The Magnificent Seven

An article on a recent ride by London Clarion submitted by James Houston.

One impact of London’s rapidly expanding population in the early 1800s was that churchyards ran out of space to bury the dead. To alleviate the problem, seven private cemeteries were built outside of central London, which are now referred to as the Magnificent Seven. Twelve members of London Clarion Cycling Club met on a cool, bright late-August Sunday to visit them.

At each cemetery we chose one or two graves to visit, to discover some of the lives associated with them. We learned about John Wade ‘good Samaritan of Deptford’, Henry Tate, Isabella Beeton, Chief Long Wolf, William and Catherine Booth, Frank Bostock, Will Crooks, and Harry Orwell.

In addition to visiting the cemeteries, we also stopped by other sites of interest along the route. This included the Brixton Windmill, the Hyde Park Pet Cemetery, a historic pub which had recently been rebuilt ‘brick-by-brick’ after developers demolished it without permission, and the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which until its closure in 2017 had been in business for 450 years and had cast Big Ben and the Liberty Bell.

Our starting point was a cafe in Bermondsey. It seemed appropriate, as not only had it originally been built as a watch house to protect the adjacent churchyard from body snatchers, but it also serves excellent coffee and pastries. From here we took a 45-mile clockwise loop around London.

We are privileged in London to have so much history at our doorstep and in London Clarion we make the most of this by having some rides in our calendar each year which focus on this aspect. I really enjoyed the good fellowship on this ride, and as we compared notes afterwards in the Anchor Tap, I thought tomyself,‘it’sgoodtobealive’.

Although the cemeteries were all built between 1833 and 1841, they are each unique and this is very much felt in person. They have different sizes and topographies and have varied histories.

In November 1854, a train made its maiden journey from the Necropolis station, an annex of London Waterloo station, to the Surrey countryside. There were no holiday makers, suitcases or trunks. The freight consisted of coffins containing corpses. The train was destined for Brookwood Cemetery, near Woking, some 23 miles outside of London.

The 23-mile (37km) distance between London and Brookwood meant that the traditional horse-drawn funeral cart (plodding at an appropriately funereal pace) could take up to 12 hours. Brookwood was the answer to the overcrowding, and the Southwestern railway provided transport needed for the deceased and the mourners. Trains ran every day and would be met at Brookwood by a team of black horses to haul the carriages down the slope into the cemetery.

The reason mourners faced a 46-mile (74km) round trip to bury their dead was because London's rapid growth had pushed the population to 2.5 million and the capital’s churchyards, were running out of room to bury the dead.

In 1851 parliament passed "An Act to Amend the Laws Concerning the Burial of the Dead in the Metropolis" The following year, the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company was formed with the ambition to create London's one and only burial ground forever. The company went to great efforts to make the new cemetery on the former Woking Common so attractive that Londoners would not even consider burying their loved ones elsewhere. The Brookwood prospectus promised eternal peace.

The train was divided according to social class and religious affinity The Bishop of London, Charles Blomfield, was concerned about the remains of those who had led "decent and wholesome lives travelling alongside those whose lifestyles had been morally lax". Blomfield did not think the "hurry and bustle" worked in combination with religious solemnity. The solution was to make the Necropolis train an entirely separate service, with their own carriages and timetable, and six separate categories of ticket for the living and the dead.

The coffins were segregated so that the bodies of Anglican worshippers travelled behind the carriages for Anglican mourners, and the same for those of all other religions. The London Necropolis Railway came to an end during the night of 16April 1941, in one of the last major air raids on London, the station was hit by high explosive and incendiary bombs. Post-war, funeral train services did not restart as motor cars and hearses were becoming more popular and were more convenient.