The LNC

This was written, as were the rest of these early posts, for Union Branch Magazine I edited. This was written by John Clark - my first guest contributor.

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

The Grand Surrey Canal

As a child I used to enjoy visiting my Grandmother, or Nan as we always called her, and one of the reasons was that if you were lucky you got to see the wood barges being hauled up the canal to the wood yard. She lived in St. Georges Way, North Peckham and to get there we had to cross Willowbrook Bridge over the canal. If you’re familiar with the area you will know the bridge at the bottom of Peckham Hill Street, It’s just one of the many in the area including Commercial Way, Trafalgar Avenue and Old Kent Road to name but a few on the main roads. Now no longer do they straddle the Canal instead they bridge the “Green Tongue”, an extension of Burgess Park.

I didn’t know it then but “the Canal”, as we called it was properly called the Grand Surrey Canal. Later when I came to know that the canal was called the “Surrey Canal” I was surprised as it only went as far as Wells Way and that even when my mother was a child it only went to the Camberwell Road.

So what went wrong, why did the “Surrey Canal” never get to Surrey?

The Grand Surrey Canal Act passed in 1801 authorised the canal from Rotherhithe to Epsom, but even before the canal was built the company started making plans for an enlarged ship dock at its entrance. This soon began to take priority over the canal.

The company, trying to deliver both canal and dock at the same time, ran into financial problems and for a while work stopped on them both. The dock, or basin, opened first, on 13th March 1807. There is a famous picture of the canal in which it all looks idyllic a nice sailing barge moored up with St Georges Waterloo Church in the background, very different from the area as I knew it.

The Croydon Canal, which was being built at the same time, depended on the Grand Surrey for its connection with the Thames. So the directors of the Croydon Canal Company were peeved and applied pressure for the “Surrey Canal” to be completed as least as far as their junction.

This did happen but the relationship between the two companies was never as good as it might have been, with the Grand Surrey company focusing most on its dock operation. The Grand Surrey was opened as far as Camberwell Road in 1809 but was never built any further. A 1,100 yard, (1000m) arm serving Peckham was also opened in 1826, this stopped just short of Peckham High Street to where it was connected by a short piece of road called Canal Head. This has in recent times been redeveloped as “Peckham Square”.

In the 1940s the section from Wells Way to Camberwell Road was closed and in 1970 when the dock was closed the Canal was drained. (In fact it survivedlonger than most of the Croydon Canal, which was filled in much earlier to form the track bed for the South London rail link from London Bridge to Croydon through Sydenham. Where there exists an unusual type of bridge to be crossing over a railway but which can be seen as a typical canal bridge from an earlier period once one knows the history.) Another use for the northern section of the canal is the new “Surrey Canal Road” and “Canal Approach” which uses part of the filled in canal from Ilderton Road to Evelyn Road.

I remember looking over Trafalgar Bridge and Willowbrook Bridges into the junk that had been tossed in over the years when it was drained – the end of an era. Of course the barges had gone, as was the need to cross the bridges when my Nan moved to a new flat when the North Peckham estate was being built. However when I occasionally drive over one of these bridges all those memories come back, a lost part of Peckham.

Laurie Smith