Morbid splendour
Death seemed to present a promising financial opportunity when Brompton Cemetery opened in 1840. With 2.5 million inhabitants, London was the world’s most populous city. Its ancient graveyards were over-filled, so Parliament approved the founding of seven commercial necropolises. The West of London and Westminster Cemetery Company decided to make imposing architecture its selling point, and laid out a 600-metre-long avenue of limes leading from the north gate to elevated colonnades, extensive catacombs and a domed octagonal chapel. The protests of small shareholders prevented further extravagance, but the company had over-reached itself and was forced to sell out after twelve years of operation. The purchaser, the government, had picked up a bargain, as the burial business began to flourish.
The round lawn between the colonnades, intended as an open space, was soon covered with graves when Queen Victoria’s servant Julius Kanné was laid to rest there. Today the pomp and pathos of Victorian days – decorated Celtic crosses and mourning angels, plain upright stones and marble mausoleums with metal doors – share the cemetery with burgeoning nature, as the 20th century spurned ostentatious forms of burial. Many graves were neglected, leaving Brompton Cemetery in a state of picturesque deterioration. Weathered stones lie in deep shade. Grasses grow tall to the left and right of the central avenue, moss fills the hollows of inscriptions, ferns and brambles grow unchecked. The 16-hectare site is a biotope harbouring several families of foxes, 200 species of moths and butterflies, a great variety of birds and countless wild flowers, undisturbed by traffic and visited by few.
Info
Address Between Old Brompton Road and Fulham Road, SW10 9UG | Public Transport West Brompton (District Line) | Hours Daily from 8am, May–Aug until 8pm; March, Sept until 6pm; Feb, Oct until 5pm; Nov–Jan until 4pm. Tours May–Aug Sun 2pm from the chapel | Tip For a violent contrast to the cemetery, visit Chelsea Football Club’s stadium and museum (entrance by the west stand in Fulham Road, tours daily every 30 minutes from 10am to 5pm).
Those who appreciate overgrown, morbid decay should avoid the south-west corner of the cemetery, where the stands of the Chelsea football ground, bright and ugly, tower above graves and bushes.
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