The Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery

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The Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery

The Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery offer guided walks, events and publications.

The Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery (FoKGC) is a registered charity whose objects are the preservation, conservation and restoration of the Kensal Green Cemetery, for the public benefit. We are run by an Executive Committee of Trustees, elected by our members each year. Kensal Green Cemetery is still owned by the same company which founded it in 1830, - the General Cemetery Company – with whom we

work to restore monuments and maintain the historic landscape. In addition, we run regular tours and events, facilitate private events to celebrate notable ‘residents’ and engage with local communities to preserve the biodiversity and tranquillity of 72 acres of open green space.

13/06/2026

A few weeks ago you may remember that we revealed the secret identity of one of the 'forgotten' coffins in the catacombs. An eagle eyed YouTuber, HazelOwl7893, had spotted the name on the coffin plate when it was briefly revealed on Ron Carlson's 'Faces of the Forgotten' episode on the KGC catacombs. The coffin on the left in the photo belongs to James Moore (1849-1935), the winner of the first ever official cycle race in 1868 at St-Cloud, Paris. What's more James’ burial place was, at that time, a mystery, not known even to the deceased's family.

But who does the coffin on the right belong to? A couple of weeks ago we paid a rare visit to the catacombs and Meriel Smith managed to decipher the corroded coffin plate on the second casket. It belongs to Ivy May Hamilton who died 2nd September 1966 aged 44 Years. With a little bit more digging Meriel discovered that Ivy died after an altercation with one of her tenants at 15 Mozart Road, W10. The tenant, 52 year old carpenter, John Augustus Wills, wanted a rent book and a notice to quit as the house was about to be compulsorily purchased by the local authority. As Ivy wasn't keen to issue a rent book Wills held back a weeks rent. The ensuing argument got well out of hand, despite the police being called, and Ivy ended up being wounded by one of Will's chisels. She died a few days later in hospital and Wills was charged with murder. You can read the full story of the events leading up to Ivy's death in the newspaper article attached.

Wills went on trial at the Old Bailey in February 1967. He was acquitted of not just the murder but also a secondary charge of manslaughter and walked free from court. The house was later demolished to make way for the Mozart Estate. Ivy was placed temporarily in the catacombs but has remained there unclaimed until now.

You can read more on this story at https://thelondondead.blogspot.com/

12/06/2026

Lady Caroline Capel: Waterloo from the drawing room

In 1814, Lady Caroline Capel fled to Brussels with her husband, John Thomas Capel, who was escaping creditors after gambling debts. A year later, she found herself caught in another gamble: Napoleon’s Waterloo.

Caroline, her husband and two daughters stayed in a château outside Brussels, Caroline heard the cannon of Waterloo in the distance, while Brunswick soldiers were camped in the grounds.

While her husband and daughters had attended the Duchess of Richmond’s ball on 15 June she remained at the château and was woken up at 3 am by the roll of the drum: the Brunswick troops were preparing to march on Quatre-Bras.

Her letters capture the terror and personal feelings behind the grand military story: mothers waiting for news, the famous Duchess of Richmond’s ball, families scrambling for horses, transport, money and escape routes. Her brother, Lord Uxbridge, survived the battle, but lost his leg.

In the aftermath of the battle, the Capels visited the battleground and Caroline wrote a heart-wrenching account of what it was like in the days after the horrors of war.

It was a happy ending for Caroline – in total, she had ten daughters and three sons, most happily married to rich aristocrats. At some point, Caroline Capel returned to England, where she died, aged seventy-four, on 9 July 1847 and buried at Kensal Green Cemetery.

Kensal Green Cemetery is the last resting place of many who witness Napoleonic Wars from different angles, - civilian, as well as military. We explore the stories of some of them in our special event:

❗St.Helena to Kensal Green Exploring Napoleon’s Final Chapter
🗓10:30 Saturday, 20th June 2026
👉 Book your place: https://www.kensalgreen.co.uk/events.php

Images: Lady Caroline Paget, Lady Capel (1773-1847) holding her daughter Harriet, the grave of Lady Capel and two of her military brothers-in-law

10/06/2026

Another great example of how to get your money's worth out of a grave. Joseph Morey, a licensed victualler of Nine Elms Lane in Lambeth, bought the exclusive burial rights in the plot in perpetuity for £3 3 shillings in 1847 to bury his 19 year old son Alfred. It was used again a decade later to bury Alfred's married younger sister who was then 26. In 1873 Joseph joined his two children. The plot continued to be used by the family until 1994, 5 further burials, 8 in total at an average cost of, in new money, just over 39 pence per burial space. Old money is a bit trickier to work out, £3 3 shillings is, someone correct me if I'm wrong, is 63 shillings or 756 pence (63 X 12). 756 pence divided by 8 is 94 and a half pence, which divided by 12 is 7.875, so 7 Shillings (84 pence) with 10.5 remaining, therefore average cost was 7 shillings 10 and a half pence. Google confirms 7 s 10 1/2 p is 39.375p in new money so my maths is correct I think. All I can say is, whatever else has happened in the world since 1847, thank God for decimalisation because old money was a truly ridiculous system....

07/06/2026

After returning to Paris from exile on Elba, raised new forces and took an army north, towards Brussels, to attack the allied British and Prussian armies under Wellington and Blucher. As is well known, he lost to the allies at and fled. Fearful of capture by the vengeful Prussians or assassination by dissatisfied Frenchmen, he surrendered to the British. He hoped for a new life in the USA or a quiet retirement on an estate in England, but the allies were having none of that and sent him to the remote island of .Helena, an important stopping point for ships sailing from South Africa to England, at that time it was run by the British East India Company.

Kensal Green Cemetery is the last resting place of many who fought at Waterloo and those who witnessed his last days in exile.

Join us for our special event on Saturday, 20th June to find out more. We will delve into the history of Napoleonic wars, their impact on Britain and Napoleon’s last days on St. Helena.

After lunch, we will take a tour of the cemetery, see memorials to many of those witnesses and tell stories of their experiences.

❗St.Helena to Kensal Green Exploring Napoleon’s Final Chapter

🗓 10:30 Saturday, 20th June 2026

👉Book your place: https://www.kensalgreen.co.uk/events.php

06/06/2026

It was our pleasure last week to finally meet Hans Noordam, creator of the website The Androom Archives and long term supporter of KGC. When we asked Hans which was his favourite memorial, he had no hesitation in choosing Wilkie Collins. His first visit to the cemetery, back in the late eighties, was specifically to see Wilkie's grave as he is a huge admirer of the great novelist and a longstanding member of the Wilkie Collin's Society.

Hans is probably the original cemetery blogger - he started so early in fact, way back in 1995, that the concept of blogging didn't even exist. Instead he had to create his own website from scratch (no off the shelf templates in those days) using very basic HTML to create hand-coded pages. It would have been a slow and frustrating process but luckily Hans has a background in IT and didn't let the difficulties put him off! He has been updating his website and adding new names and cemeteries for over 30 years and The Androom Archives now has 4573 grave locations from 18 countries in far too many cemeteries for us to count, each location with photos and a short biography. For KGC alone he has 160 entries. This labour of love shows no sign of coming to an end; Hans visited the cemetery last week to add more locations to his archive!

You can see the Androom Archives here: https://www.androom.com/

05/06/2026

Book 12 of the KGC book club is Geraldine Roberts 'The Angel & The Cad' recommended by Sue Richardson Capel. It is, according to The Times, the "shocking tale" of the marriage between Catherine Tylney-Long, the Angel of the title, an heiress who was supposedly the richest commoner in England and the Right Honorable William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley, the 4th Earl of Mornington, the cad who was in reality was neither right nor honorable, nephew of the Duke of Wellington, a gambler, philanderer, rake and a most miserable husband.

Catherine was the most eligible spinster in England with numerous suitors vying for hand in marriage (and the vast fortune that came along with). She could have become the Queen of England as the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV was amongst those eager to woo her. But she fell for the dashing William Wellesley-Pole, heir to the Irish Earldom of Mornington, a decision she would rue for the rest of her short life. Two months before the wedding her husband added her surnames to his own by Royal License to become William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley, allowing his friend Byron to dub him 'Long-Pole'.

Long-Pole burned through Catherine's fortune and was forced to go into exile to escape his creditors, abandoning his wife and three children in the process. Catherine died in 1825 at the age of 35 and Long-Pole married again, this time to the wife of a Coldstream guard he had been conducting an affair with. He was responsible for the selling off of the contents of Wanstead House, one of London's grandest homes and Catherine's property, and its subsequent demolition. He is buried in the catacombs beneath the Anglican Chapel where this photo was taken.

Geraldine Robert's book is the only available full length retelling of this fascinating story and is a timely reminder that life in Regency England, even for the wealthiest and most privileged women, was not remotely like 'Bridgerton' and that handsome men are far more trouble than they are worth...

03/06/2026

3 June 1912 died Kitty Melrose (born Agnes Butterfield), the vivacious star of the Edwardian stage. Her last and most successful stage appearance was at the London Adelphi Theatre in the musical The Quaker Girl, which opened on 5 November 1910 and ran for 536 performances.

In 1912 Kitty, aged 30, was found dead in her apartment at Smith Square, Westminster, having taken her own life by sticking her head in the gas oven, causing asphyxiation from carbon monoxide poisoning. Her family blamed her death on heartbreak caused by her fiancé, Edward Lawson-Johnson, breaking off their engagement. Described as a 'man about town' by the press, Lawson-Johnson was supported financially by his family and they had forbidden him to marry her.

She is buried in square 43 of Kensal Green Cemetery.

01/06/2026

Sculptor Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907) may not be, strictly speaking, one of ours, as she is buried next door in the other Kensal Green, St Mary’s Catholic Cemetery but as St Mary’s don’t have any social media presence or any Friends group to celebrate their heritage we feel obliged to step in when something momentous happens. The occasion is Edmonia Lewis’ first major museum retrospective held, a mere 119 years after her death, at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Official recognition of Edmonia’s artistic legacy has taken some time, not only because she is a woman but also because she is of mixed black and native American heritage; her mother was Mississauga Ojibwe, born in Albany, and her father a black servant. She was born in 1844 in Greenbush. New York and raised in Newark and Niagara Falls. When she was 15 her brother sent her to study at Oberlin College in Ohio, one of the few educational institutions in the US that accepted women or people of colour. Despite Oberlin’s liberal attitudes Edmonia encountered racism and prejudiced behaviour and never completed her course of study; in 2022 the college awarded her a posthumous degree.

In 1866, aged 22, Edmonia left the US and went to Rome to study sculpture in the studio of the American neo-classical sculptor Hiram Powers. Her work gained attention, partly perhaps because as The Athenaeum put it she was an ‘interesting novelty’ but also because she was genuinely talented and produced powerful and impressive work. In 1872 she returned to the United States where she produced her most famous work, the monumental ‘Death of Cleopatra’ for the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The following year Ulysses S. Grant commissioned her to sculpt his portrait bust.

She spent her later years in Paris and in 1901 moved to London where she lived in virtual anonymity. Until as recently as 2010 where, when and how she died were completely unknown. After researching Lewis’ life since the 1980’s US cultural historian Marilyn Richardson probably couldn’t believe her luck when the 1901 census went on line and she found the artist’s name at 37 Store Street in Bloomsbury (just around the corner from the British Museum). With the help of a London based US lawyer, Scott Varland, she eventually located Lewis’ will and probate records. These showed that Lewis died on 17 September 1907 in the Hammersmith borough infirmary on Goldhawk Road, had been living at 154 Blythe Road, W14 and left effects worth £489 0s 1d. The cause of death recorded on her death certificate was nephritis, then called Brights disease, a chronic inflammation of the kidneys. Burial records revealed that she was interred in St Mary’s Catholic cemetery where her grave is marked by a flat ledger style stone on which all traces of any inscription have long since weathered away. The anonymity of the grave led another admirer, Bobbie Reno, the town historian of East Greenbush, a suburb of Albany, to set up a GoFundMe page to raise the money necessary to create the new marker you see there today.

Further information: https://thelondondead.blogspot.com/2022/06/seeing-wonderful-things-edmonia-lewis.html

28/05/2026

A unique opportunity for history enthusiasts to walk among the memories of Waterloo and St Helena:

St Helena to Kensal Green – Exploring Napoleon’s Final Chapter

A talk and guided walk

🗓 Saturday, 20th June 2026
🕥 10:30 AM
📍 Kensal Green Cemetery, London W10 4RA

Kensal Green Cemetery is the resting place of many veterans of the Battle of Waterloo: the conflict that sealed Napoleon’s fate. It is also home to the Admiral who transported Napoleon to St Helena, along with several others who met and spoke with him during his exile.
The day will begin with an engaging historical talk exploring these dramatic events, followed by lunch and a guided tour of the cemetery. Together, we will visit the graves of those who witnessed and shaped this extraordinary period of history.

Join us for a fascinating journey into the final chapter of Napoleon’s story.

Book your place: https://www.kensalgreen.co.uk/events.php

27/05/2026

The Last Chance Saloon - still time to lodge your objections!

Address

Harrow Road
London
W104RA

Website

http://www.kensalgreen.co.uk/

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