Brompton Cemetery by Michal Huniewicz

About this shoot

This cemetery was built in 1840 as the city was growing more and more populous and its cemeteries became overcrowded. That caused epidemies as bodies decayed and got into water supplies. There are stories of bodies exploding due to post mortem gases, and bones lying around in cemeteries.

There is a chapel located in the middle of Brompton Cemetery. Along what is known as the colonnade there are entrances to catacombs in which bodies lie in three coffins due to legal requirements (a body that is not buried must be kept in a metal coffin - so they were stored in wooden, metal, and another wooden coffin). You can only get down there once a year. No one has been buried there for about a century, I was told, but it's not legally impossible now, if you know someone interested.

The cemetery is one of the Magnificent Seven - seven large cemeteries in London.

Uploaded on: 2011-04-01. Updated on: 2026-02-02.