Tag: Kensal Green
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The Last Mourner
One thing fascinates me about grave-hunting. When did the last true mourner last visit this grave? This throws me back to an experience in my boyhood. It’s been oft reported that my fascination started as a result of my weekly pilgrimages to both my grandfathers graves. Besides complaining “why can’t I go off and explore?!”,…
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A Them-Days Jamie Oliver
Celebrity chefs are common-place nowadays – the likes of Gino Sheffield Di Campo, Ainsley Harriott and Jamie Oliver. But let’s turn back the clock and look at the very first ‘sleb cook whose grave is one of the most impressive funerary monuments in the country. A true story of love and devotion: one of the people…
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The Wards
An artistic dynasty’s story in Kensal Green Surfing eBay one lunchtime, I found a single page from the London Illustrated News. On a page with barely readable writing, alongside some beautiful engravings of steles and sculptures of the Copán archaeological site in South America was a slightly planer illustration celebrating the memorial to James Ward,…
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Ain’t It Grand To Be Bloomin’ Well Dead
‘Some people there were praying for me soul I said, ‘It’s the first time I’ve been off the dole!’ Look at the mourners, bloomin’ well sozzled Ain’t it grand, to be bloomin’ well dead!’ One of the most striking things of ‘The London Nobody Knows’, one of the best films about London that has ever…
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The Magnificent Seven: A Photographic Guide
By Christina Samuel Johnson once said ‘when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life‘. Yawn. We’ve all had that quote shoved down our throats at some point. Yes yes, London is never boring, etc etc. However, if you really are tired of London life, and fancy a slice of London DEATH,…
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If Only They’d Ended Up There
One of the fascinating things I’ve found in researching blog posts for Cemetery Club is where people ended up being buried. In a cemetery, obviously, because where else would they be- but did you know some of our leading luminaries ended up somewhere else entirely? George Cruickshank Any artists or illustrators – and historians, for…
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Westminster Meets Kensal Green – My First Tourguiding Experience
by Christina It is a Saturday morning at the end of June, it is about a million degrees, and Kensal Green Cemetery looks green and alive. I am standing in front of the gravestone of Dickensian author Wilkie Collins, trying to make 10 people I only met an hour ago (and Sheldon) believe it is…
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The London Month of the Dead 2014
by Sheldon October! Traditionally the month of ghosts and ghouls, as the veil between the living and the dead becomes that little bit thinner. Naturally cemeteries around this time take on a slightly more spectral appearance as the weather shifts from summer into Autumn: the very trees themselves becoming skeletal as the leaves drop slowly…
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Little Cemetery Observations – a Photo Blog
by Christina My friend Steph is a photographer. She moved to London from New York state in January 2007 and her first flat here was in Kensal Green. One of the first places I remember her taking photographs of was Kensal Green Cemetery – a long time before I even knew the significance and history…
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Cemetery Club Visitin’ – A Checklist for Success!
by Christina The first rule of Cemetery Club is: you can talk about it as much as you like. People might think you’re weird so be ready to defend your interest in posh graveyards and all things Dead Victorian Person. It’s an interesting hobby to have and many people I know, having seen my links…
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