Brompton Cemetery
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brompton Cemetery is a cemetery located in Earl's Court, a part of the Borough of Kensington & Chelsea in west London, England. It is managed by The Royal Parks.
While the cemetery is still open for occasional new burials, today more people use it as a delightful public park (and a notorious homosexual meeting place) than as a place for mourning the dead. It has featured in a number of films, including "The Wisdom of Crocodiles" (starring Jude Law), "Crush" (Imelda Staunton and Andie MacDowell) and "Johnny English" (starring Rowan Atkinson); as well as being used as a location by photographers such as Bruce Weber (see "The Chop Suey Club").
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[edit] History
The cemetery was opened as part of an initiative in the mid-19th century to provide seven large, modern cemeteries (sometimes called the 'Magnificent Seven') in a ring round the outside of London of which Highgate Cemetery was another example. The inner-city cemeteries, mostly the graveyards attached to individual churches, had long been unable to cope with the number of burials and were seen as a hazard to health and an undignified way to treat the dead.
Brompton Cemetery was designed by Benjamin Baud and has at its centre a modest domed chapel (in the style of the basilica of St. Peter's in Rome), reached by long colonnades, and flanked by catacombs. The chapel is dated 1839.
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Beatrix Potter who lived in The Boltons nearby, took the names of many of her animal characters from tombstones in the cemetery and it is said that Mr McGregor's walled garden was based on the colonnades. Names on headstones included Mr Nutkins, Mr McGregor, a Tod (with that unusual single 'd' spelling), Jeremiah Fisher, Tommy Brock - and even a Peter Rabbett.
[edit] Famous occupants
Famous occupants of the cemetery include:
He is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.
- Tomasz Arciszewski - Polish socialist politician
- William Edward Ayrton - British physicist
- Samuel Baker founder of Sotheby's auction house
- Sir Squire Bancroft - actor and theatre impressarioo
- Joseph Bonomi the Younger - sculptor, artist, Egyptologist and museum curator
- George Borrow - author, traveller and linguist
- Fanny Brawne - John Keats' muse
- Sir James Browne - engineer
- Henry James Byron - actor and dramatist
- William Martin Cafe - Indian Mutiny hero and VC recipient
- William Cargill - politican and founder of Otago, New Zealand
- John Graham Chambers - founder of the Amateur Athletic Association
- Henry Cole - founder of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal College of Music, the 1851 Great Exhibition and inventor of the Christmas card
- Samuel Cunard - founder of the Cunard Line
- Charles Fremantle - founded the Swan River Colony (Western Australia)
- John William Godward - painter
- George Goldie - "founded" Nigeria
- Brian Glover - television and film actor
- Geraldine Jewsbury - writer
- Constant Lambert - composer and conductor
- Percy E. Lambert - racing car driver
- Nat Langham - middleweight bare-knuckle fighter
- Long Wolf - Sioux indian chief
- Henry Augustus Mears - founder of Chelsea Football Club
- Henrietta Moraes - writer, artist's model and muse to Francis Bacon
- Roderick Murchison - geologist, originator of the Silurian system
- Emmeline Pankhurst - Britain's leading suffragette
- Blanche Roosevelt - American opera singer and author
- Tim Rose - American singer-songwriter
- Samuel Smiles - biographer and inventor of "self-help"
- Ethel Smyth - classical composer and suffragette
- John Snow - anaesthesiologist and epidemiologist, demonstrated the link between cholera and infected water
- Arthur Sullivan - no, not the composer (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame) but one of his less-famous musical relations
- Richard Tauber - operatic tenor
- Ernest Thesiger - character actor in such films as The Old Dark House and Bride of Frankenstein
- Frederic Thesiger, 1st Baron Chelmsford - jurist and statesman
- Brandon Thomas - author of Charley's Aunt
- Frederic Augustus Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford - Commander-in-Chief in the Zulu War
