The Shepherd, July 2004
BOOK REVIEW
London’s Necropolis
A Guide to Brookwood Cemetery
By John M Clarke
Published 2004 by Sutton Publishing Limited
ISBN 0-7509-3513-8
Hardback, 300 pages, £30
JOHN CLARKE’S INTEREST in Brookwood Cemetery, and in particular its railway link with London, predates our own coming here in March 1982 by a number of years. This year, the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the cemetery, he has produced a very attractive and valuable guide. The cemetery, the largest in the country extends to four hundred acres and it is estimated that a quarter of a million people have been buried here, so the task of producing a guide was no small one. Mr Clarke has succeeded admirably well, and his book is attractively produced with thirty-two pages of black and white photographs.
After a Foreword by Dr Julian W. S. Litten, and the author’s 38 page introduction in which he gives a history of the cemetery, he divides the cemetery into various sections and then proceeds to mention all the notable memorials and mausolea, often giving short biographies of the people laid to rest there. These include minor Royals (a grandson of King William IV), churchmen, writers, artists, actors, sportsmen, and politicians, and there are, as many of our readers will be aware, several sections for adherents of various religious confessions and or a members of national groups; Swedes, Latvians, Poles, notable among them. In noting all these people, Mr Clarke paints a picture of British life and that of its wider Empire in the nineteenth century, and of the twentieth century with the many peoples of diverse ethnic and religious origins who have settled here.
In addition to this the main part of the guide, the author has included some notes which describe the various kinds of memorial, the symbolism of funerary art and the types of stone employed for memorials. At the end he adds a number of appendices about the London Necropolis Company and the Brookwood Cemetery Society. Of the latter he was a founder member and for many years the chairman. These appendices are followed by notes cross-referencing points in the guide to further biographical and bibliographical references.
His study, which incidentally begins with the Saint Edward Brotherhood, is a fascinating and meticulous account of the cemetery, and it well deserves the attention of our readers.
|
