Brookwood Cemetery, (also known as Woking Necropolis, Brookwood Necropolis and Necropolis Cemetery), Woking, England

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

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

By the mid-19th century the burial of London's dead had become a serious problem and J C Loudon (1783-1843) and others suggested the establishment of a large cemetery outside the city. In 1852 the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company was established and an Act of Parliament was passed which allowed them to purchase 2268 acres (about 945 hectares) of heathland near Woking from Lord Onslow for the purpose of providing a cemetery. It is unlikely that the Company ever imagined a cemetery of that size, the establishment of the cemetery providing a means of acquiring a large area of land at reduced cost for speculative building. Work began immediately on an area of about 350 acres (145 hectares) at Brookwood on the western extremity of the parish. There was no settlement at that time in the area, which was on the least desirable land, and it was not until the 1880s that the village of Brookwood developed. The 1852 Act required the Company to build an eight foot (2.5 metres) high wall around the site and this was done during the first phase of work, suggesting they had no intention of expanding beyond the initial roughly 350 acres. The Company brought a succession of Bills before Parliament to allow them to sell the 'surplus' land until virtually the whole of the area was sold apart from the land to the east of the cemetery.

The design was probably the work of the Company's architect, Henry Abraham, although it has also been attributed to William Tite and Sydney Smirke (Pevsner et al 1971). The buildings were designed by William Tite (1798-1873) and the detailed landscaping and extensive evergreen planting scheme was carried out by the local nurseryman Robert Donald, of Goldsworth, an associate of Loudon (Crosby 1982). Work started immediately and the southern half of the cemetery, known initially as Woking Necropolis, was consecrated on 9 November 1854 by the Bishop of Winchester, the first burial taking place on 13 November. Towards the end of the century, the cemetery was being referred to variously as the Brookwood Necropolis, Brookwood Cemetery, or Necropolis Cemetery, but by the early 20th century the name Brookwood Cemetery was established. It was a commercial enterprise, by far the most ambitious of the joint stock cemeteries and one of the last, as public cemeteries funded by public money started to appear soon after its inception. The cemetery was divided by paths and avenues into separate 'grounds' which were allotted to different London parishes, and to various religious denominations, as it catered for all classes and faiths. Accommodating the dead from south and central London, it was initially heavily used, its peak year being 1866 when 3842 burials took place. After 1880, however, as other cemeteries opened nearer London, the numbers began to fall. The rise in popularity of cremation after 1914 further reduced demand, although Woking's own crematorium had been established in 1889. By the end of 1939, there had been 201,000 burials; the number is now (1990s) over 300,000. In 1950 an area known as the Glades of Remembrance was opened to receive cremated remains. The site remains (2009) in use as a working cemetery.

In 1917 a large new military cemetery was laid out north of Cemetery Pales, on vacant land on the west boundary of the site; this was later extended to cater for Second World War dead. The Military Cemetery is owned by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and is administered from a building situated on the western edge of the site. It is now (1999) closed for burials.