Nunhead Cemetery

Nunhead Cemetery lies in the London Borough of Southwark, one of the seven large Victorian cemeteries built around London’s outskirts in the 19th century. It stands on 52 acres of gently sloping ground, once farmland beyond the city. The cemetery opened in 1840 under the London Cemetery Company, replacing an earlier churchyard in the City. Its Anglican chapel was designed by Thomas Little, and the entrance lodges by James Bunstone Bunning. After decades of use it was closed to new burials in 1969 and later became a nature reserve. The site holds notable graves of engineers, inventors, writers and performers. Among them are Sir Frederick Abel, co-inventor of cordite, and Bryan Donkin, who developed paper-making machines. The cemetery also remembers nine Sea Scouts lost in 1912 and commemorates 592 Commonwealth soldiers from the First World War. A memorial to the Scottish Political Martyrs stands near the north gate, erected in 1851–52 by Joseph Hume. Visitors walk paths between leaning tombstones and overgrown thickets of ivy and bramble. Views open across London to St Paul’s Cathedral on clear days. Woodland birds such as song thrushes, woodpeckers and tawny owls nest among the graves. The Friends of Nunhead Cemetery have restored parts of the chapel and some monuments, but much of the Victorian section remains an elegant wilderness.