the low light. You might be able to smell the incense that’s burned during the daily services. This style of Christian worship is probably the most similar to the religious practices that would have been familiar to St Edward himself when he was alive. Nowadays, prayers in Bulgarian, Romanian, English, Greek, Ukrainian and Russian are incorporated into each service, reflecting the nationalities of the people who come here to worship. 

Behind the church on the left-hand side are the remains of the South Station of the Necropolis Railway, which was originally used for Anglican burials and mourners. Please respect the request asking visitors not to go beyond the marked signs.

With modern cemeteries across Britain once again filling up, we face the challenge of what to do with the bodies. Councils still conduct ‘public health funerals’, the modern equivalent of a Parish Pauper’s burial. Over 2,000 take place every year and this number is predicted to rise as more people die alone and in poverty. 

Whilst Brookwood shines a light on Victorian attitudes to life, death and social class – it might also help us understand some of our contemporary attitudes too. 

Images:

St Eward the Martyr © Wikimedia Commons

Icons inside the church © Mary-Ann Ochota

Remains of the South Station branch line © Mary-Ann Ochota

Trail written and photgraphed by Mary-Ann Ochota. Mary-Ann is a broadcaster, anthropologist and author. Her most recent book is Hidden Histories: A spotters guide to the British landscape.