Delight.THE VAST VICTORIAN CEMETERY IN LONDON'S KENSAL GREEN WAS ONE OF THE FIRST GREAT METROPOLITAN BURIAL GROUNDS. AS A NEW BOOK REVEALS, IT STILL EXERTS A POWERFUL HOLD ON POPULAR IMAGINATION. The General Cemetery of All Souls at Kensal Green (consecrated con·se·crate tr.v. con·se·crat·ed, con·se·crat·ing, con·se·crates 1. To declare or set apart as sacred: consecrate a church. 2. Christianity a. in 1833) was the first great necropolis necropolis: see cemetery. necropolis (Greek: “city of the dead”) Extensive and elaborate burial place serving an ancient city. The locations of these cemeteries varied. to be laid out near London, and owes its origins to the transformation of the picturesque English landscaped garden in France as a place of sepulture, commemoration and Elysium of allusion. A milestone in urban hygiene, the cemetery was also of great aesthetic and social importance in the civilising of death. Kensal Green was landscaped with care, and the board of the General Cemetery Company (which still owns and manages the cemetery) went to great lengths to ensure that the buildings (two chapels with catacombs, a colonnade colonnade (kŏlənād`), a row of columns usually supporting a roof. Colonnades were popular with the Greeks and Romans, who employed them in the stoa and the portico; they have continued to be used throughout the Middle Ages, the over another catacomb catacomb Subterranean cemetery of galleries with recesses for tombs. The term was probably first applied to the cemetery under St. Sebastian's Basilica that was a temporary resting place for the bodies of Sts. , the entrance gate and lodges, and the boundary wall and boundary railings) were architecturally distinguished and soundly built in order to attract custom. An architectural competition was held in 1831-32, attracting 48 entries, including some interesting designs that were not realised. In the end, the architect responsible for the magnificent cemetery buildings and some of the mausolea
James Stevens Curl is editor of Kensal Green Cemetery Kensal Green Cemetery, located in Kensal Green, London, England, was incorporated in 1832 by The General Cemetery Company, and is the oldest of the 'Magnificent Seven' cemeteries still in operation. to be published by Phillimore & Co., Shopwyke Manor Barn. Chichester. West Sussex. P0206BG, this autumn (e-mail: boohshop@phillimore.co.uk). The lavish book will demonstrate why the place is of national and international significance, and discuss the cemetery's history, buildings. monuments, sculpture, flora, fauna and landscape. |
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