Funeral Trains: Necropolis Private Station

"He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow."

Westminster Bridge House

Necropolis Private Station.

Towards the middle of eighteen hundred, cemetery spaces in the metropolis became scarce. In 1854 a private company set up a station almost opposite one of the main the entrances to Waterloo Station, at Westminster Bridge House, 121 Westminster Bridge Road. This small station was provided for the transportation of some of the London Dead to Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey. The waiting rooms had been allotted for the exclusive use of any mourners attending a private funeral. Added to this there was also a beautifully equipped mortuary chapel. A single platform awaited the train of the dead.

At its peak fifty bodies a day would be transported along this line, and would normally total three or four thousand a year until bomb damage closed this station it in 1941. Today, hidden behind an iron gate, is this lost historic station of the dead.




London Time


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