London Cemeteries

England London  Cemeteries

Only a fraction of London's monumental inscriptions survive today. It can be helpful to search surveys of church cemeteries made in the past, when more gravestones were intact, and before churches were demolished.

History
Up to the mid-1800s, most London burials took place in churchyards. For further information on these burial grounds, see specific London parish pages. Due to overcrowding, municipal cemeteries, located outside of the historic City of London, such as New Bunhill Fields, became popular.

In addition to the city churches, other popular burial grounds in medieval and early modern London included:


 * Austin Friars
 * Crutched Friars
 * Mercer's Chapel
 * Rolls Chapel
 * St Anthony's Hospital
 * St Mary Magdalen Guildhall
 * Whitefriars

Bunhill Fields burial ground, opened in 1665 to inter Londoners who died in the Great Plague, was in operation until 1854. Approximately 120,000 burials took place there. (175+ entries)

The Magnificent Seven Greater London cemeteries opened in the nineteenth century were (with years opened):
 * 1) (1832) (1,500+ entries)
 * 2) (1837) (1,900+ entries); official website
 * 3) (1839) (175+ entries);  (665+ entries)
 * 4) (1840) (4,500+ entries)
 * 5) (1840)
 * 6) (1840) (950+ entries)
 * 7) (1841)

Beginning in 1854, thousands of East Enders were buried in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey (also known as the London Necropolis). It is the largest cemetery in the UK and one of the largest in the world. Until World War II, funeral trains ran from Waterloo station directly to the Cemetery. (614+ entries) More than 235,000 people have been buried there. The official Brookwood Cemetery site offers a grave search for a fee.

Large Victorian cemeteries include:


 * New Bunhill Fields
 * (240+ entries)

Major modern cemeteries include:


 * Wandsworth Cemetery, London BillionGraves
 * (1,850+ entries)

Church Interiors
For early monuments inside London churches, see:


 * Weever, John. Ancient Funeral Monuments in Great Britain &amp;c. 1631; reprint, London: W. Tooke, 1767. Digitized by Internet Archive. City of London begins on page 413.
 * Fisher, Payne and G. Blacker Morgan. Catalogue of the Tombs in the Churches of the City of London, A.D. 1666. 1668; reprint, London: Hasell, Watson, Viney, Ld., 1885. Digitized by Internet Archive.
 * Oliver, Andrew. A List of Monumental Brasses in the City of London Churches. 1891. Digitized by Internet Archive. (41 brasses)

Churchyards
The Churchyard Inscriptions of the City of London (1910) is available online.

Guides
A very useful guide to published monumental inscriptions appeared in the Genealogists' Magazine in the late 1920s and early 1930s:


 * 'A Bibliography of Monumental Inscriptions in the City and County of London,' Genealogists' Magazine, Vol. 5 (1929-1931):406-408; Vol. 6 (1932-1934):22-23, 68-69, 107-109, 285, 439-441, 503 and 561.

Raymond has compiled an extensive list of publications of City of London monumental inscriptions.

For a modern guide to London's burial grounds, see:


 * Wolfson, Patricia S. and Cliff Webb. Greater London Cemeteries and Crematoria. London: Society of Genealogists Enterprises Ltd., c2005, 2007..

Websites

 * Cemetery Records (London Metropolitan Archives Information Leaflet)
 * Deceased Online. Includes London Borough of Brent, London Borough of Camden, London Borough of Havering, London Borough of Islington, and London Borough of Merton monumental inscriptions.
 * The London Burial Grounds. History, cemetery photographs. David Orme took an 1897 description of the city church cemeteries and updated it with additional sources and modern observations.
 * Brookwood Cemetery. History, cemetery chapel, cemetery map, grave search, famous graves.