Follow My Tracks

West Norwood Cemetery is one of the great final resting places for London’s historic dead. A city so ancient required vast amounts of space to inter its dead.

A Wiki-rip of the history:

In 1830 George Frederick Carden, editor of The Penny Magazine, successfully petitioned Parliament about the parlous state of London’s over-full church burial yards. In response they passed a number of laws that effectively halted burials in London’s churchyards, moving them ‘to places where they would be less prejudicial to the health of the inhabitants’. In 1836 a specific Parliamentary statute enabled the South Metropolitan Cemetery Company to purchase land from the estate of the late Lord Thurlow in what was then called Lower Norwood and create the second of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ cemeteries.

The new cemetery was consecrated by the Bishop of Winchester on 7 December 1837, receiving its first burial soon after. Until 1877 the consecrated grounds were overseen by the Diocese of Winchester, then Rochester, before coming under the authority of Southwark from 1905.

Architect William Tite was a director of the cemetery company and designed the landscaping, some monuments, and was eventually interred there himself. This was the first cemetery in the UK to be designed in the new Gothic style. It offered a rural setting in open countryside, as it lay outside London at that time. Its design and location attracted the attention of wealthy – and not so wealthy – Victorians, who commissioned many fine mausoleums and memorials for their burial plots and vaults.

The cemetery was built on the site of the ancient Great North Wood, from which Norwood took its name. Although many trees had been cleared, a number of mature specimens were included in Tite’s original landscaping. A tree survey of the cemetery in 2005 identified one oak which is thought to date from 1540-1640. Fourteen more oaks, a maple and an ash tree were identified that predate the foundation of the cemetery in 1836. In the first years of the cemetery’s operation, these were joined by coniferous trees and evergreen holm oaks.^[3]

The site originally included two Gothic chapels at the crest of the hill, but these were badly damaged by bombing during World War II. The Dissenter’s chapel was rebuilt as a Crematorium while the Episcopal chapel was levelled, to be replaced by a memorial garden over its crypt. In 1842 a section of the cemetery was acquired by London’s Greek community for a Greek Orthodox cemetery, and this soon filled with many fine monuments and large mausoleums. Grade II*-listed St Stephen’s Chapel within the Greek section is sometimes attributed to architect John Oldrid Scott. Another section in the south-east corner was acquired by St Mary-at-Hill in the City of London for its own parish burials.

Between 1978 and 1993 the cemetery achieved several levels of official recognition by being included in the West Norwood Conservation Area, while the entrance arch, the fine railings by Bramah and 64 monuments were listed as Grade II and II* – more listed monuments than any other cemetery.

However, space for new burials ran out in the inter-war years, and, deprived of this regular source of income, the cemetery company was unable to properly afford its upkeep or the repair of buildings damaged by wartime bombing. Lambeth Council compulsorily purchased the cemetery in 1965, and controversially claimed ownership over the existing graves. Lambeth changed some of the character of the grounds through “lawn conversion”, removing at least 10,000 monuments (including some of the listed monuments) and restarted new burials, reselling existing plots for re-use. Consistory Court cases fought in the Southwark Diocese in 1995 and 1997 found this to be illegal. It brought about the cessation of new burials and forced the restoration of a handful of the damaged or removed monuments. In addition it required Lambeth to publish an index of cleared plots, so that the descendants of historic owners can request restitution of their family’s plot. As a consequence of the courts’ findings Lambeth now operates the cemetery in accordance with a scheme of management under the joint control of all interested parties that includes Lambeth, the Diocese, the Friends of West Norwood Cemetery and conservation bodies such as English Heritage.

The full article can be read HERE.

In the middle of this vast grave yard stands a red brick enclosure that has a scaffold and tin roof. This is what was once the memorial rose garden. Built on the site of the original chapel. A V1 rocket took care of that and flattened it and yet below still stands the catacombs, and contained within it is many barrel vaults lay coffins, and within these… well you can imagine. 200 years in a lead lined coffin does wonders for the complexion. So we have racks of boxes that contain a collection of bones and the putrid puddle that we are destined to become – but not yet. And as photographers and urbexers are drawn to the aesthetic of the decaying, we also have a curious obsession with death, and the final resting places of those of us that have gone before, especially those that saw fit to rest on display to the rest of the world. Here these people lay. The word Catacomb makes most of us salivate and the ‘Camden Catas’, that are merely brick storage tunnels, aren’t a patch on these.

So how did I get in? Well I asked and was let in. Now this raises a couple of issues. I love to explore and there are places that I love to go that I will never be able to get permission to enter and in these cases, I have no problems in hopping the fence. But West Norwood has a highly active Friends association and they would love nothing more than for people to take an interest in the work that they are trying to do in raising the profile of the cemetery and the treasures (and they are beautiful) that are contained within its walls.

The catas are a sensitive environment and is one of which we should be respectful. So before you leap onto your keyboards and down my throat, and say this is not exploration, well let me remind you that in a city this old, the places that we visit are more often forgotten and we stumble across them, rather than discover them. There have also been recent reports of the Catas being ‘explored’ – well guys if you want to see it, go knock on the cemetery office door or look at the Friends WEBSITE and drop them a polite e-mail rather than ripping grates out of their settings or knocking the door in. If the door were open, that would be different, but I can assure you that they’re locked (twice). Rant over.

Now, a taster of what lies below, the setting that people have chosen for their bodies to lay, whilst waiting for the Last Trumpet.

Over the past two nights I have walked myself lame. I have crossed across this city more times than I have fingers, my heels hurt and my toes have blisters and yet the urge to carry on is so strong that I was trying to see if I had any plasters in the kitchen drawer. But today is Sunday. A rest day. An iron-the-shirts-for-work day.

I lay in bed and re-ran the night in my head. The taxi driver parked in the drive of the building I had hoped to conquer, thwarting any hope of making the roof that night and the miles and miles of tunnel routes that we walked about the ground, tapping covers, watching pipes are wires vanish under the ground. How we wanted to be there.

We walked up and down and chatted. Every man hole cover was potential, every vent in the road might give us a glimpse of what lay beneath and at the same time we were trying to look up. Step-step-step-step-step…

It was a night of recce, of exploration, of not knowing where we might end up and what we might do if a lid could be opened. We had a minor breakthrough towards the end of the night but by 2am my feet were screaming. We strode back to the car and drove into the night. Many things lay waiting to be conquered.

It is the realisation that you are driven to be out on those streets, looking, watching, checking behind the hoarding, that we do not view the world in quite the same way as the rest of the people and the easily ignored becomes the absurdly interesting. We are peering behind the curtin, daring to look where others blindly accept that there is something else but they do not need to know it. We break down the 4th wall and explore what may be a new reality or a new way of interacting with this one.

How tied are we to this 9-5, iron-my-shirt, polish-my-shoes, go-to-work life? A littel, but only because at the moment there are bills to pay and I need petrol for the car. Work to live, don’t live to work. Live to explore and see.

It takes *something* to push you out of a rut and tonight I felt I got that. The need to get over the fear that grows when you haven’t done something for a while. The breaking down the the mental barriers that our minds construct to stop us from potentially doing foolish things, but that also limit us creatively.

We started in the familiar warm place – a gentle breaking of the shell of fear, a slight tap-tap-crack, a small rush, just in case you find that you cannot handle the full flood that would come from doing something more serious. Temple Court at sunset. We sat and watched the great golden orb slowly sink towards the horizon behind the dome of the white stone building.

I had come from the exhibition at the Aldwych, taking advantage of the opportunity to see the ticket hall whilst open to the pubic, being one of the places that I am uncertain I could ever see without it.

We climbed down before we lost the light but by the time we reached the other side of the hoarding the sun was gone, and after a quick drink over the road, it was dark outside.

We strode the streets of the West End. What to do… A few things we held in mind. Cavendish, Silken, a few others we had hints and vague ideas about and yet the streets were full of people a lot longer into the night than we had planned. We walked the Embankment aware of what lay beneath and listened to the sighing of the river.

We recce’d a spot that we had been warned about – but the spikes on the particular fence were rather large and we had decided that they were better left for a night where a well placed sling would allow us to make light work of the place.

We took up New Court – a tiny gem in the city that Hydra has been tipped off about – easy in – stairs up and the stunning view that I never grow tired of as the city unfolds beneath your feet. We sat there and ust watched it. Torn between the urge to experience and absorb and photograph that I might share it with people, I snapped a few pictures and looked at the lights around us. Only when up high can you appreciate how small a city London is. Thousands of years of a want to live by the river have created this compact and beautiful jumble.

Time marched on and we wanted to pull in one more site before the sun rose. It would not be long now. Down and over the boundary and walking to the Strand, we approached the Silken Hotel. It is a building that I have passed more times that I can think about in the car, on the bus and on foot and yet never really notice it. It has been under construction for as long as I have been back in the Big Smoke and the crane stands towering above it.

Again access was easy and we stealthy made our way to the centre of the building where the body of the crane pierced the concrete floors and speared into the sky. We stepped out in the void and grabbed the white, slowly rusting metal.

We climbed the ladders. This was my first crane and my overly sized tripod, the love of my life and most useful piece of kit was getting in the way. Only today I had looked at getting something smaller. The slow change in the type of exploration that enthralled me demanded new equipment, but I slowly maneuvered on.

The last few ladders are vertical where as the lower ones are at a slight angle to make the climbing easier. With the change I noticed the unconscious tightening of my grip on every rung. We were above the roof level now and it is hard to tell when you are approaching the top. Suddenly we were there and my position became an awful mix of raw terror and absolute pleasure. I could not bring myself to get too close to the edge but did not want to allow my fear to freeze me in place.

I was certain I could feel the crane swaying slightly and it made my stomach roll and my heard beat like a fury trying to break free from my chest and scream to the city below. This was revelation. This is why I do this. This is why I will continue to do this. Dawn started to break over the sleeping city, the revelers that lay about or leaned against bus stops wondering whether they would make the last night bus or end up on the first of the day. It was time to head home, but like climbing a mountain the journey out is as important as the journey in.

We descended level after level, back into the hotel. I watched Hydra ahead and then it came… The rough, gruff shout in a slightly African voice “What are you doing..?”

She responded – we were here to take photos and didn’t mean any harm. There were steps and I quickly descended. Hydra stood there on the concrete the other side of the void. The man was no where to be seen. Quickly I made the leap. The guard had bolted, we assumed for the office to tell his boss or make a phone call. We made a swift exist and sped up the Strand and when we felt we were a safe distancea away, strolled to the station. It was 4:30am. I could get the first train home.

I sat in the carriage and watched the sun come up, warming my face and I walked down the hill to my house. It was a new day.

Fear is an important emotion and we all react to it differently. It comes with a rush of adrenaline and then a window of impulse. Do we flee or fight. Many explores require you to quel the inner screams, just incase they become outter screams that might give the game away, as you push on up a rickity ladder, propped against a Victorian girder that you are praying will hold.

Or as I am told by my American cousins it’s whether you take down the sec with a tripod to the head or run in the hope they don’t catch you and mace you…

It intiates the most primal instinct of self preservation, at any cost. Your friends will not be your friends if it’s a choice between you or them. Synical? Maybe, or maybe it’s a fact that we know to be so true that we do not like to admit it.

There are members of the community who set out to push the envelope of what is explorable. How far we can infiltrate. There will be occasions where the plan, no matter how well thought out, will not go to plan. Our actions, like every other in the universe has a consequence, causes a re-action. Are we prepared for those consequences? We have to be. If you are not then you have found the limit of your comfort zone. Will you push outside it? Maybe, but it will be painful. It may also be enlightening.

Clapham Common – not far from where I am but so close to the city that it overspills and some of that vibrancy lands here. The night was a bit of a fail. The group had turned out to be larger than planned, one place we wanted to see was sealed and undo-able without enough action to make what we do a criminal offence and so that was not happening tonight.

The other – an epic – magical doorway into another world had been sealed and try as we might it was not doable.

We were starting to disband. Two new friends headed to the tube as responses to texts requesting further ideas had come up with absolutely nothing. I was about to walk towards the station myself when someone shouted that they had an idea.

We crept down the dark streets to The Greenway. There lit up like a Christmas tree stood a temple to everything that was great about Victorian architecture and engineering. The temple although having been recently open was now sealed. Through the window we looked at the great machines that were resigned to their fate of pumping the city’s shit through deep brick tunnels.

We stepped out in a light. Silver steel lids glinted in the glow and it is these we approached. A small click and the lid swung back revealing a ladder going down into the pitch black. I could see nothing in that hole. We descended into the dark and with a click the lid was pulled shut over us and torches came on. We came to the first platform and looked around us in with the pale beams of light.

If the building above was a temple this was a tomb… or a prison. Some great monster could have lived here, been lured down by the cities ancient founders and imprisoned, promised a wealth of food and regular sacrifice only to find it is shit on every moment of every day, the great joke on the green-eyed greedy beast.

The occasional rumble only emphasised the idea…

We descended from platform to platform down the great ladder, lifting heavy steel trapdoors and then we were at the bottom. A great smelling pit stood below us and the last ladder vanished into the swill. Across from us a hole and a wooden ladder that with some coercing was pulled across enough for us to reach it. The risk of falling and being swallowed whole was great. Who knew what lay beneath, something with tentacles? Something with teeth?

We found ourselves in the smooth stone tunnel, the floor covered in a black bubbling sludge, the slime of the beast. We walked through the cuverd, carved worm hole for some great unending distance, a labrynth with no turnings, but no goal, dark step after dark step. We walked and lost time and walked more until the decision was made to turn around. The long road back lay before us, and we trudged back to the ladder, crossed the great moat-way and hauled our weary asses up to the hatch and back into the fresh air.

I needed a shower – it was time to go home. I made it to bed at 3:15 and the alarm would go off less than two hours later to wake me for work.