The Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery

15/09/2026

On this day, 15 September, died Mary Ann Thurston (1810-1896), a beloved nanny to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s nine children, including the future King Edward VII.

When she was appointed in spring 1845, the Queen noted:

“Mrs Thurston is a widow of about 32, very nice & respectable looking, & she bears an excellent character, so that I hope she will be a success.”

She certainly was and remained in the royal nursery for the next twenty years.

In 1865, when Mrs Thurston, no longer needed as a nanny, took up a new position, the Queen found it surprisingly difficult to say goodbye:

"Soon after I came home saw good Thurston, who is to become Housekeeper at Windsor. We shall see a great deal of her, but she has been 20 years with our children & the thought of the dear old Nursery being broken up, is dreadful to me now! I could not have parted completely from such a good, faithful, devoted servant. Gave her a bracelet containing the coloured photos of the 6 younger Children, as she saw the 5 youngest born & took charge of Affie, when he was about 9 months old. She is so bound up with the recollections of the happy past, & one feels as if one could never sufficiently repay the services of such an excellent person."

Mrs Thurston died at Kensington Palace. She was buried in Square 157 at Kensal Green Cemetery on 18 September 1896. Princess Louise attended the funeral, while Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales sent wreaths bearing affectionate inscriptions.

Her monument, erected in February 1898, carries a touching dedication:

“In grateful and loving memory of Mary Ann Thurston by V.R.I. and her children Victoria, Albert, Edward, Alfred, Helena, Louise, Arthur, Beatrice.”

Two names are missing – Alice and Leopold – as they were both already dead by the time this memorial was commissioned.

Mrs Thurston’s monument, now Grade II listed, is a unique example of a funerary sculpture created by a member of the Royal Family: its circular relief was carved by HRH Princess Louise herself.

14/09/2026

🚶‍♂️ Guided Tours of Kensal Green Cemetery 🚶‍♀️

Step beyond the gates and discover one of London’s great historic cemeteries.

Our Highlights Guided Tour is the perfect introduction to Kensal Green Cemetery, exploring its fascinating history, remarkable architecture and development, as well as some of the famous (and infamous!) characters buried within this great necropolis.

🕑 Sundays at 2 pm
📅 Every Sunday in September and October
📅 First and third Sundays, November to February

Please check our website for available dates.

Please note: there will be no access to the Dissenters’ Chapel on 4 and 11 October.

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

12/09/2026

It’s all starting to feel quite autumnal in Kensal Green Cemetery 🍁

11/09/2026

🚶Guided Tour: The Days of Giants: Joseph Locke and his generation of railway pioneers
❗Sunday, 20 September, 2pm

Joseph Locke is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. He was probably more influential on the development of UK than Isambard Kingdom , who is also buried here. This tour will look at his achievements and those of some of the other railway engineers and promoters, who found their resting place in Kensal Green.

More information and to book: https://www.kensalgreen.co.uk/events.php

10/09/2026

On 10 September 1855, an extraordinary funeral procession made its way to Kensal Green Cemetery, with as many as 50,000 people turning out to pay their respects to Feargus O’Connor, the charismatic Chartist leader known as the ‘Lion of Freedom’.

Born in Ireland in 1794, O’Connor became one of the most powerful voices of the British working-class movement.

Standing 6 feet tall in an era when the average man was less than 5 feet 5 inches, he towered over his contemporaries, with enormous self-confidence and speaking style to match. A great orator, he could hardly do otherwise than dominate any public gathering!

His newspaper, the NORTHERN STAR, circulating widely among working people, often being read aloud in pubs and meeting places, turned Chartism into a truly national movement.

But years of campaigning took their toll, and O’Connor began drinking heavily. Then, following the failure of his controversial Chartist Land Plan, his behaviour became increasingly bizarre and erratic. In 1852, after assaulting another MP in the House of Commons, he was taken into custody, declared insane and committed to an asylum in Chiswick.

His health continued to deteriorate. By 1855 he had largely lapsed into an unconscious state, and his sister, alarmed, had him moved to her house at 18 Albert Terrace, in Notting Hill. He died there less than a fortnight later, on 30 August 1855.

O’Connor’s friends organised a magnificent funeral, and tens of thousands working class men turned out to say a final farewell. They gathered at Finsbury Square and Smithfield, carrying banners and flags before joining the funeral cortege in Notting Hill. A hearse drawn by four horses led the way, with crowds lining the route all along to the cemetery.

At the head of the procession was a huge black flag bearing the words: “HE LIVED AND DIED FOR US”.

Another banner (apparently present at the Parisian barricades in February 1848) proclaimed the revolutionary slogan: “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité! République Démocratique et Sociale!”.

O’Connor was laid to rest in Square 31. A twenty-foot-high Gothic style monument (now grade II listed) was erected over his grave “by subscription chiefly from the working classes” – as the inscription says.

Feargus O’Connor remains a controversial figure, blamed personally for Chartism’s failures for over a century after his death. His enormous ego and confrontational style undoubtedly caused divisions within the movement, but for all his faults, he gave working class people a powerful sense of solidarity.

He spent much of his life campaigning for the People’s Charter, sacrificed his wealth, health and social standing for the cause, and became one of the most recognisable faces of nineteenth-century radical politics.

His biography “Feargus O’Connor: A Political Life” by Paul Pickering was published in 2008.

07/09/2026

An interesting read from The Past to start off your week:

The cemetery – defined as a burial ground without an attached primary church or chapel – is a place where artistic, architectural, horticultural, historical, and literary interests are combined. Many were planned as places of botanical and geological instruction, while the epitaphs, extolling th...

05/09/2026

The dynamic Lydia Abou-Jaib, local resident and worker for the Queens Park Trust, organised the Trust’s first AGM on Thursday 3 September and our Chair, Johanna, went along to let local residents know about the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery, 72 acres of open green space on their doorstep. Congratulations to Lydia and members of the Trust’s Board on getting this far towards delivering benefits and improvements to local residents. We hope to hear more in due course about how we might contribute.

04/09/2026

❄️ ON THIS DAY: ADMIRAL EDWARD INGLEFIELD (1820–1894) ❄️

On 4 September 1894 died Admiral Edward Inglefield, a naval officer and polar explorer with a particularly wide range of talents.

Inglefield made three expeditions to the Arctic. In 1852, commanding Lady Jane Franklin's steamship Isabel, Inglefield sailed in privately funded search for her missing husband, Sir John Franklin, who disappeared with his entire crew in 1845.

Although he found no trace of Franklin, Inglefield made important geographical discoveries, surveying around 800 miles of Greenland's west coast, and was awarded the Royal Geographical Society's medal. Later he published an account of his journey, “A Summer Search for Sir John Franklin”.

On his third Arctic expedition, Inglefield took a camera with him. Photography was still in its infancy, and he was using the complicated wet-collodion (or “wet plate”) process, which had only been introduced a few years earlier. This meant carrying chemicals, setting up a portable darkroom, carefully coating a glass plate, exposing it and developing before the emulsion dried – all while trying not to freeze in one of the harshest environments on Earth!

The surviving glass-plate negatives are now held by the National Maritime Museum and include some of the earliest Arctic photographs in its collection. They are also among the earliest known glass-plate negatives made in the Arctic and contain some of the earliest photographic images of Inuit people.

After more than half a century in the Royal Navy, he retired in 1885 and devoted much of his time to painting. His watercolours of Arctic landscapes were exhibited in London galleries and at the Royal Academy.

He was also an inventor. Among his creations were a marine hydraulic steering gear and an anchor design that became known as the “Inglefield anchor”. His name lives on in Inglefield Land and Inglefield Gulf in Greenland, as well as in HMS Inglefield.

And just in case all that wasn't enough, Inglefield was also a writer, keen gardener, collector of antique glass, and apparently a very accomplished after-dinner speaker.

He died at his home in Queensgate, London, aged 74, and was buried here at Kensal Green Cemetery, in Square 124.

02/09/2026

Have you downloaded our new Kensal Green Cemetery Friends app yet? 📲

Developed with Situate it not only features content on the history of the cemetery and our most renowned memorials but also self-guided themed tours. A fantastic feature if you allow the app to access GPS is that it will notify you of locations of interest as you pass by them in the cemetery.

We are really excited about this app because it is just the start of what could be a brilliant tool for visitors to the cemetery. As we add more content and more grave locations, finding your way around the cemetery and discovering fascinating stories about our permanent residents will get so much easier. If you are a visitor to the cemetery you definitely need this app! If you are interested in the cemetery but can't visit right now, the app content is still available for you to browse. So wherever you are in the world please download the Kensal Green Cemetery Friends app! It is completely FREE and available now for download on Google Play, the App Store, Play Store, or any other reputable app store.

The new app is a work-in-progress so let us know your thoughts (there is space to provide feedback in the app) and if you have any suggestions for content you would like to see on there - please share it with us!

31/08/2026

🦁 ON THIS DAY: JOHN TRIVETT NETTLESHIP (1841–1902) 🦁

On this day, 31 August, in 1902, died John Trivett Nettleship, one of nineteenth-century Britain’s leading painter of wild animals, widely praised for his powerful, naturalist depictions of lions, polar bears, tigers, pumas and leopards.

Often found sketching at London Zoological Gardens, in 1880 Nettleship travelled to India to observe his favourite wild animals in their natural environment. He also illustrated several books, published a volume of “Essays on Robert Browning's Poetry” (which was probably the first serious study of the poet, and has passed through three editions with considerable enlargements), and a biographical study of the eighteenth-century painter, George Morland.

Exceptionally fit and adventurous, Nettleship boxed, hiked, and climbed mountains. When preparing for an Alpine expedition in 1866 with his friend Henry Cotton, they trained by walking barefoot around Regent's Park early in the mornings. Just days before setting off, he walked from London to Brighton!

He was a member of an artistic circle known as “The Brotherhood”. They were admirers of William Blake, on friendly terms with the Pre-Raphaelites.

His wife Ada (1856–1932) was a talented dressmaker known for working at the forefront of the Aesthetic fashion and the rational dress movement, with notable clients including Sarah Bernhardt.

She made Constance Lloyd's wedding dress for her marriage to Oscar Wilde, as well as the spectacular theatrical costume covered with shimmering wings of more than 1000 beetles worn by Ellen Terry in John Singer Sargent’s famous “Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth”.

Their eldest daughter, Ida (1877–1907), followed her father’s footsteps and became an artist. She married another painter, Augustus John.

Nettleship's grave, topped by a plain, grey granite cross, can be found in Square 154 of Kensal Green Cemetery.