Catalogue description Office of Works and successors: Royal Parks and Pleasure Gardens: Brompton Cemetery Working Plans

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Details of WORK 98
Reference: WORK 98
Title: Office of Works and successors: Royal Parks and Pleasure Gardens: Brompton Cemetery Working Plans
Description:

This series comprises working records of Brompton Cemetery, relating to the layout of the cemetery, buildings and the use of burial space. It contains plans relating to the changes which took place under the supervision of the Office of Works and successors from 1852.

For each compartment of the Cemetery there are several plans spanning the period from 1858, when the first detailed survey was carried out, to 1988 when the paper maps were superseded by electronic records.

In May 1857 the Land Surveyor of the Office of Works and Public Buildings, Thomas Alexis Dash, was instructed to examine the ground of Brompton Cemetery with a view to the preparation of a plan. Dash produced his first copy of the plan in August 1858 but in outline only. The plan was of a suitable scale to allow for the identification of each burial plot using a five-figure digit, and was for convenience presented in sheets, one for each labelled compartment, with an index map to show the position of each compartment within the cemetery.

Dash was then instructed to add the burial information to the basic plan. The burial numbers for all graves which had been purchased were added in accordance with the information held in the Burial Register. By 1859 this enabled the conveyance of Grants to all those possessing exclusive Rights of Burial. The plans were then used (in compliance with the 1832 Cemetery Companies Act) to show the place and situation of every grave, vault and place of burial made in the Cemetery, numbered in accordance with the entries made in the Burial Register. By 1885, all burials were numbered - private graves, vaults, catacombs, and common graves alike.

In the 1860s the Cemetery administrators appear to have revised the extent of many of the compartments and created a number of new ones. TA Dash produced a revised index map in 1870 together with a set of revised compartment outline plans. In 1884 a third index map was produced followed by a further set of compartment plans, created in 1889 to which had been added the burial information recorded on the original (1858) plans. This third set carry TA Dash's Office of Works stamp, are dated 1889, and largely conform to the outline plans created in 1870. They were in use until 1988.
Date: 1858-1996
Arrangement:

Index maps of the whole cemetery are followed by those for each compartment in alpha order by notation and with the numbered compartments and catacombs at the end.
Related material:

Minute books of the Cemetery Company are in WORK 6

Registered files relating to administration of the cemetery are in WORK 16

Registered files relating to maintenance are in WORK 19

Files relating to the Chelsea Memorial at Brompton are in WORK 20

Maps and plans are in WORK 38

Brompton Cemetery: Burial registers, common graves books, stone ledgers, burial books and photographs. WORK 97

Brompton Cemetery: Unregistered Files, Papers, Drawings and Photographs: WORK 100
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

Department of National Heritage, 1992-1997

Department of the Environment, 1970-1997

Ministry of Public Building and Works, 1962-1970

Ministry of Works, 1943-1962

Ministry of Works and Buildings, 1940-1942

Ministry of Works and Planning, 1942-1943

Office of Works, 1851-1940

Royal Parks Agency, 1993-
Physical description: 178 flat sheet(s)
Access conditions: Open
Immediate source of acquisition:

In 2011-2012 Royal Parks Agency
Accruals: No further accruals are expected.
Administrative / biographical background:

In 1837, The West of London and Westminster Cemetery Company bought 40 acres of land from the estate of William Edwardes, 2nd Baron Kensington (1777-1852) in West Brompton. A design competition was held for the proposed cemetery. Benjamin Baud (assistant to the architect Sir Jeffry Wyatville) submitted the best designs for the buildings and walls; Stephen Geary was appointed architect; Isaac Finnemore and John Claudius Loudon (a garden designer and eminent horticultural writer) were the landscaping consultants.

Brompton Cemetery was consecrated in 1840, but not all of the original 'garden-cemetery' design was realised, as The West of London and Westminster Cemetery Company ran into financial trouble.

Brompton created an appealing environment, relatively free of regulations or restrictions. Provision was made for non-conformists and dissenters: separate Anglican and dissenter chapels were included in the original plans, and separate parts of the cemetery were designated. As a result, Brompton has been recognised as a national cemetery, serving as a resting place for anyone from any creed that does not have a national burial ground within the United Kingdom.

The 1848-49 cholera epidemic in London prompted the government to create a public body - The General Board of Health. The Board had responsibility for creating new cemeteries, for forbidding burials in specific places (as required), and notably for compulsory purchase of the commercial cemeteries and putting them under state control. However, subsequent political constraints imposed on the Board resulted in only one commercial cemetery being purchased. The Board bought Brompton Cemetery in 1852 from its financially stretched Cemetery Company, so making it the first (and only) London cemetery to become Crown property. Brompton was conveyed to the Commissioners of Works and Public Buildings by deed under powers in section 45 of the Burial Act, 1852.

As Crown property, all works relating to the buildings were the responsibility of the Office of Works, Royal Parks Division from 1852. The responsibility was passed to successor bodies: Ministry of Works and Buildings in 1940, Ministry of Works and Planning in 1942, Ministry of Works in 1943, Ministry of Public Buildings and Works in 1962.

The new Department of the Environment (DoE) inherited responsibility for Brompton from the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works in 1970 (Statutory Instrument 1970/1681). The Department of National Heritage took over this responsibility from May 1992.

Management of Brompton Cemetery passed to The Royal Parks Agency, established on 1 April 1993 as an Executive Agency of the Department of National Heritage (renamed in July 1997 the Department for Culture Media and Sport).

Since the first burial in 1840, some 200,000 interments have taken place at Brompton of which 155,000 had taken place by 1889, and 198,000 by 1951.

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