In 1851 all of the graveyards in London closed their doors for further burial due to overcrowding. As a result, several companies established themselves as alternatives, providing burial services located outside of London in the surrounding suburbs. The largest corporation offering burial services was the London Necropolis Company. Established in 1852 by an Act of Parliament as a direct response to the closure of London’s graveyards, the company intended to establish a single cemetery large enough to accommodate all of London’s burials.
Brookwood Cemetery
The cemetery opened in 1854, and at the time was the largest cemetery in the world. The LNC offered three tiers of funerals. A first class funeral cost £2 10s, and allowed the family to select the burial plot and included the right to erect a permanent memorial. Second class burials cost £1, and allowed some control over the plot location. The right to erect a memorial cost an extra 10s. Third class funerals were reserved for those buried at the expense of the parish. While these burials had none of the frills of the higher tier options, Brookwood still afforded more dignity for poorer burials, as unlike all other graveyards at the time, the LNC did not use mass graves for the poor.
The London Necropolis Railway
The development of Britain’s railways system meant that bodies could now be transported over longer distances. The LNC built the London Necropolis Railway station next to Waterloo station in central London, and ran a dedicated railway line solely for funeral services.
There were two stations at the other end of the line. The North station was for non-conformists (those who didn’t want an Anglican burial) and the South station was for Anglicans. Both the station waiting rooms and the train themselves were segregated by both religion and class to prevent both mourners and cadavers from different social backgrounds from mixing.
In 1941 the railway terminus in London was all but destroyed during an air-raid. It was decided that it was not financially viable to rebuild the station, and the London Necropolis Railway was abandoned. After the end of the war the remaining parts of the London station were sold. The stations at Brookwood remained open as refreshment kiosks for a few years afterwards but were subsequently demolished.
The First Cremations
In 1878 the Cremation Society of Great Britain bought an isolated piece of the LNC’s Brookwood land and built Woking Crematorium on the site. However, it was not until 1884 that cremation of human remains was formally declared legal in Great Britain. Cremation was still not a common practice in Britain, as most people preferred a traditional burial. Until 1945 the practice remained unusual and relatively expensive. Woking crematorium was the only operational crematorium in the country, and the business from wealthy patrons provided an important line of income that helped to make up for the lack of burials.
End of the Line
The company was never as successful as had been hoped. Even though the LNC had been granted a monopoly on London burials, they still fell woefully short of their estimates. The site had been planned to accommodate 5 million burials – even by 1994, 150 years after its establishment, Brookwood had only conducted 231,730.
While it was never as successful as planned, the London Necropolis Company had a significant impact on the funeral industry, and the principles established by the LNC influenced the design of many other cemeteries worldwide. Brookwood cemetery today is a Grade I listed site, and is home to a number of notable graves and memorials.