Railway to Eternity

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As Victorian London expended rapidly, along with its population, the twin scourges of poverty and disease grew. These ills ensured employment for clergy and gravediggers and it wasn't long before the church yards were full and a new health hazard was introduced with decomposing bodies being exposed in shallow graves. To combat this scourge, seven huge graveyards were built in the then London suburbs, the so called 'Magnificent Seven'. Population pressure would soon mount on the Seven and it was decided to built a massive burial ground outside the city at Brookwood, in Surry. This 'Eighth' opened in 1854 and was served by train, the Necropolis Railway. At the time this was the largest cemetery in the world and remains the largest in western Europe. The London end operated from a special station, now the site of Westminster House (picture left above), and had equipment to lift the coffins up to the rail lines running out of Waterloo. A special train carried the mourners, who boarded at the same place and coffins to Brookwood. A branch line runs the short distance from Brookwood Station into the cemetery. There are two platforms, a northern for nonconformists and the southern for Anglicans. The platform (picture centre above) are designed to deal with trolleys carrying coffins and have rounded edges to allow smooth movement. The cemetery is still in use today and holds the UK's only US military cemetery from World War 1 (picture right above). The railway stopped running during World War 2, when the London station was bombed. While the rails were removed at Brookwood, the path it took remains as do the cemetery stations.