Brompton Cemetery, London UK

Brompton Cemetery covers 16 hectares (39 acres) within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in West London. The walled site has gates and lodges on Old Brompton Road to the north, and Fulham Road to the south. The tracks of the District Line run to the west, and Finborough and Ifield Roads to the east.

Brompton Cemetery was opened in 1840 as the West of London and Westminster Cemetery. Its founder was the architect, inventor and entrepreneur Stephen Geary (1797-1854), who had previously created cemeteries at Highgate and Nunhead. These three, along with Abney Park, Kensal Green, Tower Hamlets and West Norwood, represent London’s Magnificent Seven, a ring of suburban garden cemeteries opened between 1833 and 1841, on the cusp of the Georgian and the Victorian eras.

The population of London had doubled within 40 years; with some two million inhabitants, it was the largest city in the world. New burial space was needed to meet the demands of a rapidly growing city and relieve the horrors of crowded ancient churchyards. The Magnificent Seven were commercial ‘joint stock’ enterprises, raising funds through the sale of shares on the stock market, and aiming for a clientele from the affluent middle and upper classes. Facilities for the general population followed from the 1850s, as the metropolitan boroughs began to establish their own municipal cemeteries.