Everything about Brompton Cemetery totally explained
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.
It 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").
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), reached by long colonnades, and flanked by catacombs. The chapel is dated 1839.
Beatrix Potter, who lived in
The Boltons nearby, took the names of many of her animal characters from tombstones in the cemetery and it's 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.
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 impressario
- 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
- William Cargill - politician and founder of Otago, New Zealand
- 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
- 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 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
- Long Wolf - Sioux Indian chief
- 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
- Percy Sinclair Pilcher - Inventor and pioneering aviator
- 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 - anaesthesiologist and epidemiologist, demonstrated the link between cholera and infected water
- 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, 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
Further Information
Get more info on 'Brompton Cemetery'.
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