Brompton Cemetery
The origin of Brompton Cemetery, like that of Kensal
Green, lies in the movement to remedy the shocking state
of the overcrowded graveyards of the metropolis in the
early nineteenth century. (ref. 1) Between 1832 and 1841 Parliament, in order to relieve this situation, authorized the
establishment of half a dozen cemeteries near London by
commercial companies. Of these the West London and
Westminster Cemetery Company was one, and undertook
to lay out a large new burial place at Brompton.
This company was incorporated by Act of Parliament in
1837, its self-styled 'founder' or 'projector' being Stephen
Geary, architect and civil engineer. (ref. 2) In 1830 Geary had
designed the monument to George IV at what later became
known as King's Cross, and had taken out a number of
patents for a variety of inventions. He also founded the
London Cemetery Company, which had been incorporated in 1836, and was the architect of its cemetery at
Highgate. (ref. 3) At Brompton he acted from 1837 to 1839 as
architect to the West London and Westminster Cemetery
Company. (ref. 4)
In August 1836 the provisional directors of this intended company were advertising for subscribers to a
share-capital of £50,000, (ref. 5) and in February 1837 the Bill
for the incorporation of the company was introduced in the
House of Commons. One of its sponsors was Thomas
Wakley, the medical reformer and M.P. for Finsbury, who
provided similar support for several other cemetery company bills at about this time. (ref. 6) The Bill received the royal
assent in July 1837 and nominated fourteen gentlemen to
act as directors of the company. They were authorized to
lay out a cemetery on forty acres of ground in Kensington,
build chapels and catacombs, charge fees for burials, and
raise a capital sum of not more than £100,000, of which
half was to be obtained by the sale of two thousand shares
at £25 each. In order to placate the metropolitan clergy
(some of whom, being dependent in substantial measure
for their income upon the revenues from burial fees, had
petitioned against the Bill), the Act also required the
company to pay a fee of ten shillings to the local incumbent
upon the burial of any person removed from a parish
within ten miles of the cemetery. (ref. 7)
The first meeting of the board of directors was held at
the company's offices in Essex Street, Strand, on 20 July
1837. Only five of them attended, and after the election of
the Honourable Edmund Byng as chairman, the only
significant items of business transacted were the appointment of a solicitor and a secretary, and of Stephen Geary
as architect. (ref. 8) At the next meeting only three directors
attended, and in the first few months of its existence
attendance rarely exceeded four. Of these the most important were two barristers, Francis Whitmarsh and Sir Francis Knowles, both of whom had acted as Counsel for the
company's Bill as it went through Parliament, (ref. 9) and both of
whom acted successively as deputy chairman of the board.
Half a dozen of the original directors never attended at all,
and in August 1838 Byng, who had only been present at
two meetings, resigned as chairman. By this time the
bankers Messrs. Bouverie had been appointed treasurers
to the company, and it was evidently to provide the board
with more efficient leadership that the Honourable Philip
Pleydell Bouverie, senior partner in the firm, was in the
following month elected first to the board and immediately
afterwards to the chairmanship. (ref. 10)
Efficient leadership was certainly needed, for the company at once ran into difficulties over the acquisition of the
intended site of the cemetery. By its Act of 1837 the
company was empowered to lay its cemetery out on some
forty acres of land bounded on the north by Old Brompton
Road, on the east by Honey Lane, on the south by Fulham
Road and the lands of the Equitable Gas Light Company,
and on the west by the Kensington Canal. (ref. 11) Most of this
land (reputedly over thirty-eight acres of it) belonged to
Lord Kensington, (fn. a) but a small piece at the south end,
fronting on to Fulham Road, had recently become the
property of the gas company. During the progress of the
cemetery company's Bill through Parliament the provisional directors had signed an agreement with Lord
Kensington for the purchase of his land for £20,000,
which was to be paid in seven instalments spread over
three years. But after the first three instalments had been
paid doubts arose about Lord Kensington's capacity to sell
the land, his title to it having been severely limited by the
marriage settlement which he had made for his heir in
1833. By mutual agreement the question was referred to
the Court of Chancery and was not resolved until
November 1838. The conveyance to the company was
finally made in August 1839. (ref. 13)
The purchase of land from the Equitable Gas Company
proved even more troublesome. The cemetery company
had originally intended to buy the whole of the Equitable's
four-and-a-half-acre estate, with its long frontage to
Fulham Road, but the price of £5,000 was considered to
be too high, and the directors therefore decided to try to
buy only a strip wide enough 'to make a handsome
approach' to the cemetery from Fulham Road. Unsuccessful negotiations ensued, and in 1839 a makeshift entrance
was made from the south end of Honey Lane instead. (ref. 14)
Figure 74:
Brompton Cemetery, plan. Based on the Ordnance Survey of 1949–63.
Location of some monuments mentioned in the text or illustrated:
1. Chelsea Pensioners; 2. Mrs. Pankhurst; 3. Earl of Kilmorey:
4. G. Godwin; 5. F. Leyland; 6. Val Prinsep; 7. J. Jackson; 8. Lt.
R. Warneford, V.C., 9. B. Roosevelt Macchetta; 10. R. Coombes
In 1843, however, the gas company put the whole of its
estate up for sale by auction. Two lots were bought for
£475 by John Gunter, now one of the directors of and
eventually the largest shareholder in the cemetery company, to which he soon afterwards reconveyed them for the
same price. An adequate entrance from Fulham Road was
thus at last obtained. (ref. 15)
Until possession of Lord Kensington's land was
obtained little could be done towards forming the cemetery. In November 1837 David Ramsay, a nurseryman of
Brompton, was appointed 'landscape gardener and contractor', but he does not seem to have immediately been
given any work to do; (ref. 16) and in March 1838 one shareholder, when pressed to pay the first call on the shares for
which he had subscribed, complained that 'although a
considerable time has elapsed since the passing of the Act,
there are no visible signs of any proceedings to carry it into
execution.' By this time the company was already 'considerably in Debt', a special board meeting was needed to
discuss ways of 'getting rid of the remaining Shares', and
by the end of 1838 only two of the original directors still
bothered to attend meetings with any regularity. (ref. 17) This
depressing start to its career was certainly one reason for
the company's endemic financial problems.
In June 1838, when possession of Lord Kensington's
land was (wrongly) thought to be imminent, the directors
decided to hold a public competition for designs for the
layout of and intended buildings in the cemetery, and
offered a first prize of one hundred guineas. Stephen
Geary, the company's architect, had already prepared
designs, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy at about
this time, and they were specifically stated to be eligible for
the competition. (ref. 18) But when in September 1838 the
directors serving on a special 'Committee of Taste'
examined all the designs submitted, they awarded the first
premium to an entry marked 'Windsor', which proved to
be by Benjamin B. Baud. The second premium was won
by Henry E. Kendall and Thomas Allom, and the third by
Frederick Sang. (ref. 19)
Baud had been one of Sir Jeffry Wyatville's assistants in
the rebuilding of Windsor Castle, where in 1824 George
IV had authorized Wyatville to adopt the word 'Windsor'
as his motto. Brompton Cemetery seems to have been
Baud's only important independent work, and when he
died in 1875, aged sixty-nine, a correspondent of The
Building News wrote that he was 'now almost forgotten in
the profession.' (ref. 20)
After some 'consultation with Practical Men' (from the
evidence of the company's minutes, probably the architect
John Shaw the younger), a full meeting of the directors
confirmed the Committee of Taste's award of the first
premium to Baud. (ref. 21) Geary's services as architect to the
company were therefore no longer required, and in
January 1839 he was told that his appointment would be
cancelled unless he tendered his resignation. (ref. 22) He did
so, but soon afterwards he claimed compensation of £498
as the 'Projector of the Company', and when this was
refused he took the matter to court. Ultimately he seems to
have been paid a very much smaller sum. (ref. 23)
In February 1839 Baud succeeded Geary as architect to
the company, but there seems to have been some doubt
about his capacity, for the directors decided to inquire
from Wyatville 'as to the competency of Mr. Baud' to carry
out the works now projected. Yet despite these reservations
the directors also decided at the same meeting 'to adopt the
General Design of Mr. Baud in its main elements and order
of architecture . . . subject to any modifications in detail or
extent that may seem expedient'; and shortly afterwards he
was instructed to prepare estimates for a portion of his
plans, the cost not to exceed £30,000. (ref. 24)
This first stage of building comprised the wall which
was to enclose the whole cemetery and the lodge at the
main entrance on the north side. Although the question of
Lord Kensington's title to the site had been settled in
November 1838, further disputes ensued about the precise
acreage of ground involved, and work could not start until
August 1839, more than two years after the passing of the
company's Act. (ref. 25) The contractor for the wall on the east
and south sides was John Faulkner, who had completed his
work by the end of the year. The lodge, west wall and
catacombs there (the last now partly removed), and the
brickwork for the north wall were done by Messrs. Nowell,
evidently the firm of Philip Nowell, mason to the Queen,
of Grosvenor Wharf, Pimlico, and one of the contractors in
the building of Belgravia. The ironwork in the north wall
was by E. and R. Dewer. Extensive drainage works were
also begun, and J. Finnemore (late gardener to Lord
Ravensworth and the Marquess of Normanby) was
appointed gardener. (ref. 26) In December 1839 J. C. Loudon
was consulted about the trees and shrubs best suited for
planting on the site. (ref. 27)
Baud's designs for the layout of the cemetery provided
for a long carriage drive to lead from the entrance lodge
straight down the middle of the site to an octagonal domed
chapel near the south end. This drive was to be flanked in
its northern half by an avenue of lime trees (which cost 1s.
6d. each and were planted in 1840 (ref. 28) ). In the southern half
of the drive there were to be two parallel ranges of
round-arched arcades, each with a central bell tower, and
these arcades were to be continued into a 'Great Circle', at
the east and west extremities of which there were to be two
subsidiary chapels in the manner of Greek temples, one
for the Nonconformists and the other for the Roman
Catholics. At the south extremity of the 'Great Circle' two
more parallel ranges of arcades led up to the principal
octagonal chapel, the focal point of the whole cruciform
design (Plate 105a, fig. 74).
This conception proved, of course, extremely expensive
to realise, and the two subsidiary chapels were in fact never
built. In the summer of 1840, however, Messrs. Nowell's
tenders for the carcase of the principal chapel (which was
to be faced with Bath stone) and for the two southern
segments of the 'Great Circle' and the two bell towers
were all accepted. (ref. 29) Levelling works, road-making and
planting also proceeded, and it was in this scene of busy
disorder that the cemetery was consecrated by C. J.
Blomfield, Bishop of London, in June 1840. The first
burial took place a few weeks later, the east end of the
lodge having been fitted up as a temporary chapel. (ref. 30)
By this time money was short, and although it was
decided to issue another thousand shares of £25 each, the
company had nevertheless to resort in June 1840 to one of
its directors, the local landowner Robert Gunter, for a
short-term loan of £5,000 needed to pay Messrs. Nowell.
The costly conditions laid down by the Westminster Commissioners of Sewers for the drainage of the cemetery were
considered by the directors to be so unreasonable that they
sought the advice of both George Gutch (who, as district
surveyor for Paddington, was well versed in such matters)
and of Counsel; but ultimately they had to acquiesce,
leaving them with no remedy 'for what the Directors still
feel to be an injustice'. Apart from a contract with Messrs.
Nowell for the interior of the chapel, building work seems
to have come to a halt. (ref. 31)
In the spring of 1841 there were 'Opposing opinions'
among the directors about future policy. Some of them
attributed 'the inadequate present success' of the cemetery
to 'the disorder consequent on building', and urged that
'no further buildings are at present requisite', while others
thought that 'the present incomplete execution of the
designs has checked resort to the Cemetery.' At a special
general meeting held in May to resolve the directors'
differences, the shareholders were told that over £61,000
had already been spent, and that the capital so far
subscribed fell short of expenditure already engaged for by
some £2,640. Despite this depressing news the shareholders decided to press on, and by the end of June
Messrs. Nowell's tenders for the completion of the arcades
and the 'Great Circle', the completion of the interior of the
principal chapel and the building of small wings on either
side of it had all been accepted. (ref. 32) (fn. b)
By early 1842 all this work had been completed. (ref. 34)
Apart from the two subsidiary chapels in the 'Great
Circle', the only important omissions from Baud's original
layout plans were thus the arcades which he had envisaged
for the formation of a large courtyard in front of the
principal chapel; but it may well be that in their continuous
search for economy the directors had reduced the quality
and embellishment of his first designs. The British Almanac
criticised the open screen of segmental arches filled in with
iron palisading which formed the north wall — 'If intended
as decoration, arches of that form have no particular
elegance to recommend them'; and the design of the
entrance lodge, in the Italian Doric manner, was 'without
any decided character'. (ref. 35) Today the impact of the long
ranges of arcades and of the 'Great Circle' is greatly
reduced by the tombstones and monuments which fill all
of the space thus enclosed, and the octagonal chapel,
despite its claims to be regarded as 'a chaste specimen of
Palladian architecture', seems too small in relation to the
dominant position allocated to it. (ref. 36) Notwithstanding their
considerable cost, the cemetery's buildings seem, indeed,
to have a somewhat meagre air (Plates 104, 105, fig. 75).
Figure 75:
Brompton Cemetery, north entrance and chapel. Benjamin Baud, architect, 1839–42
The number of burials in the cemetery soon proved to
be disappointingly small — 89 in 1841, producing gross
receipts of only £800, and 285 in 1842, producing
£1,350. Expenditure was therefore reduced to a minimum, (ref. 37) and (perhaps in consequence) there began early in
1843 a long dispute between Baud and the directors about
the amount of the fees due to him. (ref. 38) In the autumn of the
same year serious defects in the construction of the catacombs along the west wall were found to be due to the
contractors' failure to follow the architect's specifications;
but Nowell's, the firm involved, replied that Baud had
passed their work. (ref. 39) At about the same time the acquisition through John Gunter of part of the Equitable Gas
Company's ground provided access to Fulham Road, and
in February 1844 the directors were considering a drawing
submitted by a surveyor, Mr. Winterbotham, for a new
entrance there. (ref. 40) In March Baud protested at the directors' employment of Winterbotham and reminded them
that he had already supplied them with two designs for the
lodge at the intended Fulham Road entrance; but by this
time the directors had already decided to remove him from
the office of architect. In April Baud (through his solicitor)
demanded a special meeting of the directors to investigate
any charges against him, but when this was held the
directors confirmed their decision to dismiss him. (ref. 41) Subsequently he brought an action against the company claiming £4,000, his fees for the design of buildings not yet
executed being the main item in dispute; but in 1846 the
Court of Exchequer ruled against him, and although the
company's legal expenses were heavy, Baud seems to have
got nothing. (ref. 42) (fn. c)
The small lodge at the Fulham Road entrance was
designed and erected in 1844 by a builder, Mr. Dawson.
At the same time part of the wall on the south side of the
cemetery were taken down and rebuilt to enclose the
additional land recently acquired. (ref. 44)
Despite rigid economy the company's liabilities amounted in 1845 to nearly £22,000, and in that year the
directors therefore obtained another Act of Parliament
which authorized them to raise £21,731 by the sale of
3,477 new shares. These new shares were to be of the
nominal value of £25 each, but at first they were to be
sold for only £6 5s.; they were to confer the same rights as
the old shares, and in the first instance they were to be
offered to the existing shareholders. (ref. 45) By 1847 most of the
liabilities had been paid off, and a dividend of two shillings
per share was declared. Three years later, when the number of burials per annum had increased to over seven
hundred, the dividend had risen to five shillings per
share, (ref. 46) but this still only amounted to one and a half per
cent upon the company's total outlay. (ref. 47)
By this time the appalling conditions prevailing both in
the metropolitan graveyards and in those of many provincial towns had been grimly described to Parliament in
1843 by Edwin Chadwick, then the secretary of the Poor
Law Commission, in his Report on the Practice of Interment
in Towns. (ref. 48) But nothing had been done to remedy the
situation when the cholera epidemic of 1849 (in which
some 14,000 people had died in London alone) again
raised the problem in urgent form. During the winter of
1849–50 Chadwick, now one of the members of the new
General Board of Health, accordingly prepared another
report which inter alia castigated the record of the metropolitan cemetery companies. They had 'effected no appreciable diminution of the existing evils'; there was not even
one of them 'in which some of the worst of the old evils are
not continued'; entombment (e.g. the provision of catacombs and family mausolea) as distinguished from inhumation was still encouraged; they had 'afforded no relief
from the oppressive expense of funerals', nor had they
'effected the slightest improvement of any kind in respect
to the interment of the poor.' And the report stated flatly
that 'the interment of the dead is a most unfit subject for
trading profit.' (ref. 49)
The Government's Metropolitan Interments Act of
1850, which was largely based upon the proposals contained in this report, provided a solution which would, if it
had been fully implemented, have extinguished all the
metropolitan cemetery companies. The Board of Health
was empowered to provide new burial grounds in the
metropolitan area, purchase the existing cemetery companies, and in due course close all the old insanitary and
overcrowded graveyards. Funeral costs were to be regulated by a series of scales of fees to be promulgated by the
Board, which was to make all contracts with the undertakers. (ref. 50)
The Board of Health soon found that none of the
cemetery companies was willing to sell its property voluntarily, and in March 1851 the Board finally persuaded its
reluctant Treasury masters to sanction the compulsory
purchase of all of them, but successively. The first two (and
as events turned out, the only) purchase notices issued were
in respect of the Brompton Cemetery and the London
Cemetery Company's property at Nunhead; and in April
Chadwick and the directors of the Brompton company
agreed that the assessment of the price to be paid for that
cemetery should be referred to an independent arbitrator. (ref. 51)
(At this stage Chadwick was hoping to involve his friends
Joseph Paxton and the émigré German architect
Gottfried Semper in improving the Brompton Cemetery
after its acquisition, but this was to come to nothing. (ref. 52) )
The directors calculated that their total expenditure
upon the cemetery amounted to £147,685, (ref. 53) (more than
double that at Nunhead, the next most expensive cemetery
for which figures are available (ref. 54) (fn. d) ), of which nearly
£60,000 was attributed to the cost of Baud's elaborate
buildings. (ref. 55) Fortified by the advice of (Sir) William Tite,
the architect of the South Metropolitan Cemetery Company's Norwood cemetery, they decided that they were
entitled to the sum actually expended by the company, to
which 'lost interest may be added', and they therefore
demanded £168,762. (ref. 56) The Board of Health, on the
other hand, considered that with the exception of the
General Cemetery Company at Kensal Green all the
metropolitan joint-stock companies had 'as commercial
undertakings . . . been failures', the Brompton company
(as previously mentioned) only paid a dividend equivalent
to one and a half per cent upon capital outlay, and expenditure upon all 'such works as are deemed perfectly useless'
was to be disregarded. It therefore offered only £43,836. (ref. 57)
The arbitration hearing took place in July 1851 before
Mr. (later Sir) Barnes Peacock, Q.C., assisted by two
professional men, one chosen by each party, the architect
Philip Hardwick being the company's nominee. (ref. 58) Their
award, announced in October, amounted to £74,921, and
represented a considerable triumph for the now beleaguered Board of Health. (ref. 59)
Earlier in the year the Board had needed to raise a large
capital sum to buy land at Abbey Wood, Erith, for its own
proposed new cemetery. But the assurance companies to
which it had applied for a loan had refused, principally
because the Board's own life was statutorily limited to five
years; and the Government refused to help by the issue of
Exchequer Bills. The Government was in fact having
second thoughts about the whole of Chadwick's grandiose
scheme. In July, at the very time of the arbitration hearing,
the Treasury had ordered the Board to abandon the
purchase of the land at Abbey Wood and had inquired
whether it was still 'possible to put an end' to the purchase
of the Brompton and Nunhead cemeteries. By December
the Government had decided to introduce a new interments Bill based on different principles from the Act of
1850, and the Treasury therefore instructed the Board to
abandon the purchase of the two cemeteries 'if the parties
consent thereto'. (ref. 60)
The directors of the Brompton Cemetery had, of
course, been aware of the Government's change of
position since at least October and had at first decided to
await events. But after the Board of Health's request for
the award to be set aside had been received a special
general meeting of all the shareholders was held in January
1852. Some of the directors, and certainly the chairman,
Pleydell Bouverie, proposed that the request should be
accepted, but most of the shareholders thought otherwise,
and by 122 votes to 54 they called upon the directors to
enforce the award. (ref. 61)
Brompton was thus the only metropolitan cemetery
company to be acquired by the Government, for the
owners of the Nunhead Cemetery (who had demanded
£99,000, been offered £40,000, and awarded only
£42,000) agreed to forgo the arbitrator's decision. (ref. 59) The
conveyance of the cemetery, from the West London and
Westminster Cemetery Company to the Commissioners of
Works and Public Buildings, was made on 5 November
1852. (ref. 62) By the time of the directors' final meeting, on
20 December 1854, all the shareholders had received a
total of £11 9s. 5d. per share. (ref. 63) Thus those of them who
only held the original £25 shares must have lost heavily,
but those who had bought the new shares of 1845 at only
£6 5s., or who held some of both issues, must have been
well pleased to be rid of a property which had never
yielded a dividend of more than 5s. per share and on which
far too much had been spent on inessential building works.
By 1889 over 155,000 interments had taken place, and
the question of closure was being considered. (ref. 64)
Brompton Cemetery is now managed by the Department of the Environment, and is closed for burials except
where old graves can be re-opened.
The monuments erected in the cemetery display much
of the wide range of Victorian and later tastes (Plates
106, 107). John Jackson, the pugilist (d. 1845), had an altartomb with statues of athletes (now removed) at either end
and surmounted by a couchant lion. Similar in conception
is the monument to Robert Coombes, the champion sculler (d. 1860), which is surmounted by an inverted skiff.
The second Earl of Kilmorey (d. 1880) is commemorated
by a massive granite mausoleum in the Egyptian manner,
designed by Messrs. Kendall and Pope. (ref. 65) George Godwin
(d. 1888), architect and editor of The Builder, has a more
modest and very much more pleasing monument which
includes a portrait medallion attached to a column flanked
by mourning female figures. Frederick Leyland (d. 1892),
ship-owner and patron of the Pre-Raphaelites, has the
finest tomb of all, designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. (ref. 66)
An ancient Gothic sarcophagus in Sienese marble and
supported on eight squat pillars provides a very unusual
monument for the artist Val Prinsep (d. 1904), Leyland's
son-in-law. The suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst
(d. 1928) has a Celtic cross with figures carved in relief in
the manner of Eric Gill. Close to the western boundary of
the cemetery a granite obelisk commemorates the graves of
over two thousand pensioners from Chelsea Royal Hospital; and a separate enclosure nearby for other military
graves contains a large memorial to the Brigade of Guards,
erected in 1889.
Other notable people buried in Brompton cemetery
include George Borrow, author; Sir Henry Cole, first
director of the South Kensington Museum; Thomas
Cundy (d. 1895), architect; Sir John Fowler, railway engineer; Sir Charles James Freake (d. 1884), the developer
of a large part of South Kensington; Sir James KayShuttleworth, educational pioneer; Samuel Smiles, author
of Self-Help; and John Snow, the anaesthetist who discovered that cholera is water-borne. The ashes of Constant
Lambert, composer, are also buried here.