Quote:London had a problem on its hands. By the mid 19th century the city already had an extremely long and storied history but with the turn of the century came the masses. The lure of the city, with its industry, its jobs, and its connections to the rest of the world caused the population of London to double by 1850. The streets and structures were packed with humanity and all the debris, pollution, and chaos that came with it. And while these were all major problems facing the city, time was running short on finding a solution to one of the biggest issues. The problem was not brought on by the living, one of the most urgent matters was being caused by London’s dead.

Previous to the mid-19th century the typical way to dispose of the dead was to bury them in one of the many small church graveyards in family plots or an unmarked place of eternal rest. With the massive influx of people filling the London streets it also meant a level of death unseen by a city that was poorly equipped to deal with the bodies stacking up. The living population doubled, but the land set aside for the dead remained at only approximately 300 acres scattered throughout 200 small burial sites.


Illustration Cemetery at Bunhill Fields, Finsbury, London, 1866. Image via nhm.ac.uk/discover/a-history-of-burial-in-london.html.


Graves were dug hastily, just for the bodies to reappear above ground after a heavy rain. Plots were dug only for the shovels to hit unexpected layers of bones. Old bodies were dug up and discarded to make room for the fresh corpses. The London burial crisis was in desperate need of a solution and in 1830 Parliament thought they had it with the creation of the “Magnificent Seven,” seven massive, privately run burial grounds that lay just outside the borders of the city. They were sprawling, picturesque, beautifully maintained….and woefully expensive. The only problem that the Magnificent Seven solved was how to die if you had deep pockets. The vicious cycle continued. The dead infected the living, plagues and epidemics swept through the streets taking more souls and adding to the piles of bodies that only further infected those who survived the last miasma. In 1842 a Royal Commission was established to investigate the crisis and the findings were grim. It was determined that London simply had no more graves to give, there was no room, and digging a new grave would inevitably unearth a current tenant. There would have to be a solution, but things became much worse when a wave of cholera swept through the city in 1848, lasting a year, taking over 14,000 lives, and completely decimating any thin sense of optimism someone may have had of finding a quick and efficient answer for disposing of the dead. The already overwhelmed city soon became crushed over the influx of bodies and the accompanying decay and disease. By 1851 the epidemic had slowed and the Act to Amend the Laws Concerning the Burial of the Dead in the Metropolis, also known as the Burials Act, was passed forbidding any further burials to take place in the most heavily populated areas of London. There was simply no other option, the burial grounds that did exist were not good at hiding the overcrowding problem from the world and the ground was actually growing taller due to the sheer amount of humans in various stages of decay that were packed inside. According to an 1852 account David Bartlett remarked:

Quote:“Many times in our walks about London we have noticed the grave-yards attached to the various churches, for in almost every case, they are elevated considerably above the level of the sidewalk, and in some instances, five or six feet above it. The reason was clear enough—it was an accumulation for years of human dust, and that too in the centre of the largest city in the world.”

Even Charles Dickens commented on the heights of the growing graveyards, saying that they were “"conveniently and healthfully elevated above the level of the living.“

While the halt on new burials within the city put a stop to the rampant unavoidable exhumations in the burial grounds it led to another question. How do we prevent any new cemeteries from becoming just as full down the road? London was going to continue to grow and people were not going to stop dying, a plan needed to be in place.

Sir Richard Broun and Richard Sprye were entrepreneurs who believed the growth of London was partially due to the recent industrialization, and they also believed that industrialization could be an answer to the burial problem by using a new and controversial addition to the city, the railroad. The pair crunched the numbers and presented their plan. A 500-acre tract of land twenty-three miles outside of London in the village of Brookwood would be purchased and the already existing London and South Western Railway would dedicate one train a day to the purpose of transporting the dead to the new Brookwood Cemetery in dedicated coffin trains. The bodies would be kept at the cemetery until families arrived for the funerals by dedicated train, a fast and efficient way to attend that would otherwise require an agonizingly long horse and carriage ride of over ten hours. Broun estimated that the cemetery could hold 5,830,500 individual single-depth graves, enough to last 350 years before the burial ground would be full. Some people were against the railway, feeling it was demeaning to the dead, but on June 30th 1852 the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company (LNC) was formed. But, there were numerous roadblocks before things could officially get underway.


Great Seal of the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company. Image via wikipedia.com.

For one, the entire operation had to be built from the very beginning, and there were some very differing ideas as to how the project should proceed. Broun and Sprye knew what they wanted, but consulting engineer William Cubitt denied idea after idea. By September 1853 Broun and Sprye were out of the picture, an entirely new Board of Trustees was in place, and work could finally begin on the railway.  A 2,200-acre tract of land stretching to Brookwood was purchased, and a railway line was constructed branching off from the main rail line leading directly into the westernmost section of land where the cemetery would begin. Just over one year later on November 7th 1854 the cemetery opened under the name Brookwood Cemetery with the Bishop of Winchester consecrating the ground dedicated to Anglican burials. At the time it was the largest cemetery in the world and the burials began fast, the first train left the London Necropolis Railway station on November 13th carrying the first to be buried that same day, the stillborn twins of a Mr. and Mrs. Hore.

The opening of Brookwood Cemetery and the London Necropolis Railway made dignified death accessible to all. Boasting the same gardens and grandeur of the luxury cemeteries, people could afford to bury their loved ones without risk of finding graves already occupied, without fear of them unintentionally resurrecting, and knowing they were being laid to rest away from the pollution and hazards of burials in London before the Burials Act was passed.

The company had a private terminal in London’s Waterloo Station and when a person died their body was transported there to lay in storage underneath the archway until it was time for their burial. The terminal for the Necropolis line was separate from the London and South Western Railway and it housed two mortuaries, the boardroom for the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company, and separate waiting rooms for those attending first-, second-, and third-class funerals. On occasion, these waiting rooms could be used as makeshift chapels if there were family members who were unable to make the journey to Brookwood Cemetery. This separate terminal prevented hearses from blocking the street but it also allowed mourners to arrive at the railway in private. Once arrived, the families and friends of the deceased gathered at the train station in the morning and boarded railcars that were separate from the cars dedicated to carrying the dead.


The original Necropolis Railway station in Waterloo. Image via https://www.cultofweird.com/death/london-necropolis-railway/

First-class funerals got the mourners first-class train tickets but also allowed them to select a grave location of their choice and guaranteed them that a permanent memorial would be erected by the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company. Second-class mourners had less control over burial location and had to pay an additional fee for a stone. Third-class was reserved for the pauper burials where expenses were paid at the expense of the parish. Because of this, the parish decided where the grave would be located and there was no permanent marker. It may seem like all the control was given away, but here in Brookwood Cemetery even the paupers were promised their own, private resting place rather than being disposed of in a mass grave. Large numbers of graves in the overcrowded London burial grounds were even dug up and the bodies moved to Brookwood, finally giving them their own place of rest.


Third class ticket to Brookwood Cemetery. Image via wikipedia.com.

The train cars themselves also had their own class structure and people were separated into either Anglican or Noncomformist in first-, second-, or third-class seating which were all very similar with the exception of some differing decorative elements. Once inside the cemetery itself there were two different stations, North Station for the Nonconformists and South Station for those belonging to the Church of England. Each station were single-story structures made primarily out of wood and they served as much more than just a station stop. The buildings were the funeral reception areas, it was where cemetery staff lived inside built-in apartments, it was where upper class mourners could select pre-made headstones, and it’s also where the “refreshment rooms” were. Each station was fully licensed to serve alcohol during normal business hours, and they catered to more than just the mourner. A relative of a member of the cemetery staff once recalled: “In addition to catering for mourners, who mostly came down from London by train, we also had local people who walked through the cemetery calling in for afternoon tea…” The refreshment rooms were also where the train crew stayed while the funeral was going on and on at least one occasion in January 1867 the driver of the train became too drunk to drive back, leaving a fireman to drive the train back to London.


North Station of the Brookwood Cemetery. Image via wikipedia.com.

By 1896 congestion had become an issue and the London and South Western Railway proposed that they would provide the Necropolis Railway with a new station in exchange for their old terminal. An agreement was signed in May 1899 and on February 8th 1902 the new Necropolis Railway terminal opened. The new four-story building held the company offices, mortuaries, storerooms, waiting rooms, ticket offices, and a dedicated chapel space for those unable to travel to the cemetery. Portions of the London and South Western Railway were then widened to accommodate the growing Waterloo station and the original site of the Necropolis Railway was destroyed in the construction.

Although the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company solved a massive problem for the dead of the city, the long-standing phenomenon envisioned by Broun and Sprye came to an end sooner than they anticipated. When Broun and Sprye proposed their revolutionary burial solution the numbers they presented were staggering, an ability to bury millions of bodies and have burial spaces available for the next 350 years. But, in the first twenty years of operation Brookwood Cemetery had only seen approximately 3,200 burials a year. The first indication of the decline came in October 1900 when the railway eliminated Sunday services, but the real death blow came just over forty years later.

On the night of April 16th 1941 London experienced one of the worst nights of the London Blitz with bombs raining down on the city, starting thousands of fires and taking 1,000 lives by the time it ceased. The terminal for the Necropolis Railway was destroyed with only the platforms, first class waiting rooms, and offices surviving. The train itself was described as “burnt out” and the station was immediately closed down with decisions about the future of the railway to be figured out after the war. When the time came to revisit the train line in 1945 there were major obstacles standing in the way of any hopes to reopen. The cost of rebuilding the station, the trains, and fixing the now-neglected tracks was going to be substantial and the fact that use of the line was beginning to decline even before the war made repair and reopening seem unnecessary. The Necropolis Railway was officially, and unexpectedly, permanently closed.


The London Necropolis Railway after the bombing of the London Blitz. Image via wikipedia.com

The London and Southwest Railway (which became the Southern Railway after 1923), and the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company began negotiations to determine what to do with the facilities. In December 1946 it was decided that the waiting rooms, caretaker areas, and the platforms themselves would be owned by Southern Railway while the office and other remaining portions would continue to be owned by the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company to either use or dispose of. They sold the site to the British Humane Association in May 1947 and the offices were relocated to Brookwood Cemetery.

As time went on the railway, and the practice of transporting the dead by rail, faded into obscurity. Portions of the property where the 1902 terminal was located was built over for new offices, the North and South Stations became North Bar and South Bar serving refreshments until they also closed, and the rails to the line into the cemetery were removed in 1947 leaving the former track bed to become a dirt path and eventually a walkway. Today there are still some remnants of the London Necropolis Railway peeking through to the modern day. In London the second building that served as the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company offices and the entrance to the first-class terminal on Westminster Bridge Road is still standing as well as some iron columns that once supported the tracks in Newnham Terrace. The North Station inside the cemetery was demolished in the early 1960s because of dry rot and South Station was closed in 1967 and used as a mortuary and storage building for five years. In September 1972 a fire broke out in South Station totally destroying the building leading to its demise by bulldozer that same year. All that remains of the two stations now are their platforms. One building that is still alive and utilized is the chapel that once belonged to South Station, now restored by the St. Edward Brotherhood who use the chapel and maintain a shrine there for the bones of St. Edward the Martyr.

In 2007 a piece of rail track laid out on the former track bed and a plaque were dedicated as a memorial to the railway and the tens of thousands of souls who found their final place of rest after taking a ride on a train.


The memorial placed for the railway in 2007.

Sources::

This abandoned railway was London’s train for the dead by Katie Thornton. November 2nd 2020. https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2020/11/this-abandoned-railroad-was-londons-train-for-the-dead

Last train home: The Necropolis Railway by Paul Slade. 2013. http://www.planetslade.com/necropolis-railway.html.

The London Necropolis Railway Funeral Train Carried the Dead to their Graves for 87 Years by Charlie Hintz. https://www.cultofweird.com/death/london-necropolis-railway/

A history of burial in London by Hayley Dunning. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/a-history-of-burial-in-london.html

Quote:Historically the LNC had invested much of its income from burials and fares, and used the dividends from these investments to pay for cemetery upkeep. Although Alliance Property kept the name "London Necropolis Company" for its funeral business, it was a property developer with no interest in the funeral industry, and saw little reason to spend large amounts maintaining the cemetery, proceeding with the proposed crematorium, or promoting new burials of bodies or cremated remains. The rising popularity of cremation meant the rate of burials was at a historic low, while the Victorian character of the cemetery had fallen out of fashion. The income from burials was insufficient to maintain the cemetery grounds, and the cemetery began to revert to wilderness. Over the course of the 1960s most undertaking work at Brookwood came to an end.



In March 1985 the company was bought by Ramadan Güney, whose family owned the cemetery until it was purchased by Woking Borough Council in December 2014. The Guney family embarked on a programme of building links with London's mosques to encourage new burials in the cemetery. [see note 25]:



London Necropolis Company (Wiki)

Quote:THE END OF THE LINE

On Friday, 11th April, 1941, the body of Chelsea Pensioner Edward Irish (1868 - 1941) left the London Necropolis Station en route for Brookwood.

Few who witnessed the departing cortege on that April day would have realised that they were watching the end of a remarkable chapter in London's bizarre history.

Five days later, on the night of the 16th/17th of April, 1941, a German bombing raid on the area destroyed the company's rolling stock, along with much of the building.

The Southern Railway's Divisional Engineer, having inspected the damage at 2pm, on April, 17th, 1941, reported starkly, "Necropolis and buildings demolished."

Although the offices and the first class entrance from Westminster Bridge Road had survived, the devastation effectively sounded the death knell for the Necropolis Railway, and, on the 11th of May 1941, the station was officially declared closed.

Following the end of the Second World War, it was decided not to resuscitate the station, and the site and surviving buildings were sold.

Nowadays, few people who pass the ornate building at number 121, Westminster Bridge Road take the time to pay it a second glance, and few of those who notice it realise that they are gazing upon a building that was once the operational hub of one of Britain's most unique and unusual railway lines.

R.I.P. The London Necropolis Railway.