Brookwood Cemetery and Monastery

As the population of London multiplied in the 19th century it became increasingly difficult to find places to bury the dead. To provide the space required for burials, the Brookwood Cemetery, or more properly, the London Necropolis, was established. It is the largest cemetery in the UK, and one of the largest in London.

The first burials took place in 1854, and there was a railway station to receive the dead and those mourning them on trains from central London. One part of the cemetery was reserved for Non-Conformists, while the bulk of the cemetery was consecrated by the Bishop of Winchester for Anglican burials.

There were three classes of burials in the cemetery, but even those in the third class were afforded a grave of their own. Brookwood was one of the few cemeteries permitted to conduct funerals on Sunday which made it popular and accessible with the poor in London who had limited free time.

In the 19^th century many of the graveyards of central London churches were closed and the remains buried in them relocated to Brookwood.

There is an Orthodox monastic community at Brookwood, first established in 1982, which has taken over the Victorian Anglican chapel, which cares for the shrine of St Edward, King and Martyr, some of whose relics are kept there. It had been a community of ROCA, until the reunion of that group with the Moscow Patriarchate, and is now a brotherhood in the Greek Church of Genuine Orthodox Christians.