Kensal Green Cemetery

London’s Beautiful, Overgrown, Chaotic and Most Fascinating Cemetery

Kensal Green Cemetery was established 1832 as London’s answer to Pere LaChaise cemetery in Paris. Over the years, it became a final resting place for London’s wealthy and famous, who wanted to be buried in the well-planned and beautiful cemetery. Over the years, Kensal Green has become a tangled, overgrown and atmospheric jumble of stone, trees, overgrowth and mystery. It is still in constant use as a cemetery and crematorium for today’s Londoners.

I’ve visited Kensal Green several times over the last twenty-five or thirty years and it’s never failed to capture my imagination and inspire my photography. It’s impossible not to be overwhelmed by the sadness and grief on display– witness the countless grieving angels. But it’s also a celebration of lives lived to their fullest, such as the young father who died in 2000 but left his children with some inspiring words:

“My son, my daughters, you have amazed me with your minds. You will have no limits to what you want from life. Whenever you want help, I will be there. By the way, enjoy food. It’s wonderful!”

There are several notable monuments, none more astounding than that of Andrew Ducrow (1793-1842), a well known circus performer and horse trainer, whose large mausoleum is surrounded by large sphinxes at the corners. There’s also the tomb of Charles Spencer Ricketts, with its gothic design and gargoyles, as well as Green Men faces staring out from the sides. And it’s hard to miss the large tomb of Major-General William Casement (1788–1844), Military Secretary to the Government of India, whose canopied monument is supported at the corners by four large, turbaned Indian bearers.

There’s a section nearby where several recent child burials have taken place, and it’s heartbreaking to see stuffed animals left guarding their graves, all waterlogged and bedraggled now after years of sitting out in the wet London weather.

But there are also hundreds and hundreds of immeasurably sad graves to be found, like the grave of little Marigold Churchill (1918-21), the two year old daughter of the young Winston and Clementine Churchill, who lies buried on her own in a forgotten corner, far from her parents and siblings who are all interred in Oxfordshire.

And near Marigold is an even sadder, overgrown, forgotten stone cross with the names of Little Willie, Little Ernie, Little Mona and Dear Nora, all who perished in early childhood, one by one, at the turn of the last century, presumably leaving their grief-stricken parents left to wonder how they would carry on. I had to almost crawl on my hands and knees in the undergrowth and pull the tangled vines off their grave to read of their tragic story. Though their story is all but forgotten, it can still be read in the remaining metal lettering around the base of the cross.

Many of the headstones are illegible, some of those lettering has fallen off over the years, and many lean and tilt precariously. I was shocked to see a large opening underneath a heavy stone monument, where I could see eight or ten Victorian coffins stacked on shelves under the ground, the wood decaying and leather covering now gone, except for the brass buttons that fastened it to the wood. My favorite headstone in the cemetery is of a small horse sitting on top of a tomb, with a small child next to the horse’s forelegs. When I first visited Kensal Green, the horse and child still had their heads, but now the horse has only one leg; perhaps next visit, both will have fallen to the ground and become buried and forgotten in the overgrowth.