Brompton Cemetery, Kensington & Chelsea, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest:   

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

The West of London & Westminster Cemetery Company was formed in 1836 when an Act of Parliament was passed for establishing cemeteries for the 'Interment of the Dead, Northward, Southward and Eastward of the Metropolis'. The company was authorised to develop a c 16ha cemetery to the west of London. The site proposed for this cemetery was surrounded by fields and market gardens and was bordered to the west by the Kensington Canal. The majority of the land, which belonged to Lord Kensington, was acquired by August 1839. An additional c 2ha on the south side was bought from the Equitable Gas Company. The land, formerly the site of brickworks and market gardens, was flat and lacked the varied topography of Highgate (qv) and Nunhead (qv) Cemeteries. It was described as 'having no natural attraction whatever ... not a tree and scarcely a shrub adorn the place' (Collinson 1840). The cemetery company appointed Stephen Geary (1797-1854), designer of Highgate Cemetery and founder of the London Cemetery Company, as company architect in 1837. David Ramsay, a nurseryman and contractor who had worked for Geary at Highgate, was the landscape gardener. Together they submitted designs and tenders for the proposed cemetery but in 1838 the Board of Directors decided to hold a public competition. This was won by Benjamin Baud (1807-75), who had previously assisted Sir Jeffrey Wyatville (1766-1840) with improvements to Windsor Castle (qv) and had submitted unsuccessful designs for the new Houses of Parliament in 1835. To overcome the constraints of the site his scheme relied on architectural drama for its impact. Brompton was a classical conception with dramatic vistas and spaces, in a rural setting. In addition to Baud the company employed Issac Finnemore, a landscape gardener, and J C Loudon as a consultant for laying out the grounds; plants and trees were supplied by Smith's of Islington and Buchanan and Olroyd of Cambridge. Building work started in 1839 and the cemetery was consecrated in June 1840, the first burial taking place a few weeks later. The building works and the landscaping were far from complete however and the North Lodge had to be used as a temporary chapel, the Anglian Chapel being eventually completed in 1842. Baud's extravagant ideas and a slow initial uptake of burial plots appears to have led the directors into financial difficulties. Baud's designs were therefore altered, building specifications were skimped, and serious faults appeared in the catacombs; in 1843 Baud was dismissed.

Meanwhile the principle of commercial cemeteries was being debated by Parliament and in 1850 the Metropolitan Interments Act was passed granting the Government powers to purchase private cemeteries. Although the Act was repealed two years later, Brompton, at the insistence of the directors, was compulsorily purchased by the Board of Health at less than half the price asked for by the company. In 1854 the final meeting of the Board of Directors was held and the company was wound up.

By 1939 155,500 interments had taken place and closure of the cemetery was being considered. During the Second World War bombs damaged part of the western wall catacombs and the north-west area by West Brompton station. In 1970 the Department of the Environment took over the administration and maintenance of the site from the former Ministry of Works and by 1993 care had passed to the Royal Parks Agency. In 1986 the Friends of Brompton Cemetery was formed, aiming, among other things, to create a nature reserve and to provide for quiet recreation. The site remains (1999) open for burials and is administered by the Royal Parks Agency.