Book review: The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi by Andrew McConnell Stott

This book opens with the author, Andrew Stott, observing one of London’s most eccentric sights – the annual memorial service to Joseph Grimaldi held in Holy Trinity Church, Dalston, and attended by dozens of clowns in full regalia.  But who was Joseph Grimaldi?  Born in 1778, he was the first son of Joseph Giuseppe Grimaldi, better known as “the Signor”, an entertainer with a violent, unpredictable streak and an unhealthy obsession with death.

The Signor wished his son to follow in his footsteps onto the stage, and young Joe made his theatre debut as a toddler.  He had a wretched childhood, as the Signor was a domineering and abusive parent, regularly beating Joe (even on stage) and forcing him to train and work for long hours.  Stott shows us the dark side of theatre in this period – the many children working in theatres not only had to work long hours in poor and dangerous conditions, but many were also abused – verbally, physically and sexually.  With this atmosphere of exploitation and violence, it is easy to see why Joe later chose to keep his own son away from the theatre until he was in his late teens.

After the Signor’s death, Joe became the main breadwinner for his family and Stott documents the difficult path Joe took to eventual stardom, eventually making the pantomime role of Clown his own – he expanded the role from a simple buffoon to the clown character that we recognise today, complete with face paint and brightly coloured hair.

Sadly, despite his success on the stage, Joe’s personal life was filled with tragedy, mental illness and disability.  Stott does not seek to retrospectively diagnose Joe with any specific illnesses, but mentions the bouts of melancholy that often struck – ironically – at the times of Joe’s greatest successes.  The physical demands of Joe’s pantomime roles also took their toll, causing him to age prematurely and spend his final years as a cripple.  Stott identifies the contrast between Joe’s stage persona and his personal life as the birth of the idea of the tragic clown.

Stott’s biography not only tells us Joe’s story but also immerses the reader in the colourful, chaotic world of the theatre in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  As well as enlightening the reader about pantomime in this period (which was quite different from the pantomimes performed today), Stott includes takes of bankrupt theatre owners, vengeful set builders and a colourful array of actors, singers and acrobats and their exploits.  At times, however, it feels as though this narrative can overwhelm Joe’s story.  Many of the anecdotes are interesting and sometimes hilarious, but at times it can feel difficult to keep up with all the names, theatres and incidents that are described in detail and that are often unrelated to Joe’s life.

This is a minor quibble, however.  The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi is a fascinating biography, one that will appeal to fans of theatre history and comedy, and even just those interested in the history of London in general.

The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comedian, by Andrew McConnell Scott, Canongate Books

A rather unusual eulogy on a gravestone in Fulham

The churchyard at All Saints, Fulham deserves an entire blogpost to itself - it's the resting place of many Bishops of London, in their elaborate tombs, and also contains many crumbling and wonderfully morbid 18th Century headstones decorated with skulls and hourglasses.  It's also the location for the scene in the classic horror film The Omen, where Patrick Troughton's priest is impaled by a lightning rod during a storm.

The grave of Isabella and Joseph Murr

However, whilst exploring this wonderful and incredibly interesting graveyard I came across a headstone that I felt deserved a little blog post of its own.  In many ways it is quite unremarkable - a tall headstone from the early nineteenth century, inscribed with the name of Isabella Murr, a local woman who died in 1829.  Her grieving husband Joseph provided a eulogy that was inscribed on the stone.

Ye who possess the greatest charms of life

A tender friend - a kind indulgent wife

Oh learn their worth! In her beneath this stone

These pleasing attributes together shone

Was not true happiness with them combin'd?

Ask the spoiled being she has left behind

We do not know when the "spoiled being", Joseph Murr, died - the only words on the bottom half of the gravestone are as follows:

Presumably Joseph, or whoever chose this inscription, had a sense of humour.  It's a rare thing to find in a graveyard, but I am sure that in the 200 years since this stone was placed here, this inscription has raised a few laughs. 

"The largest and oldest museum in Reykjavik" - Hólavallagarður cemetery

A number of posts I've written for this blog so far have focused on graveyards, particularly the grand Victorian graveyards of London (at the time of writing, I have photographs of Highgate, Brompton and Kensal Green cemeteries waiting to have blog posts written around them).  However, the graveyard featured in this post lies 1,000 miles from London, on a quiet hillside in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland.

Hólavallagarður

Unlike Britain, Iceland has no long history of cities as we would recognise them.  Settled by the Vikings in the late 9th Century, Iceland has always had a small population (today it is around 300,000) and settlements tended to be small.  Reykjavik has long been settled - today, one can visit the remains of a 10th Century longhouse discovered during demolition works in the 20th Century - but it only began life as a town in the mid-18th Century.  The oldest buildings in the city are on Aðalstræti ("main street"), close to where the Viking longhouse is situated. 

It was close to Aðalstræti that Reykjavik's main graveyard was situated for around 800 years.  Now a slightly gloomy paved square surrounded by hotels, museums and coffee shops, this ancient burial ground was called Víkurgarður.  It is thought that a church was situated in this area since around the year 1000, when the Icelandic people converted to Christianity.

In 1838, however, the tiny burial ground at Víkurgarður was closed and a new, larger burial ground at nearby Suðurgata was consecrated, called Hólavallagarður. The Icelandic people had an interesting tradition around burial grounds - there was a folk belief that the first person to be buried in a graveyard would not rot, but would become the graveyard's "guardian", watching over the people subsequently buried there.  At Hólavallagarður this "guardian" is Guðrún Oddsdóttir, wife of a local magistrate.

The view from Hólavallagarður - the grey spire is that of Hallgrimskirkja

The name "Hólavallagarður" simply means "garden on a hill" - the photograph above shows the view over the city from the cemetery.  The first time I came across this cemetery was on my first full day in Reykjavik, whilst walking out of the city centre towards the National Museum of Iceland.  It was a damp, gloomy November day and there was no-one else around.  I visited again a few days later, after the snow had fallen, on an equally quiet and peaceful day (although it was a great deal colder!).

There are many trees in Hólavallagarður

My initial impression of Hólavallagarður was of a rather dark, heavily forested space.  The many trees in the graveyard, mostly birch and rowan, were planted in the early 20th Century.  They give the graveyard a natural - if slightly claustrophobic - feel, and I imagine that on a sunny day in spring or summer Hólavallagarður looks and smells completely alive despite the condition of its residents.  The trees also make Hólavallagarður rather distinctive, as trees are not a particularly commonn sight in Iceland, particularly outside of Reykjavik.  Iceland was once heavily forested, but deforestation and soil erosion caused by human activity after settlement in the 9th Century means that only a tiny percentage of the country is now forested.

Hólavallagarður's plots had all been bought by 1932, although many graves date from much later than this.  It struck me whilst exploring the cemetery how untouched by war and vandalism it is - in London's big cemeteries one sees signs everywhere of decay, vandalism, and the scars of Second World War air raids and ill thought out "modernisation" schemes by councils after the original cemetery companies sold up.  In contrast, Hólavallagarður was well-kept and clean.  The metal railings surrounding gravestones had not been stolen for scrap metal or for making weapons during wartime.  It looked as though it has never been neglected.  Dozens of redwings hopped and flew between the headstones and trees, shy birds that took off every time I pointed my camera in their direction.

Having spent a great deal of time exploring and photographing Victorian cemeteries and graves in London, I spotted some symbols and fashions similar to those popular in Victorian Britain.  The grave pictured below shows an upturned, extinguished torch, a common signifier of death in 19th Century funerary imagery.  This particular grave could also be a "broken column" grave, signifying that the man buried there was the head of the family.

The graves at Hólavallagarður are less grand, less ostenatious than some of those from the same period in Britain.  This may partly be down to the fact that until relatively recently, Iceland was a poor country, only gaining its high standard of living after indpendence from Denmark in 1944.  The modest, simple graves have a quiet dignity about them.  Some of them, such as the one pictured below, reflect the green, organic nature of their surroundings.

As well as being home to many trees, Hólavallagarður is full of mosses and lichens.  The air in Reykjavik is incredibly clean, providing ideal conditions for lichens to grow.  Many of the graves are "fenced off" by stone walls or metal railings, leaving narrow, winding walkways covered in leaves and moss.  Even before the snow came I had to watch my footing as I walked between graves, mindful of how slippery it was under foot.

The livid green of the moss and the brightly coloured lichens lifted some of the gloom from this otherwise very grey, wintery space.

Uphill from the cemetery's main entrance stands an elegant little structure, a beautiful red and white bell tower.

As well as the numerous living birds flitting around the cemetery, Hólavallagarður also has many birds on its memorials.  On gravestones, birds can be interpreted as symbols of peace, or (particularly if they are doves) messengers from God.

Hólavallagarður is unique among cemeteries of a similar age - unlike other large urban cemeteries in Europe it has been untouched by war, vandalism and neglect, giving it a feel of peace and continuity not found in other 19th Century cemeteries.  Art historian Björn Th. Björnsson has described it as "the largest and oldest museum in Reykjavik", a place where "a living exhibition and history opens itself to anyone who can read the hand of the sculptor and discern from symbols and types of font the thoughts and deeds of the dead."  Reykjavik is a wonderful place to visit, and Hólavallagarður is a lovely, peaceful spot to while away a couple of hours wandering around the old graves.

Fallen comrades: Caroline of Brunswick's life and death in Hammersmith

Hammersmith, with its riverside factories and wharves, was badly bombed during the Second World War - but that's a story for another blog post.  Amongst the postwar concrete of the immediate area around Hammersmith tube station, a few older buildings and facades remain: a Georgian building that now houses a Chinese restaurant, rows of 19th Century villas leading down towards the river, and the splendid Gothic church of St Paul, built from a distinctive pinkish stone.

St Paul's Church, Hammersmith

Today St Paul's also has a modern extension, and is surrounded by a pleasant green space full of blossom trees, a magnet for workers from nearby shops and offices during their lunch breaks.  As with so many green spaces in built up areas of London, this piece of land was once a burial ground - indeed, archaeologists uncovered many burials during the construction of the church's extension in 2009-10.  Only a small number of gravestones remain, clustered by the church's tower, tucked away in a corner of the churchyard.

The grave of Richard Honey and George Francis

One of these gravestones - pictured above - is protected by English Heritage, not because the men whose grave it marked were rich or illustrious but because of how they died, and how their friends and colleagues chose to commemorate their deaths. Richard Honey and George Francis were ordinary working men who met an untimely end when trouble flared at the funeral of George IV's estranged wife, Caroline of Brunswick, on 14th August 1821.

Caroline Amelia Elisabeth of Brunswick was a German princess, a first cousin of George IV (her mother had been the sister of George III).  She became engaged to the future George IV in 1794.  George was already secretly married to Maria Fitzherbert, though this match was not legal as George had not sought the permission of his father the King to marry, as set out in the Royal Marriages Act of 1772.  This Act had come into existence to prevent members of the Royal Family from marrying anyone deemed unsuitable after George III's brother married a commoner, Anne Horton, in 1771.

George III refused to give financial help to his debt-ridden, wayward heir unless he got married.  Caroline of Brunswick was considered a suitable match and she and George were engaged despite having never met.  Concerns about Caroline's suitability were first raised when the diplomat Lord Malmesbury went over to Brunswick to bring Caroline over to England for the wedding.  Malmesbury expressed reservations about Caroline's lack of tact and poor personal hygiene.  Nevertheless, Caroline made the journey over to England, arriving in Greenwich on 5th April 1795.

The marriage between Caroline and George was a disaster from the start.  Both parties were immediately repelled by the other.  George, upon seeing Caroline for the first time, simply called for a glass of brandy.  He was extremely drunk during the wedding ceremony.  It was rumoured that Caroline had been suggested as a possible bride by George's mistress at the time, Lady Jersey, in the hope an unappealing wife would ensure that George continued his relationship with his mistress.

Caroline gave birth to a girl, Princess Charlotte Augusta, on 7th January 1796, nine months after the wedding.  By this time, rumours were already circulating about the poor state of the royal marriage and in April 1796 the couple formally separated.  Princess Charlotte did not live with her mother, but Caroline visited her often.  Caroline also brought a number of other children into her household.  One of these children, a little boy called William Austin, was alleged to be Caroline's illegitimate son.  This claim led to Caroline being subjected to investigations over her fidelity, during which time she was unable to see her daughter.  The accusations of infidelity were not able to be proved, but Caroline became increasingly isolated socially and left England for mainland Europe in 1814.

George IV when he was Prince of Wales.  When Caroline first met him, she remarked that he was a great deal fatter than she'd been led to believe.

Caroline settled in Italy, where a man called Bartolomeo Pergami was hired as her servant.  Pergami rose to become the head of Caroline's household, and before long scurrilous rumours about Caroline's relationship with him began to spread back in England.  In 1817, Princess Charlotte tragically died in childbirth at the age of 21.  George declined to inform Caroline of their daughter's death, and Caroline only heard the news by chance from a passing courier.

By this time, George was keen to divorce Caroline, something which could only be done if one of the parties admitted or was found guilty of adultery.  After the death of George III in 1820, Caroline returned to England to assert her rights as Queen, and it was then that George intensified his efforts to legally end their marriage.

What followed was an infamous, highly publicised trial that sought to prove Caroline guilty of adultery with Pergami.  However, what George and his government had not considered was Caroline's popularity with the general public.  George was deeply unpopular - he was seen as an incompetent drunk - whereas Caroline was viewed as the wronged wife.  Many petitions, altogether collecting around a million signatures, were collected supporting Caroline's cause.  The Bill of Pains and Penalities, which sought to remove all of Caroline's priveliges and titles as George's wife, was defeated in the House of Lords.

Caroline at her trial

During the trial, Caroline had brought her household to Hammersmith, to Brandenburgh House, a grand residence that had recently been vacated by the Margravine of Anspach.  Caroline quickly became popular with local residents, and it is said that when the Bill of Pains and Penalties was defeated, "the Hammersmith tradesmen who served her illuminated their houses, and the populace shouted and made bonfires in front of Brandenburgh House. After her acquittal, the poor queen publicly returned thanks for that issue in Hammersmith Church, and more deputations came to Brandenburgh House to congratulate her on her triumph." (source)

Media coverage of the trial was huge, and hugely sensational.  The Radical politican William Cobbett took up Caroline's cause.  A biography of Cobbett states that "from the moment of Caroline's arrival in England, [Cobbett] constituted himself her champion." (G.D.H. Cole - The Life of William Cobbett, p.166)  Cobbett and his Radical colleagues were able to utilise the popular press in support of Caroline's cause, with papers and news sheets being printed in large numbers and distributed far and wide.

"The story, according to Cobbett, reached “every cottage in the Kingdom”. It arrived there via a news-chain. At the top of the chain were the newspapers, which sold only a few thousand because the stamp duty kept their price at 7d (though the Times doubled its sales to 20,000 during the queen's trial by supporting her with more enthusiasm than its rivals). Those papers were lent out by libraries, read out in taverns and rented by the hour" (source)

This was a watershed moment for politics - for the first time, masses of ordinary people were engaged with a political matter and due to the pressures of public opinion, the Bill was defeated and the support of the public led to Caroline emerging victorious against her unpopular husband.

Brandenburgh House (right), the Hammersmith home of Queen Caroline (picture source)

Sadly, Caroline did not long survive the defeat of the Bill of Pains and Penalties.  Three weeks after George IV's ostentatious coronation, at which Caroline had been noisily refused entry to the ceremony, Caroline died.  She had fallen ill soon after the coronation, dying either of cancer or an intestinal obstruction on 7th August 1821.  She was 53 years old.

Caroline's funeral posed a problem for George and his government.  Caroline's will had instructed that she be buried in her native Brunswick, and it was feared that the procession of her coffin from Brandenburgh House through London to the port of Harwich would draw unruly crowds.  An attempt was made to divert the cortege's route outside of London, but angry crowds gathered to block routes out of the city, forcing the procession through the middle of the city.  The chaos that ensued led to troops firing on the crowds, and two men - Richard Honey and George Francis - were killed.

The Manchester Guardian (18th August 1821) reported that:

"It became necessary [for the Guards] to force a way for the procession through whatever impediments might present themselves. The people were equally bent on turning the procession, and forcing it into the route of the city. Here a contest arose, and here, we deeply regret to say, blood was shed!

Some stones and mud were thrown at the military, and a magistrate being present, the soldiers were sanctioned in firing their pistols and carbines at the unarmed crowd. Screams of terror were heard in every direction. The number of shots fired was not less than forty or fifty. So completely did the soldiery appear at this period to have lost the good temper and forbearance they previously evinced, that they fired shots in the direction in which the procession was moving."

The two men who lost their lives were ordinary working men.  Here the story might have ended, with the men disappearing into a common grave and eventually being forgotten.  However, the dead men's friends and colleagues raised money to provide the large headstone which still survives today.  The stirring, daring inscription reads:

Here lie interred the mortal remains of

Richard Honey, Carpenter,

aged 36 years, and of

George Francis, Bricklayer, aged 43 years,

who were slain on the 14th August, 1821, while attending the 

funeral of Caroline, of Brunswick,

Queen of England

The details of that melancholy event

Belong to the history of the country

In which they will be recorded

Together with the public opinion

Decidedly expressed relative to the

Disgraceful transactions

Of that disastrous day

Deeply impressed with their fate

Unmerited and unavenged

Their respective trades interred them

At their general expence [sic]

On the 24th of the same month

to their memory.

Richard Honey left one female orphan.

George Francis left a widow and three young children.

Victims like these have fallen in every age

Stretch of pow'r or party's cruel rage

Until even handed justice comes at last

To amend the future and avenge the past

Their friends and fellow-men lament their doom

Protect their orphans, and erect their tomb.

Although organised labour as we would recognise it today was then in its infancy - in the early 1820s trade unions were officially illegal - the inscription on this large tombstone, paid for by the donations of ordinary working people, shows the solidarity between Caroline's working class supporters and their determination that their fallen comrades would not be forgotten.

The inquest into the deaths recorded a verdict of "wilful murder against a life guardsman unknown" for Francis and manslaughter for Honey, who unlike Francis did not die at the scene but succumbed a few hours later to his injuries.  The fact that no individual was ever named or prosecuted for the deaths was picked up upon by commentators at the time, as the cartoon below shows.

A caricature by George Cruikshank (source)

Brandenbugh House is long gone, demolished not long after Caroline's death, but Hammersmith has not forgotten her. Queen Caroline Street runs close to St Paul's church where the two shot men lie at rest, even though their surroundings are completely changed from that of the little riverside churchyard they were orignally buried in.  Their grave is well worth a visit to see the inscription, a moving example of solidarity amongst the working classes.

For a more detailed account of Caroline's scandalous trial and its political fallout, I recommend the entertaining book "Rebel Queen" by Jane Robins.

A Victorian Gothic Graveyard: West Norwood

Thank you for all the kind responses and comments to the previous post about Nunhead.  As it turns out, I enjoyed my trip to Nunhead so much that I've decided to make a bit of a series of London's Magnificent Seven graveyards.  Over the next few months I'm planning to visit the rest of them and report back here - they all seem incredibly different from each other despite being created with the same purpose in mind.

Don't blink.

The subject of today's blog is West Norwood, which like Nunhead is in South East London, close to Crystal Palace.  The cemetery is situated on a hillside - thought to be healthier - and these days overlooks the big transmitters at Crystal Palace, and a number of people were buried there specifically because they had been involved in the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the graveyard overlooked the relocated Crystal Palace until its destruction by fire in 1936.

Unfortunately for me, the tours of West Norwood's cemetery take place earlier in the winter months and I was dependent on catching the 10.24 from Victoria to get to West Norwood in time.  I missed this train by less than a minute so instead took a train to Croydon and changed there.  I was far too late for the guided tour by the time I arrived in West Norwood.  The cemetery is a very short distance from the station - there is only one entrance these days, as the previous gates have been out of use for many years.

Not to be deterred by missing out on the tour, I set off around the cemetery.  Unlike Nunhead, West Norwood did not suffer quite the same levels of neglect and most of the area is free of trees and overgrown brambles and weeds.  One of the first monuments that stands out upon entering the cemetery is the Gothic spire pictured above, a monument to James William Gilbart, a banker and influential author who died in 1863.

Gothic architecture is a recurring feature throughout the cemetery.  West Norwood was consecrated as a burial ground in 1837 - making it the second of the Magnificent Seven to be opened after Kensal Green opened in 1832.  William Tite, designer of London's Royal Exchange and numerous railway stations across Britain, was charged with designing the new cemetery's layout and he incorporated the design ideals of the Gothic Revival into the cemtery's landscape.  The two chapels on the site - Anglican and Non-Conformist - were both of a Gothic design, as are many of the grand monuments.  This was a departure from convention - previously, large new cemeteries that were planned (as opposed to growing haphazardly around churches) had been based on Classical styling.  Tite later went on to lay out the designs for the huge new cemetery built by the London Necropolis Company at Brookwood in Surrey in the 1850s.

William Tite (image borrowed from National Portrait Gallery's website)

Sadly, neither of the Gothic chapels at West Norwood remain today.  The chapel in the cemetery is a modern rebuild of the Non-Conformist chapel and incorporates a crematorium which is still in use today.  The Anglican chapel was the victim of a V1 flying "doodlebug" bomb during the Second World War and has not survived, although the catacombs beneath it remain, though they are not particularly safe and therefore rarely available for viewing by the public.

Similar to other Victorian burial grounds, West Norwood fell into decline after the Second World War and was subject to a compulsory purchase order by Lambeth Council in 1965 after the company that owned the cemetery ran into financial difficulties due to attempts to repair WWII bomb damage.  The council then bulldozed a large number of monuments - estimated to be around 40% - and many graves were opened and reused (this was later ruled to be illegal and has now stopped).  This explains why many modern graves can be found nestled in amongst monuments from the 19th century.  Poignantly, rather a large number of these more recent burials are little graves of babies - there is something horribly sobering about seeing the grave of a baby born in the same year as oneself.

 

The second of the above pictures showing new graves alongside old ones also includes an example of Victorian funerary symbolism - the clasped hands (in white, slightly damaged, on the headstone on the right).  Meaning "farewell", this symbol is commonly found on gravestones from the Victorian period.  Another symbol of death, the upside down torch ("life extinguished"), is visible on the monument pictured below - look at the square columns at each corner.

Another symbol that crops up in Victorian cemeteries is that of the broken pillar, which represented the loss of the head of a family.  The first image below is properly broken - it has lost its grave, but is an ornate and attractive example of this type of gravestone design.  The second picture shows what the broken pillar design looks like when complete.

West Norwood has its fair share of illustrious inhabitants.  Mrs Beeton is one famous burial at the cemetery, but due to missing the start of the guided tour I didn't manage to locate her grave.  However, shortly after finding and photographing the two broken column monuments, I ran into the tour group and was able to join them for the remainder of the cemetery tour.

The monument above isn't an example of the broken column design - its column was once topped by a draped urn, which due to the passing of time was worn down and eventually fell off, and reattaching it is impossible without causing significant damage to the column.  This monument marks the grave of William Marsden, a surgeon who founded the Royal Free Hospital which, as its name suggests, was to provide free healthcare for the poor of London.  After his first wife (buried here too) died of cancer, he also founded what was to become the Royal Marsden Hospital on the Fulham Road, a specialist facility for cancer sufferers.

This rather overgrown tomb marks the resting place of Thomas Cubitt and many of his family members.  Cubitt is responsible for many of the grand white stucco houses that are found in Belgravia and Pimlico in central London (there is a monument to Cubitt at the bottom of Denbigh Street in Pimlico) and died a very rich man.  The marble slab over his family tomb is reputedly a foot thick and must have been exceptionally cumbersome to transport to the cemetery.  Despite Cubitt's vast wealth, his family were still subject to the sad realities of life in Victorian Britain and the grave contains the remains of a number of children who died young, including two who died within two days of each other.

This beautifully sculpted angel is part of Sir Henry Doulton's mausoleum.  Sir Henry was born into a family prominent in the pottery business, and went on to be extremely successful in his own right, overseeing the manufacture of drain pipes and other items intended to improve sanitation as well more artistic items.  The tiles and bricks that make up his tomb came from a Doulton factory, and the monument is Grade II listed.

Another red coloured mausoleum is the tomb of Henry Tate, well known both for being a major figure in the sugar trade and, an avid collector of artworks, also the founder of the Tate Gallery in London.  In both his tomb and that of Doulton, the remains of these two men and their families have now been reburied underground as both monuments have been extensively restored.

As well as the destructive actions of Lambeth Council, vandalism and the natural shifting of the ground within the graveyard have claimed many monuments.  Some of these have been restored or made safe, and we came across one such monument that was in imminent danger of collapsing and is now being restored.

One grave which has proved to be an unlikely tourist attraction is that of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a name that will be familiar to followers of the Baptist church.  He was the founder of the Metropolitan Tabernacle at the Elephant & Castle and his sermons, all of which he wrote down and many of which are still available to buy in printed format, were enormously popular and drew huge crowds.  His burial in 1892 also drew huge crowds.  His tomb, pictured below, still attracts coachloads of tourists, mainly from America.

Next to Spurgeon's tomb is another impressive monument - to the inventor of Bovril.  John Lawson Johnston invented a beef based beverage as part of a contract to feed French troops and Bovril made him an extremely rich man, and he died on his yacht in the south of France in 1900.  His tomb was damaged by a bomb during WWII, but still remains an imposing monument today (pictured below).

I've provided a far from exhaustive list of illustrious persons buried at West Norwood -the cemetery is the final resting place of many politicians, engineers, inventors, philanthropists and other notable people.  The Friends of Norwood Cemetery offer a booklet contianing short biographies of "Norwood Notables" which includes a map to make locating each grave easier (it would have been useful I had bought this before I started wandering around!)

One part of the cemetery offers a departure from the usual Victorian graves and memorials - the Greek Cemetery.  A community of Greeks grew up in the City and Bayswater during the nineteenth century and many of the families became wealthy through the shipping business.  Although they did not really have a connection to south east London, the community bought a large plot at West Norwood for the burial of their relatives and many impressive memorials can be found in this section of the cemetery.

As the above photograph demonstrates, the architecture in the Greek cemetery is markedly different to most of that in the regular cemetery, with - understandably - mostly Classical influences.

However, as this man's memorial clearly shows, many of the tombs also incorporated Ancient Egyptian designs.  The Greek cemetery is very easy to find as its monuments are much larger than those surrounding it, and many of the inscriptions on tombs are in Greek rather than English.

 

A few more photographs from the cemetery...

With any luck, this isn't the last this blog will see of West Norwood.  I enquired about tours of the catacombs at the cemetery and have joined the Friends of West Norwood Cemetery so that I'll be able to visit the catacombs (Lambeth Council restrict access quite severely due to health and safety issues) some time next year.

The Friends of West Norwood Cemetery have a website at http://www.fownc.org/