Walking in Nunhead Cemetery ...............

Now Nunhead Cemetery is one of those places where you can have a history lesson while watching some fascinating wildlife, stumble across an interesting building or just enjoy the solitude.

Of course foremost it is a cemetery which was part of that Victorian drive to apply rationality and uniformity to all things including the burial of the dead.

The centuries old practise of interring the dead close to the living in city centres was regarded as unhealthy and I suspect all too messy for many Victorians, added to which many of these small ancient burial grounds were all but full.

So in 1852 the London Necropolis Company set about planning and establishing big out of town resting places.

The first was at Brookwood in Surrey and with that typical Victorian ingenuity the company also added a dedicated railway line which opened in 1854 and provided a train service for the mourners, and their deceased loved ones direct from Waterloo to Brookwood.
Nunhead was the seventh.

It was opened in 1840 and originally was called All Saints Cemetery and continued the business of interring the dead till by the middle of the last century it was almost full.

And after its closure it pretty much was left to its own devices which I guess will have been when I wandered in looking for conkers, but that is a tale I have already told along with its  restoration by the the Friends and the Council.

I can’t remember when I was there but it was only the once and seen through the eyes of a ten year old so I am pleased that Adrian has sent these pictures of the place, and I rather think I will post more of his Nunhead photographs through the summer.

Pictures; Nunhead Cemetery, 20014 provided by Adrain Parfitt

*The story of one house in Peckham number 6 ............ of conkers, trespass and Nunhead Cemetery, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-story-of-one-house-in-peckham_13.html