Not far from our Branch Office, at 121 Westminster Bridge Road stands an odd looking, narrow four story building, at ground level is a wide arch with a driveway, the exit was some streets away off Hercules Road. For many that passed through that portal it would be the start of their last journey. For this was the entrance to the station and terminus of the London Necropolis Company (LNC). The early 19th century saw a massive increase in the population of London, and a corresponding increase number of deaths and burials. Normal internment took place in parish churchyards from which the church received an income, a monopoly position that the church wished to protect. This was at time before the construction of the great commercial and municipal cemeteries.
The churchyards had reached bursting point and had become unsanitary. With the cholera epidemic of 1848-9 resulting in 14,601 deaths something had to be done. A solution was to build a cemetery far beyond the reach of any possible expansion of London and convey the bodies there by train.
By an Act of Parliament of 1852 The London Necropolis and Mausoleum Company was incorporated, later to become LNC.
The cemetery is at Brookwood near Working and was intended to be of such a size as to meet London’s burial requirements for the foreseeable future. There were objections, not least the conveyance of bodies from different social classes on the same train.
The building and associated station of the LNC in Westminster Bridge Road opened on the 11th February 1902, it being the company’s second premises, the first being lost in the growth and redevelopment of Waterloo Station. Initially the LNC used outside firms of undertakers to assist in their business operations, but gradually the LNC took over these functions. The Westminster Bridge Road building contained its own mortuaries, workshops and waiting rooms; the coffins were taken to the platforms by lifts.
The LNC lines joined the main line of the London & South Western Railway (L&SWR) just out side the LNC station. In life both class and religion divided society, and so it was in death. There were two platforms, one for first class and the other for third class mourners and coffins; a glass screen separated the two tracks creating a further separation in deference to finer sensibilities of the first class travellers. The capacity of the hearse vans varied, up to twenty four coffins per van with internal segregation for class and denomination. Off the first class platform was highly decorated chapel for the more ostentatious funerals. The tickets were issued in first, second and third class for passengers and coffins (passenger tickets were return, coffins one way), until 1918 when the rail companies abolished 2nd class. Still today if you are travelling by rail if you don’t travel first class you’re travelling third. However post 1918 because of contractual arrangements coffins could still travel second class. Rates varied, not least if there was a contract from a local Parish workhouse or hospital for multiple funerals of paupers, eight being the minimum number for discount.
The L&SWR supplied the locomotives and so as not to offend the general rail travellers, the carriage stock was on permanent loan from them. The hearse vans were built to the specifications of the LNC and owned by them. Apart from specials there were normally two trains per day.
At Brookwood a branch line led into the cemetery for funeral trains. There were two stations, South Station was for Anglican funerals and North Station for nonconformists (the south side of a churchyard being considered more preferable for a number of historical reasons). There was a third station just outside the cemetery on the main line for day to day visitors. In the early days of the LNC there were inadequate marshalling facilities for locomotive entry to the cemetery branch line, therefore the funeral train was uncoupled from the locomotive and hauled into the cemetery by a team of black horses.
This railway funeral service continued until the night of 16th of April 1941, when during an air raid much of the LNC facilities were destroyed by enemy bombers. Reconstruction was not considered viable, not least because of declining demand for such services, in part due to the growing public acceptance of cremations.
John Clark
