The Railway Of The Dead: London’s Necropolis Railway Honoured

A macabre part of the UK’s history has been honored today as a special tour visited the Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey.

In London’s mid-Victorian period, the city was under constant construction.

As a result, the city’s population had swollen from under half a million people in 1801 to two and a half million by 1851.

This created a rather macabre issue: what could be done with the bodies of the deceased in such a densely populated city?

There simply wasn’t enough room in the graveyards.

As a result of the problem, a railway line was set up with the specific purpose of transporting corpses away from London- known as the London Necropolis Railway.

The deceased were taken to the then newly established Brookwood Cemetery 35 miles away in Surrey.

At 10 o clock on Wednesday, a group gathered to honour this unique railway system, and the part it played in transporting those killed in the war, when it was extensively used by the military.

The railway closed for business in 1941, when its London Station was bombed - but personnel who were killed in the second world war were also buried there.

And many of those who died during the first world war and are buried here, would have made their final journey on the Necropolis Railway.

Pictures: John Clarke