
I'd booked up for an evening salon about death in the Dissenters Chapel, run as part of London's Month of the Dead, but before the event started I went for stroll among the graves and tombs.

In fact, Kensal Green has more listed monuments than any of London's other cemeteries. And it is still not only in use, but plainly cared for and regularly tended by relatives of those who rest there.

One of the things I love doing when I am wandering around a graveyard is reading the names on the headstones. There are, of course, many famous people buried at Kensal Green.
According to the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery:
"Kensal Green is the resting place of the engineers Sir Marc Isambard Brunel and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the mathematician Charles Babbage, and the novelists Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope and William Makepeace Thackeray; Lord Byron's wife, Oscar Wilde's mother, Charles Dickens' in-laws and Winston Churchill's daughter; a cross-dressing Army doctor and the surgeon who attended Nelson at Trafalgar; the creator of Pears' Soap, and the original WH Smith; the funambulist Blondin and the Savoyard George Grossmith; the first man to cross Australia from south to north, and the last man to fight a duel in England; the Duke's nephew who ruined the richest heiress of the day, and the English adventuress who became a French baronne disgraced by the accusation of murder."

Next year I intend to visit the final Magnificent Seven cemetery - Tower Hamlets. Although I haven't been there yet, I have already posted a photo of it on my blog, thanks to a friend who lives nearby and who a keen photographer. You can see his photo here.
Links and previous related posts
http://www.kensalgreen.co.uk/
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2010/10/walking-among-londons-dead.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2011/10/london-necropolis-highgate-cemetery.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2012/10/london-necropolis-west-norwood-cemetery.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2013/10/london-necropolis-abney-park-cemetery.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2011/10/london-necropolis-brompton-cemetery.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2013/10/pagan-eye-tower-hamlets-cemetery-park.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2014/10/kensal-green-dissenters-chapel-dying.html
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