Brookwood Cemetery, also known as the London Necropolis, is a burial ground in
Brookwood, Surrey, England. It is the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in Europe. The cemetery is listed a Grade I site in the
Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
History
Background
Brookwood Cemetery was conceived by the
London Necropolis Company (LNC) in 1849 to house
London's deceased, at a time when the capital was finding it difficult to accommodate its increasing population, of living and dead. The cemetery is said to have been landscaped by
architect William Tite, but this is disputed.
In 1854, Brookwood was the largest
cemetery in the world but it is no longer. Its initial owner being incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1852, Brookwood Cemetery (apart from its northern section, reserved for Nonconformists) was consecrated by
Charles Sumner,
Bishop of Winchester
The Bishop of Winchester is the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Winchester in the Church of England. The bishop's seat (''cathedra'') is at Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire. The Bishop of Winchester has always held ''ex officio'' (except dur ...
, on 7 November 1854. It was opened to the public on 13 November 1854 when the first burials took place.
In 1858 the London Necropolis Company sold 64 acres of the extra land to the government for the building of
Woking Convict Invalid Prison
Woking Convict Invalid Prison was constructed in mid-19th-century England, primarily to hold male invalid convicts who previously had been billeted on hulks and had been moved to the temporary invalid prison at Lewes. The concept of a prison spec ...
.
Necropolis Railway
Brookwood originally was accessible by rail from a special station – the
London Necropolis railway station
London Necropolis railway station was the terminus at Waterloo, London, of the London Necropolis Railway. The London Necropolis Railway was opened in 1854 as a reaction to severe overcrowding in London's existing graveyards and cemeteries. It a ...
– next to
Waterloo station in Central London. Trains had passenger carriages reserved for different classes and other carriages for coffins (also for different classes), and ran into the cemetery on a dedicated branch from the adjoining
South West Main Line – there was a junction just to the west of
Brookwood station. From there, passengers and coffins were transported by
horse-drawn vehicles. The original London Necropolis station was relocated in 1902 but its successor was demolished after suffering bomb damage during
World War II.
Return tickets were issued for mourners and single tickets for the dead.
There were two stations in the cemetery: ''North'' for non-conformists and ''South'' for Anglicans. Their platforms still exist along the path called Railway Avenue. For visitors wishing to use the South West Main Line, Brookwood station has provided direct access since June 1864. A very short piece of commemorative track, with signpost and plaque, purposefully gives way to a grass field and recollects the old final stage of the journey of the deceased.
It was the cholera epidemic of 1848 that led two industrialists to develop this high burial site. It was at first a controversial project. The Bishop of London condemned the "offensive" despatch of first-, second- and third-class corpses in the same carriages, so this had to be modified.
Early burials
The LNC offered three classes of funerals:
* A first class funeral allowed buyers to select the grave site of their choice anywhere in the cemetery. The LNC charged extra for burials in some designated special sites. At the time of opening prices began at £2 10
s (about £ in terms) for a basic with no special coffin specifications. It was expected by the LNC that those using first class graves would erect a permanent memorial of some kind in due course following the funeral.
* Second class funerals cost £1 (about £ in terms) and allowed some control over the burial location. The right to erect a permanent memorial cost an additional 10
shillings (about £ in terms); if a permanent memorial was not erected the LNC reserved the right to re-use the grave in future.
* Third class funerals were reserved for pauper funerals; those buried at
parish expense in the section of the cemetery designated for that parish. Although the LNC was forbidden from using mass graves (other than the burial of next of kin in the same grave) and thus even the lowest class of funeral provided a separate grave for the deceased, third class funerals were not granted the right to erect a permanent memorial on the site. (The families of those buried could pay afterwards to upgrade a third class grave to a higher class if they later wanted to erect a memorial, but this practice was rare.) Despite this, Brookwood's pauper graves granted more dignity to the deceased than did other graveyards and cemeteries of the period, all of which other than Brookwood continued the practice of mass graves for the poor.
Brookwood was one of the few cemeteries to permit burials on Sundays, which made it a popular choice with the poor as it allowed people to attend funerals without the need to take a day off work. As theatrical performances were banned on Sundays at this time, it also made Brookwood a popular choice for the burial of actors for the same reason, to the extent that actors were provided with a dedicated section of the cemetery near the station entrance.
While the majority of burials conducted by the LNC (around 80%) were pauper funerals on behalf of London parishes and prisons, the LNC also reached agreement with a number of societies, guilds, religious bodies and similar organisations (such as
Woking Convict Invalid Prison
Woking Convict Invalid Prison was constructed in mid-19th-century England, primarily to hold male invalid convicts who previously had been billeted on hulks and had been moved to the temporary invalid prison at Lewes. The concept of a prison spec ...
and Tothill). The LNC provided dedicated sections of the cemetery for these groups, on the basis that those who had lived or worked together in life could remain together after death. Although the LNC was never able to gain the domination of London's funeral industry for which its founders had hoped, it was very successful at targeting specialist groups of artisans and trades, to the extent that it became nicknamed "the Westminster Abbey of the middle classes". The
Royal Hospital Chelsea, which previously buried their inmate pensioners at
Brompton Cemetery in Chelsea, have used Brookwood Cemetery, where they have two plots, since 1893.
A large number of these dedicated plots were established, ranging from
Chelsea Pensioners and the
Ancient Order of Foresters to the
Corps of Commissionaires and the LSWR. The Nonconformist cemetery also includes a
Parsee burial ground established in 1862, which remained the only
Zoroastrian burial ground in Europe. Dedicated sections in the Anglican cemetery were also reserved for burials from those parishes which had made burial arrangements with the LNC.
The first burial was of the
stillborn twins of a Mr and Mrs Hore of Ewer Street,
The Borough. The Hore twins, along with the other burials on the first day, were pauper funerals and buried in unmarked graves. The first burial at Brookwood with a permanent memorial was that of Lieutenant-General
Sir Henry Goldfinch, buried on 25 November 1854, the 26th person to be buried in the cemetery. The first permanent memorial erected in the Nonconformist section of the cemetery was that of Charles Milligan Hogg, son of botanist
Robert Hogg, buried on 12 December 1854. Goldfinch and Hogg's graves are not the oldest monuments in the cemetery, as on occasion gravestones were relocated and re-erected during the relocation of existing burial grounds to Brookwood.
Over 235,000 people have been buried there.
Reburials
The massive London civil engineering projects of the mid-19th century—the railways, the
sewer system and from the 1860s the precursors to the
London Underground—often necessitated the demolition of existing churchyards. The first major relocation took place in 1862, when the construction of
Charing Cross railway station and the routes into it necessitated the demolition of the burial ground of Cure's College in
Southwark
Southwark ( ) is a district of Central London situated on the south bank of the River Thames, forming the north-western part of the wider modern London Borough of Southwark. The district, which is the oldest part of South London, developed ...
, which uncovered at least 7,950 bodies. These were packed into 220 large containers, each containing 26 adults plus children, and shipped on the London Necropolis Railway to Brookwood for reburial, along with at least some of the existing headstones from the cemetery.
At least 21 London burial grounds were relocated to Brookwood via the railway, along with numerous others relocated by road following the railway's closure. Churches whose graves were relocated included:
*
St Antholin, Budge Row
St Antholin, Budge Row, or St Antholin, Watling Street, was a church in the City of London. Of medieval origin, it was rebuilt to the designs of Sir Christopher Wren, following its destruction in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The 17th-century ...
(demolished 1875)
*
All-Hallows-the-Great (demolished 1894)
*
St Magnus-the-Martyr (remains removed from crypt 1894)
*
All-Hallows-the-Less (destroyed in the
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past the ...
, remains removed 1896)
*
St Michael Wood Street
St Michael's Wood Street was a church and parish of medieval origin in Cripplegate Ward in the City of London, and is first mentioned in 1225 as ''St. Michael de Wudestrate''. It stood on the west side of Wood Street, initially with a frontage o ...
(demolished 1897)
*
St Mildred, Bread Street (remains removed 1898, church destroyed in
London Blitz 1941)
*
St George Botolph Lane
St George Botolph Lane was a church off Eastcheap, in the ward of Billingsgate in the City of London. The rear of the church overlooked Pudding Lane, where the fire of London started. It was first recorded in the twelfth century, and destroyed in ...
(demolished 1904)
*
St Marylebone Parish Church (remains from crypt removed 1987)
*
St James's Church, Piccadilly (remains removed from St. James's Garden, established 1878 on the former burial grounds of the church, from 2017-2020 due to
HS2 terminal construction at
Euston Station)
* The unconsecrated
Cross Bones Graveyard
Cross Bones is a disused post-medieval burial ground on Redcross Way in Southwark, south London. Up to 15,000 people are believed to have been buried there. It was closed in 1853.
Cross Bones is thought to have been established originally as ...
in Southwark (closed 1853, many remains removed in successive years)
Brookwood Cemetery and cremation
In 1878, the LNC sold an isolated piece of its land at Brookwood, close to
St John's village, to the
Cremation Society of Great Britain, on which they built
Woking Crematorium, the first in Britain, in 1879. While the LNC never built its own crematorium, in 1910,
Lord Cadogan decided he no longer wanted to be interred in the mausoleum he had commissioned at Brookwood. This building, the largest mausoleum in the cemetery, was bought by the LNC, fitted with shelves and niches to hold urns, and used as a dedicated
columbarium from then on.
After 1945 cremation, up to that time an uncommon practice, became increasingly popular in Britain. In 1946, the LNC obtained consent to build their own crematorium on a section of the Nonconformist cemetery which had been set aside for pauper burials, but chose not to proceed. Instead, in 1945, the LNC began the construction of the Glades of Remembrance, a wooded area dedicated to the burial of cremated remains. These were dedicated by
Henry Montgomery Campbell,
Bishop of Guildford in 1950. Intentionally designed for informality, traditional gravestones and memorials were prohibited, and burials were marked only by small stones.
In the next decade the cemetery came closest to having its own crematorium. Following the closure of the two Brookwood railway stations, the land surrounding the site of South station and the station's two Anglican chapels was redundant. As part of the London Necropolis Act 1956 the LNC obtained Parliamentary consent to convert the disused original Anglican chapel into a crematorium, using the newer chapel for funeral services and the station building for coffin storage and as a refreshment room for those attending cremations. Suffering cash flow problems and distracted by a succession of hostile takeover bids, the LNC management never proceeded with the scheme and the buildings fell into disuse. The station building was demolished after being damaged by a fire in 1972, although the platform remained intact.
Horticultural
With the ambition for it to become London's sole burial site in perpetuity, the LNC were aware that if their plans were successful, their Necropolis would become a site of major national importance. As a consequence, the cemetery was designed with attractiveness in mind, in contrast to the squalid and congested London burial grounds and the newer suburban cemeteries which were already becoming crowded.
['' The Times'', 8 Nov. 1854.]
The LNC aimed to create an atmosphere of perpetual spring in the cemetery, and chose the plants for the cemetery accordingly. It had already been noted that
evergreen plants from North America thrived in the local soil. Robert Donald, the owner of an
arboretum
An arboretum (plural: arboreta) in a general sense is a botanical collection composed exclusively of trees of a variety of species. Originally mostly created as a section in a larger garden or park for specimens of mostly non-local species, man ...
near Woking, was contracted to supply the trees and shrubs for the cemetery. The railway line through the cemetery and the major roads and paths within the cemetery were lined with
giant sequoia trees, the first significant planting of these trees (only introduced to Europe in 1853) in Britain. As well as the giant sequoias (also known as ''Wellingtonia'' after the recently deceased
Duke of Wellington), the grounds were heavily planted with
magnolia,
rhododendron
''Rhododendron'' (; from Ancient Greek ''rhódon'' "rose" and ''déndron'' "tree") is a very large genus of about 1,024 species of woody plants in the heath family (Ericaceae). They can be either evergreen or deciduous. Most species are nati ...
,
coastal redwood,
azalea
Azaleas are flowering shrubs in the genus ''Rhododendron'', particularly the former sections ''Tsutsusi'' (evergreen) and '' Pentanthera'' (deciduous). Azaleas bloom in the spring (April and May in the temperate Northern Hemisphere, and Octob ...
,
andromeda and
monkeypuzzle, with the intention of creating perpetual greenery with large numbers of flowers and a strong floral scent throughout the cemetery.
In later years the original planting of the cemetery was supplemented by numerous other tree species planted by the LNC, as well as many plants planted by mourners at burial sites and around mausolea. Between the end of LNC independence in 1959 and the cemetery's purchase by
Ramadan Güney in 1985 cemetery maintenance was drastically reduced, and the spread of various plant types caused many of the non-military sections of the cemetery to revert to wilderness in this period.
20th and 21st centuries
In August 1914, on the outbreak of the
First World War, the LNC offered to donate to the
War Office of land "for the free interment of soldiers and sailors who have returned from the front wounded and may subsequently die". The offer was not taken up until 1917, when a section of the cemetery was set aside as Brookwood Military Cemetery, used for the burials of service personnel who died in the
London District. This purpose built cemetery came to accommodate further dead from
World War II.
In the meantime, 141 Commonwealth service personnel were buried from London in scattered graves throughout the cemetery, apart from a small Nurses' Plot in St Peter's Avenue in the Westminster field (where are buried nurses from Millbank Military Hospital) and an Indian plot (including one unidentified soldier) in the North-West corner.
CWGC Cemetery Report, Brookwood Cemetery.
In World War II 51 Commonwealth service personnel were buried in the civilian cemetery, where there are also buried five foreign national servicemen whose graves the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) additionally care for.
A military memorial to the missing from that war was built in 1958 by the CWGC.
Memorialised here too came to be
Edward the Martyr, King of England, whose relics are kept nearby in
St Edward the Martyr Orthodox Church
St. Edward the Martyr Orthodox Church is a True Orthodox Church in Brookwood, Surrey, England.
The monastic Saint Edward Brotherhood was established at Brookwood Cemetery in 1982 to prepare and care for a new Church in a fitting grade I l ...
.
The London Necropolis Company was taken over by Alliance Property in 1959 and the company was gradually divested of land and investments until by 1973, the cemetery was an independent entity. The cemetery changed hands between various development companies in the 1970s, during which time the cemetery maintenance was neglected: 1970 Cornwall Property (Holdings) Ltd, 1971 Great Southern Group, 1973 Maximillian Investments. Maximillian investments secured the passing of the
Brookwood Cemetery Act 1975
Brookwood Cemetery, also known as the London Necropolis, is a burial ground in Brookwood, Surrey, England. It is the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in Europe. The cemetery is listed a Grade I site in the Regis ...
which authorised them to sell unused parts of the cemetery and a few areas were sold for development.
In 1985, Ramadan Güney acquired Brookwood Cemetery from the owner Mr D. J. T. Dally, who was previously the cemetery manager . The purchase evolved from Güney's role as Chairman of the UK Turkish Islamic Trust, which wanted suitable burial facilities for its members.
[ The Brookwood Cemetery Society was founded in 1992 to organise events, promote the site's history and support restoration work. After Güney's death in 2006 he was buried in the cemetery and ownership passed to his children (by his late wife) and operated by his son Erkin, a director at the cemetery for almost 30 years. Diane Holliday, Güney's partner of 6 years, was "frozen out" from the operating company and then dismissed.] In 2011, the inheritance of the cemetery was successfully challenged by Diane Holliday and her adult son Kevin. This decision was upheld by the High Court on appeal in 2012. In 2014, Diane Holliday sold the cemetery to Woking Council
Woking Borough Council is the local authority for the borough of Woking in the county of Surrey, England. The council consists of 30 councillors, three for each of the 10 wards in the town. It is currently controlled by the Liberal Democrat Party ...
.
In 2017, work began on exhumation of the remains of approximately 40,000 to 50,000 people who were interred at the former burial ground of St. James's Church due to construction of the new HS2 terminal at Euston Station in London. The former burial ground had been in use between 1790 and 1853 before the cemetery became St James's Gardens in 1878. The grounds had been utilised as public park space until they were closed in 2017 at the outset of construction. A large part of the exhumation project consisted of a multi-year cataloguing and study of the remains by osteo-archaeologists, part of which was documented by the BBC. In 2020 it was announced that it had been agreed by the Woking Council and HS2 that the remains were to be re-interred in a new grassland plot on the south side of Brookwood Cemetery. The exhumations and study began in October 2018 and the re-interment at Brookwood took place sometime around August 2020 to November 2020. At around 50,000 individual remains, it is thought to be the largest single reburial project in the history of Brookwood.
Brookwood Military Cemetery and memorials
Brookwood Military Cemetery covers about and is the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the United Kingdom. The land was set aside during World War I to provide a burial site for men and women of Commonwealth and American armed forces who died in the United Kingdom of wounds and other causes. It now contains 1,601 Commonwealth burials from World War I and 3,476 from World War II (the latter including 3 unidentified British and 2 unidentified Canadian airmen).
Within this, there is a particularly large Canadian section, which includes 43 men who died of wounds following the Dieppe Raid
Operation Jubilee or the Dieppe Raid (19 August 1942) was an Allied amphibious attack on the German-occupied port of Dieppe in northern France, during the Second World War. Over 6,050 infantry, predominantly Canadian, supported by a regiment o ...
in August 1942. Two dozen Muslim dead were also later transferred here in 1968 from the Muslim Burial Ground at Horsell Common. There is a large Royal Air Force section in the southeast corner of the cemetery which includes graves of Czech and United States nationals who died serving in the RAF.
The cemetery also has 786 non-Commonwealth war graves, including 28 unidentified French, besides eight German dead from World War I and 46 from World War II. It also contains Polish (84 graves), Czech, Belgian (46 graves), Dutch (seven graves) and Italian (over 300 graves) sections. Except for Christmas Day and New Year's Day
New Year's Day is a festival observed in most of the world on 1 January, the first day of the year in the modern Gregorian calendar. 1 January is also New Year's Day on the Julian calendar, but this is not the same day as the Gregorian one. Wh ...
, this cemetery is open to the public from 8am to sunset Monday to Friday, and 9am to sunset Saturdays and Sundays.
The United Kingdom 1914–1918 Memorial originally stood at the northeastern end of the 1914–1918 Plot. The new memorial that replaced it was created in 2004, and currently (9 February 2022) commemorates 338 Commonwealth service personnel who died in the First World War in the United Kingdom but have no known grave. The majority of the casualties commemorated on the Brookwood 1914–1918 Memorial are servicemen and women identified by the In From The Cold Project as having died while in care of their families and were not commemorated by the Commission at the time. (Those whose graves are subsequently discovered become commemorated under the respective cemetery.)
The Brookwood Memorial stands at the southern end of the Canadian section of the cemetery and commemorates 3,428 Commonwealth men and women who died during the Second World War and have no known grave. This includes commandos killed in the Dieppe and St Nazaire Raid
The St Nazaire Raid or Operation Chariot was a British amphibious attack on the heavily defended Normandie dry dock at St Nazaire in German-occupied France during the Second World War. The operation was undertaken by the Royal Navy (RN) a ...
s; and Special Operations Executive personnel who died in occupied Europe. The Brookwood Memorial also honours 199 Canadian servicemen and women. The memorial was placed within a military cemetery near the theatre of operations.
The Brookwood (Russia) Memorial was erected in 1983 and dismantled in 2015. It commemorated forces of the British Commonwealth who died in Russia in World War I and World War II and were buried there. The memorial was erected originally because during the Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
those graves were inaccessible.
File:Brookwood Military Cemetery-1512.JPG, Original 1914–1918 memorial
File:Brookwood 1914-1918 Memorial.jpg, Replacement 1914–1918 memorial
File:Brookwood Russia Memorial-1461.JPG, Russia memorial
Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial
This site lies to the west of the civilian cemetery. It contains the graves, from World War I of 468 American military dead and a further 563 with no known grave are commemorated.
After the entry of the United States into the Second World War the American cemetery was enlarged, with burials of US servicemen beginning in April 1942. With large numbers of American personnel based in the west of England, a dedicated rail service for the transport of bodies operated from Devonport to Brookwood. By August 1944, over 3,600 bodies had been buried in the American Military Cemetery. At this time burials were discontinued, and US casualties were from then on buried at Cambridge American Cemetery.
On the authority of the Quartermaster General of the United States Army, the US servicemen buried at Brookwood during the Second World War were exhumed in January–May 1948. Those whose next of kin requested it were shipped to the United States for reburial, and the remaining bodies were transferred to the new cemetery outside Cambridge.
Brookwood American Cemetery had also been the burial site for those US servicemen executed while serving in the United Kingdom, whose bodies had been carried to Brookwood by rail from the American execution facilities at Shepton Mallet
Shepton Mallet is a market town and civil parish in the Mendip District of Somerset, England, some south-west of Bath, south of Bristol and east of Wells. It had an estimated population of 10,810 in 2019. Mendip District Council is based t ...
. They were not transferred to Cambridge in 1948, but instead reburied in unmarked graves at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery Plot E, a dedicated site for US servicemen executed during the Second World War. (One of those executed, David Cobb, was not transferred to Plot E but was repatriated to the US and reburied in Dothan, Alabama in 1949.) Following the removal of the US war graves, the site in which they had been buried was divided into cemeteries for the Free French forces and Italian prisoners of war.
It is administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission. Close by are military cemeteries and monuments of the British Commonwealth and other allied nations.
Notable graves
''List of people buried in Brookwood Cemetery
The following is a list of notable burials at Brookwood Cemetery near Woking in Surrey.
*William Addison (VC)
*Alexis Theodorovich Aladin
*Omar Ali-Shah
*Abdullah Yusuf Ali
*Aftab Ali
*Naji al-Ali
*Syed Ameer Ali
*Abdul Rahman ...
''
(Listed in order of date of death)
* Edward the Martyr (c. 962–978), King of England (reburied from Shaftesbury Abbey 1984)
* Daniel Carlsson Solander
Daniel Carlsson Solander or Daniel Charles Solander (19 February 1733 – 13 May 1782) was a Swedish naturalist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus.
Solander was the first university-educated scientist to set foot on Australian soil.
Biography
S ...
(1733–1782), Swedish naturalist, apostle of Carl Linnaeus and scientist on James Cook
James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean an ...
's first voyage to the Pacific Ocean aboard the ''Endeavour
Endeavour or endeavor may refer to:
People
Fictional characters
* Endeavour Morse, central character of the ''Inspector Morse'' novels by Colin Dexter
* Endeavor, the hero name for the character Enji Todoroki from the anime series ''My Hero A ...
’’ (reburied from Swedish Church, Wapping in 1900s)
* Admiral Sir Edward Codrington (1770–1851), naval hero of Battles of Trafalgar and Navarino (reburied from St Peter's Church, Eaton Square
St. Peter's Church, Eaton Square, is a Church of England parish church at the east end of Eaton Square, Belgravia, London. It is a neoclassical building designed by the architect Henry Hakewill with a hexastyle portico with Ionic columns and ...
1954)
* Sir Henry Goldfinch (1781–1854), Peninsular War veteran and one of the first to be buried at the cemetery
* Thomas Manders (1797–1859), low comedian
Low comedy, also known as lowbrow humor, in association to comedy, is a dramatic or literary form of popular entertainment without any primary purpose other than to create laughter through boasting, boisterous jokes, drunkenness, scolding, f ...
and stage actor
* Fortunatus Dwarris (1786 - 1860), English lawyer and author
* Robert Knox (1791–1862), notable anatomist and racial theorist involved with the Burke and Hare murders
* John Lynch (c. 1833–1866), Irish nationalist
*Gustav von Franck
Gustav Ritter von Franck (born 22 March 1807, Vienna – died 8 January 1860, London) was an Austrian author and publisher.
Life and work
Gustav Ritter von Franck was born on 22 March 1807 in Vienna and was the son of the banker and businessma ...
(1807-1860), writer, painter, founding-member Savage Club
* Rebecca Isaacs
Rebecca Isaacs (26 June 1828–21 April 1877) was an operatic soprano of the mid-19th century who was the Directress of Operas at the Strand Theatre and who created the role of Leila in '' Satanella'' at the Royal Opera House in 1858.
Born ...
, (1828–1877), the operatic soprano
* Horatia Johnson (née Ward) (1833–1890), granddaughter of Horatio Nelson
Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronte (29 September 1758 – 21 October 1805) was a British flag officer in the Royal Navy. His inspirational leadership, grasp of strategy, and unconventional tactics brought abo ...
and Emma Hamilton
* Charles Bradlaugh (1833–1891), atheist and political activist and his daughter Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner
Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner (31 March 1858 – 25 August 1935) was a British peace activist, author, atheist and freethinker, and the daughter of Charles Bradlaugh.
Early life and teaching
She was born Hypatia Bradlaugh, at 3 Hedger's Terrace, Ha ...
(1858–1935), peace activist, author, atheist and freethinker (latter after cremation)
* The 1st Viscount Sherbrooke (1811–1892), statesman
* Henri Van Laun (1820–1896), author and translator
* Alfred William Hunt (1830–1896), landscape painter, and daughter Violet Hunt (1863–1942), authoress and literary hostess
* Mary Frances Scott-Siddons
Mary Frances Scott-Siddons (1844 – 8 November 1896), frequently referred to as Mrs. Scott-Siddons, was a British actor and dramatic reader. Her paternal great-grandmother was Sarah Siddons.
After a struggle, Scott-Siddons secured an engagemen ...
(1840-1896), actress, and great-granddaughter of Sarah Siddons.
* Daniel Nicols
Daniel Nicols (8 February 1833–28 February 1897) was a French-born restaurateur best known as the founder of the Hotel Café Royal, Café Royal in London. He became a Naturalization, naturalised British citizen in 1865.
Early career
Born as ...
(1833–1897), founder of the Café Royal
* Giulio Salviati (1843–1898), glassmaker of the Salviati family
* Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner (1840–1899), Anglo-Hungarian orientalist
* Elaine Maynard Falkiner ''née'' Farmer (1871–1900), society beauty and first wife of Leslie Falkiner
Leslie may refer to:
* Leslie (name), a name and list of people with the given name or surname, including fictional characters
Families
* Clan Leslie, a Scottish clan with the motto "grip fast"
* Leslie (Russian nobility), a Russian noble family ...
* Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
(1830–1900) Shakespearean comedy actor
* Alexander William Williamson (1824–1904), chemical theorist, originator of the Williamson ether synthesis, and head of the chemistry department at University College, London
* Jamsetji Tata (1839–1904), Indian Industrialist and Founder of Tata Group
* Ross Lowis Mangles (1833–1905), the first civilian to be awarded the VC and one of 12 holders of the same award who are buried in the cemetery
* Lord Edward Clinton (1836–1907), politician and soldier
* Robert Ashington Bullen
Reverend Robert Ashington Bullen FLS, FGS, FZS, FRAS (11 June 1850 – 14 August 1912) was an Anglican priest, a geologist and an authority on mollusca.
Early years
R. A. Bullen was born in St. George's in Bermuda, the son of Robert Gaze Bulle ...
(1850–1912), priest, geologist and conchologist
* Dugald Drummond (1840–1912), Scottish locomotive engineer
* Allan Octavian Hume (1829–1912), Founder of Indian National Congress, civil servant, political reformer and amateur ornithologist and horticulturalist in British India
* Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire FRSE
Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...
(1879–1915), geneticist
* Bernhard Ringrose Wise (1858–1916), Australian politician and Attorney General, amateur mile champion of Great Britain, 1879–81, Co-Founder of the Amateur Athletic Association
* John Wrightson (1840–1916), pioneer in agricultural education and reputedly Britain's first surfer
* William De Morgan (1839–1917), potter and tile designer
* Commander
Commander (commonly abbreviated as Cmdr.) is a common naval officer rank. Commander is also used as a rank or title in other formal organizations, including several police forces. In several countries this naval rank is termed frigate captain.
...
the 5th Baron Abinger (1871–1917), hereditary peer and naval officer, one of the WWI war graves here
* Sir John Wolfe Barry (1836–1918), civil engineer, architect of Barry Docks, Wales
* Lieutenant Dudley Beaumont (1877–1918), army officer, painter and husband of the Dame of Sark
* Sir Ratanji Tata (1871–1918), Indian businessman and philanthropist
* Edward Compton (1854–1918), actor-manager
* Edmund Baron Hartley (1847–1919), Victoria Cross recipient
* Evelyn De Morgan (1855–1919), English painter
* Edith Thompson (1893–1923), executed in Holloway prison in 1923. Exhumed in 2018 and buried with her parents in City of London Cemetery
* John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more ...
(1856–1925), American artist
* Alexis Theodorovich Aladin
Aleksei Feodorovich Aladin (russian: Алексе́й Фёдорович Ала́дьин; 28 March Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O.S_15_March.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>O.S_15_March">Old_Style_and_New_S ...
(1873–1927), Russian politician who formed and led the Trudoviks
The Trudoviks (russian: Трудова́я гру́ппа, translit=Trudovaya gruppa, lit=Labour Group) were a social-democratic political party of Russia in early 20th century.
History
The Trudoviks were a breakaway of the Socialist Revolut ...
* Luke Fildes (1843–1927), painter
* Sarah Eleanor Smith (née Pennington) (1861–1931) wife of the captain of the '' Titanic'' Edward J. Smith, buried a few feet from Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon
* Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon (1862–1931) baronet, sportsman and ''Titanic'' survivor
* Abdul Rahman Andak (1859–1931), senior Malaysian civil servant, exiled to London in 1909
* Sir Dorabji Tata (1859–1932), Indian philanthropist
* Abdullah Quilliam (1856–1932), 19th-century convert from Christianity to Islam, noted for founding England's first mosque and Islamic centre
* Field Marshal Sir William Robert Robertson, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, DSO (1860–1933), Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) during the First World War
* Ernest William Moir (1862–1933), civil engineer, 1st Baronet of Whitehanger and Margaret, Lady Moir (1864 – 1942) engineer and campaigner for women's rights
* Shapurji Saklatvala (1874–1936), Indian-born British Labour and Communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
MP, and nephew of Jamsetji Tata (following cremation)[Article by Mike Squires]
* Marmaduke Pickthall (1875–1936), Western Islamic scholar, novelist, and British Muslim revert who translated the qur'an into English.
* Michael O'Dwyer (1864–1940), assassinated former Lieutenant Governor of Punjab
* Stanley Spooner (1856–1940), editor and journalist. The creator of ''Flight'' magazine.
* J. P. B. Jeejeebhoy (1891-1950), first Indian pilot in the Royal Flying Corps
"Through Adversity to the Stars"
, colors =
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, march =
, mascot =
, anniversaries =
, decorations ...
* Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1872–1953), a translator of the Quran
* Caroll Gibbons
Carroll Richard Gibbons (January 4, 1903 – May 10, 1954) was an American-born pianist, bandleader and popular composer who made his career primarily in England during the British dance band era.
Image of Gibbons from the cigarette_card.ht ...
(1903–1954), pianist and composer
* Styllou Christofi (1900–1954), penultimate woman executed in Britain (reburied from HMP Holloway
HM Prison Holloway was a closed category prison for adult women and young offenders in Holloway, London, England, operated by His Majesty's Prison Service. It was the largest women's prison in western Europe, until its closure in 2016.
Histor ...
1971)
* A memorial to the victims in the Turkish Airforce plot (1959)
* Sir Thomas Beecham (1879–1961), conductor. Initially buried here, owing to changes at Brookwood, his remains were exhumed in 1991 and reburied in St Peter's Churchyard at Limpsfield, Surrey.
* F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas
Wing Commander Forest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas, (17 June 1902 – 26 February 1964), known as "Tommy", was a British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent in the Second World War. Codenamed "Seahorse" and "Shelley" in the SOE, Yeo-Thomas ...
(1902–1964), World War II Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent
* Said Bin Taimur (1910–1972), Sultan of Muscat and Oman 1932–1970; body later repatriated and reburied at Royal Cemetery, Muscat
* Aftab Ali (1907–1972), Bengali politician and social reformer
* Dennis Wheatley
Dennis Yeats Wheatley (8 January 1897 – 10 November 1977) was a British writer whose prolific output of thrillers and occult novels made him one of the world's best-selling authors from the 1930s through the 1960s. His Gregory Sallust series ...
(1897–1977), occult and mystery writer (after cremation)
* Rebecca West (1892–1983), novelist, feminist and journalist
* Alfred Bestall (1892–1986), author and illustrator of '' Rupert Bear''
* Naji al-Ali (1937?–1987), Palestinian political cartoonist
* Hamid Mirza
Prince Sultan Hamid Mirza Qajar (23 April 1918 – 5 May 1988) was the head and heir presumptive of the Qajar dynasty, the former ruling dynasty of Iran, and the son of the last Qajar Crown Prince of Iran.
Biography Early life
He was born in Tabr ...
(1918–1988), Heir Presumptive of the Qajar dynasty
The Qajar dynasty (; fa, دودمان قاجار ', az, Qacarlar ) was an IranianAbbas Amanat, ''The Pivot of the Universe: Nasir Al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831–1896'', I. B. Tauris, pp 2–3 royal dynasty of Turkic peoples ...
* Joe Vandeleur
John Ormsby Evelyn Vandeleur, DSO and Bar (14 November 1903 – 4 August 1988), usually known as Joe Vandeleur from his initials, was an Anglo-Irish British Army officer who served in the Second World War.
Early life
Born in Nowshera in Briti ...
(1903–1988), DSO and Bar, British Army officer in World War II, served with the Irish Guards
* Margaret, Duchess of Argyll
Ethel Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll (''née'' Whigham, formerly Sweeny; 1 December 1912 – 25 July 1993) was a Scottish heiress, socialite, and aristocrat who was most famous for her 1951 marriage and much-publicised 1963 divorce fro ...
(1912–1993)
* Idries Shah (1924–1996), Sufi
Sufism ( ar, ''aṣ-ṣūfiyya''), also known as Tasawwuf ( ''at-taṣawwuf''), is a mystic body of religious practice, found mainly within Sunni Islam but also within Shia Islam, which is characterized by a focus on Islamic spirituality, ...
master and writer
* Muhammad al-Badr
, succession = King and Imam of Yemen
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, caption = Al-Badr in 1962
, reign = 19 – 26 September 1962
, predecessor = Ahmad bin Yahya
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(1926–1996) last King of Yemen
* Dodi Fayed (1955–1997), film producer, (original burial site, subsequently moved to the Al-Fayed estate in Surrey)
* Christopher Hewett
Christopher George Hewett (5 April 1921 – 3 August 2001) was an English actor and theatre director best known for his role as Lynn Aloysius Belvedere on the ABC sitcom ''Mr. Belvedere''.
Career
Hewett was born in Worthing, Sussex to Chris ...
(1921–2001), actor, played Mr. Belvedere
* Ramadan Güney (1932–2006), owner of Brookwood Cemetery, 1985–2006[
* Zdeňka Pokorná (1905–2007), Czech liberation campaigner (following cremation)
* ]Maqbool Fida Husain
Maqbool Fida Husain (17 September 1915 – 9 June 2011) was an Indian artist known for executing bold, vibrantly coloured narrative paintings in a modified Cubist style. He was one of the most celebrated and internationally recognised Ind ...
(1915–2011), Indian painter
* Boris Berezovsky (1946–2013), Russian tycoon
* Dame Zaha Hadid (1950–2016), Iraqi-born British architect
Location
Brookwood Cemetery is served by Brookwood railway station, and is located on both sides of Cemetery Pales in Woking. The Cemetery office is located in Glades House.
See also
* Canadian war cemeteries
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
*
*
Further reading
*
* Clarke, John M. ''An Introduction to Brookwood Cemetery'' 2nd Edition
*
External links
*
The Brookwood Cemetery Society
– commissioned by the Home Office.
English Heritage Listed Garden Entry
– Images of all sections of the military cemetery and burial plots and memorials. Includes allied nationals, Chelsea Pensioners, QA Nurses as well as German and Italian plots.
*
*
*
* ttps://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW014841 Aerial view from 1926 from the English Heritage "Britain from Above" archive
{{Cemeteries in England
Cemeteries in Surrey
Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries in England
American Battle Monuments Commission
Grade I listed parks and gardens in Surrey
World War I cemeteries in the United Kingdom
World War II cemeteries in the United Kingdom
Disused railway stations in Surrey
London Necropolis Company
1852 establishments in England
Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1854
Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1941