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where victorian london buried its giants

Kensal Green Cemetery

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Kensal Green · Kensal Green
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The oldest and grandest of London's Magnificent Seven, free, a vast Victorian necropolis of soaring monuments and catacombs holding engineers, writers and royalty.

Getting there. Right by Kensal Green station on the Bakerloo line and Overground, in northwest London.
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Kensal Green · Kensal Green
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The lowdown

Kensal Green, opened in 1833, was the first of the great Magnificent Seven cemeteries and set the template for them all. Inspired by the grand garden cemeteries of Paris, it is a vast, dignified landscape of avenues, chapels and extraordinary monuments, free to wander.

It became the fashionable place for prominent Victorians to be buried, and the roll-call is remarkable, the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the writers William Thackeray and Anthony Trollope, the playwright and members of the royal family among them. Their tombs range from austere to wildly theatrical.

Beneath the central Anglican chapel run catacombs, occasionally opened on tours, complete with a working Victorian coffin lift. Above ground it is a peaceful, sprawling free walk through the confidence and grief of the age that built the modern world.

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Take one of the Friends of Kensal Green tours if you can, as they go down into the atmospheric catacombs beneath the chapel, which you cannot otherwise see. Above ground, seek out Brunel's grave among the giants of Victorian engineering and letters.
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