From Doulton To Mrs Beeton: Exploring The Amazing West Norwood Cemetery

West Norwood Cemetery is one of the famous ‘Magnificent Seven’ cemeteries in London. Others I have written about previously include Highgate, here and Abney Park here.

They are all fascinating, sombre, atmospheric places to wander around, bursting with stories but also spaces of peace, solitude and nature. West Norwood is the resting place for a number of notable figures, who have left their mark on the city and country, such as Sir Henry Doulton and Mrs Beeton, but also lesser known fascinating figures such as ‘Columbus’ of Brixton and a pioneering music hall entertainer.

The Magnificent Seven

The ‘Magnificent Seven’ cemeteries, as they later became known, were established from 1833-1841, dotted around what was then the outskirts of London. This was in response to the explosion in London’s population at the time. In 1800 London’s population was around 1 million, but by the middle of the century it was around 2.5 million. Industrialisation and the expansion of London’s docks, trades and manufacturing drew people from across Britain, Ireland and the wider world and British Empire. 

This increase however caused problems. Housing in some areas became cramped, many living in abject poverty. Diseases such as cholera spread rapidly, infant mortality was extremely high and the inner city churchyards and burial grounds filled up. 

Parliament passed an Act in 1832 encouraging private enterprise to step in and help solve this problem of where to bury people. The first of the seven was Kensal Green, consecrated in 1833. It was the idea of Barrister George Frederick Carden inspired by Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, who founded the General Cemetery Company in 1830.

The second was West Norwood. 

West Norwood Cemetery

West Norwood, originally called the South Metropolitan Cemetery, opened in 1837, set up by the South Metropolitan Cemetery Company. The 40 acre site was purchased in 1836 from the estate of the late Lord Thurlow. 

It was designed by architect Sir William Tite in the Gothic Revival style, making it the first such cemetery in the UK. Tite also designed the Royal Exchange building that we still have in the City of London today. 

It was to have an almost bucolic rural setting, a garden necropolis set up on a gently sloping hill. Its beautiful setting meant that West Norwood became a favoured burial place of London’s wealthy. They often built magnificent mausoleums and monuments, many with Grade II or II* listings for protection. 

The Cemetery From The 20th Century

After the First World War, burial space in the cemetery ran out and the income naturally petered out as well. The cemetery started to fall into disrepair and parts were also damaged in bombing raids in World War Two. 

In 1965 Lambeth Council took over the cemetery via compulsory purchase. Controversially they removed at least 10,000 monuments with the ain to restart burials by reselling existing plots. This however was challenged and beaten in court in the 1990s. There are a limited number of burial spots available today but the crematorium is also still running.

In 1990 the Friends of West Norwood Cemetery group was established in response to Lambeth council’s ‘lawn conversion’ programme. Today they still look out for and promote the history and heritage of the site. They run guided tours of the cemetery, which you can find more about here.

Let’s now look at some of the fascinating figures who are buried here. There is a map by the entrance that I would recommend taking a photograph of on the way in.

Sir Hiram Maxim (1840-1916)

Hiram Maxim was born in Maine in the USA in 1840 but later emigrated to Britain in 1881 and became a naturalised British citizen in 1899. He is best known for inventing the first automatic machine gun in 1884. The Maxim gun fired over 500 rounds per minute and was then widely adopted by European armies. British colonial forces, for example, deployed it to devastating effect in Africa, including the First Matabele War (1893) and the Battle of Omdurman (1898). Small groups of British troops were able to use the weapon to defeat much larger indigenous armies. Years of testing loud firearms left Maxim almost entirely deaf. 

He also held many other patents including hair-curling irons, fire sprinklers and early electric lighting systems, rivalling Thomas Edison. As a fifteen year old apprentice working in a mill and invented a self-resetting mousetrap. 

Maxim died at his home, Sandhurst Lodge, in Streatham in 1916.

Paul Cinquevalli (1859-1918)

Paul Cinquevalli was a German music hall entertainer that became very popular in Britain after moving here. He was one of the first ‘Gentleman jugglers’, juggling all sorts of objects from plates to umbrellas. 

One of the tricks he originated was to throw a bottle in the air, catch the bottle on the end of an umbrella, and then open the umbrella as the liquid in the bottle ran out of it. Another was that he would throw a 60 pound cannon ball into the air and catch it on his back. He would also support a chair on his teeth whilst juggling. On the chair sat an assistant reading a newspaper with a desk balanced on his legs.

The Hellenic Enclosure

One of the most spectacular parts of the cemetery is the Hellenic enclosure. It was established in 1842 when London’s wealthy Greek merchant and shipping community leased a plot to create a dedicated Orthodox burial ground. St Stephen’s Chapel, shown below, was built in 1873, commissioned by Stephen and Marietta Ralli to remember their son Augustus who died suddenly aged 16. 

Many of London’s Greek merchants, including the Rallis, had connections to the island of Chios, whose population suffered terribly during the Chios Massacre of 1822 carried out by the Ottomans, leading to many fleeing their home.

Sir Henry Doulton (1820-1897)

Henry Doulton joined his father’s pottery business in Lambeth in 1835, aged 15. He became a great businessman and creative, helping to revolutionise the manufacture of glazed pipework and pushing the company into producing the decorative ware we know the company for today, using artists from the Lambeth School of Art. 

He was given a knighthood in 1887, the first potter to receive one. The company was given a Royal Warrant in 1901 and they subsequently changed their name to ‘Royal Doulton’. 

You can see Southbank House on Black Prince Road in Lambeth today, built in 1878 as the headquarters of the factory, designed by R Stark Wilkinson. 

His mausoleum here was built using red pottery tiles and bricks from the Doulton factory. 

Sir Henry Tate (1819-1899)

Henry Tate was born in Chorley, Lancashire in 1819 and started his career aged 13 as a grocer’s apprentice. He then built a successful chain of six grocery stores by the age of 35. In 1859 he became a partner in a sugar refining business and by 1868 had full control of the business that would become Tate and Sons. 

In 1872 he purchased the patent for a sugar-cube cutting method and opened the Love Lane Refinery in Liverpool, followed by the Silvertown Refinery in London in 1877. The company later merged with Abram Lyle & Sons in 1921 to become Tate & Lyle. 

Tate built a fortune on the back of his sugar business and gave significant donations to colleges and schools, as well as funding free libraries across South London. He is perhaps best remembered in London as a patron of the arts, donating his private collection to set up the National Gallery of British Art in 1897, now known as Tate Britain. 

Tate died on 5th December 1899, at his home, Park Hill, in Streatham. His family tomb here was designed by Sir Ernest George and Harold Ainsworth Peto, also with elements made at the Doulton factory. 

Isabella Mary Beeton (1836-1865)

Isabella Beeton, better known as ‘Mrs Beeton’, was born in 1836 London. She went to school initially in Islington and later Heidelberg in Germany. 

In 1856 she married Samuel Orchart Beeton, a publisher and magazine editor. Less than a year later she began writing for one of her husband’s publications, The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. 

She is best remembered as ‘Mrs Beeton’ after publishing her, still famous, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. It became the authority on Victorian cooking and home management selling 60,000 copies in its first year.

The recipes themselves were often not original to her, with many compiled or adapted from earlier writers like Eliza Acton. Eliza Acton’s earlier works had standardised the modern recipe format with ingredients, quantities and cooking times. 

Isabella Beeton sadly died only a few years after the publication of her famous work, aged 28, from puerperal fever after giving birth.

Captain John Wimble (1797-1851)

John Wimble was born in Maidstone in 1797 and went to sea at around the age of 12 or 13. By the age of 23 he was captain of his own ship, working for the East India Company and transporting goods such as silk, cotton, tea and opium. The Company was by then much more than a trading organisation, having become an increasingly powerful force in the administration and expansion of British rule in India. Wimble served on numerous ships, occasionally accompanied by his wife. In 1819 he retired from the sea and set up a ship insurance company in the City of London.

The carvings of ships are well worth a closer look.

This one show a ship, the London, with a broken mast in storm-tossed seas, off the coast of Gangam in India in 1832. The other is the Maidstone in 1840.  Wimble captained this ship, built at Blackwall Yard in London, on a round the world voyage in 1840.

There also is a carved ship’s rope decoration around the base and a ship with iron masts on top. 

Oswald “Columbus” Denniston (1913-2000)

Oswald Manoah Denniston, who became known as “Columbus of Brixton”, was born in 1913 in Jamaica and started working on a sugar plantation aged 14, before training as a signwriter and decorator. He arrived in Britain on 22nd June 1948, one of the 430 aboard the HMS Empire Windrush. He arrived into Tilbury and initially staying at the Clapham South deep air-raid shelter.

Columbus became the first African-Caribbean trader in Brixton Market in the early 1960s, selling fabrics. He also ran the Sugar Cane jukebox coffee bar and worked as a sign-writer and painter. He met his wife Margaret at a church tea party and the couple settled in Balham and then Battersea.

As well as this, he also helped found the Association of Jamaicans and the Lambeth Community Relations Council, and remained an active local speaker and pillar of the community until his death in 2000.

Thank you for reading! More blog posts on London’s historic wonders below.