







Behind the little Victorian station building, on the track that runs to Basingstoke, is the largest cemetery in Western Europe - Brookwood Cemetery . It was the brainchild of Sir Richard Brown, in response to the serious overcrowding of London's cemeteries in the 1800's.





In 1849, in order to transport the dead to their final resting place, the London Necropolis Railway (LNR) began running dedicated funeral trains from London's Waterloo station , where the LNR had its own platform with waiting rooms, to Brookwood Cemetery.





Up until the 1930's, any suitable locomotive available was used to haul the funeral trains. After that, and until the LNC officially ceased it operations just after World War Two , the trains were usually hauled by an M7 Class steam locomotive









The smaller Brookwood station building, built by the London & South Western Railway for use by funeral mourners.

Photo: Charles Moorhen

railway station a funeral train would pass the station for a few hundred yards whereupon it left the main line and steamed onto a branch line. On arrival at Brookwooda funeral train would pass the station for a few hundred yards whereupon it left the main line and steamed onto a branch line.



Once on the branch line the train would reverse down an incline (which can still be traced on the ground) before stopping at one of the two railway stations built in the grounds of the cemetery; Brookwood Cemetery North or Brookwood Cemetery South.



The latter station still survives to this day and is privately owned.







Brookwood Cemetery South Station

Photo: Charles Moorhen

The LNC offered three classes of funeral. First Class cost £2 10s (equal to £205 in 2015 terms), Second Class cost £1 (about £82 in 2015) and Third Class cost 10 shillings (.50p) or about £41 today.



However, the above prices did not taken into account travel costs for the funeral mourners. A First Class return ticket to Waterloo cost 6 shilling (.30p), Second Class cost 3/6d (17.5p), while a Third Class ticket would set a mourner back the princely sum of 2 shillings (.010p).





Robert Knox and . A number of famouspeople were buried at Brookwood Cemetery. Two such people wereand Edith Thompson



Robert Knox was the anatomist who accepted cadavers for dissection from the grave robbers, William Burke and William Hare . Hare saved himself from execution by turning King's evidence against Burke who was hanged and his body dissected.



Edith Thompson was a housewife and milliner whose lover, Frederick Bywaters , murdered her husband Percy. She was judged complicit in the murder of Percy and along with Bywaters , was hanged on the 9th January 1923; she at Holloway Prison; he at Pentonville Prison



