Its initial owner being incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1852, Brookwood Cemetery (apart from its northern section, reserved for Nonconformists) was consecrated by Charles Sumner, Bishop of Winchester, on 7 November 1854.

[11] In 1858 the London Necropolis Company sold 64 acres (26 ha) of the extra land to the government for the building of Woking Convict Invalid Prison.

The original London Necropolis station was relocated in 1902 but its successor was demolished after suffering bomb damage during World War II.

A very short piece of commemorative track, with signpost and plaque, purposefully gives way to a grass field and recollects the old final stage of the journey of the deceased.

[23] Although the LNC was never able to gain the domination of London's funeral industry for which its founders had hoped, it was very successful at targeting specialist groups of artisans and trades, to the extent that it became nicknamed "the Westminster Abbey of the middle classes".

[25] A large number of these dedicated plots were established, ranging from Chelsea Pensioners and the Ancient Order of Foresters to the Corps of Commissionaires and the LSWR.

[33] The first major relocation took place in 1862, when the construction of Charing Cross railway station and the routes into it necessitated the demolition of the burial ground of Cure's College in Southwark, which uncovered at least 7,950 bodies.

This building, the largest mausoleum in the cemetery, was bought by the LNC, fitted with shelves and niches to hold urns, and used as a dedicated columbarium from then on.

[39] In 1946, the LNC obtained consent to build their own crematorium on a section of the Nonconformist cemetery which had been set aside for pauper burials, but chose not to proceed.

[40][note 1] Intentionally designed for informality, traditional gravestones and memorials were prohibited, and burials were marked only by small 2-to-3-inch (5.1 to 7.6 cm) stones.

[42] Suffering cash flow problems and distracted by a succession of hostile takeover bids, the LNC management never proceeded with the scheme and the buildings fell into disuse.

[28] As well as the giant sequoias (also known as Wellingtonia after the recently deceased Duke of Wellington), the grounds were heavily planted with magnolia, rhododendron, coastal redwood, azalea, andromeda and monkeypuzzle, with the intention of creating perpetual greenery with large numbers of flowers and a strong floral scent throughout the cemetery.

In the meantime, 141 Commonwealth service personnel were buried from London in scattered graves throughout the cemetery, apart from a small Nurses' Plot in St Peter's Avenue in the Westminster field (where are buried nurses from Millbank Military Hospital) and an Indian plot (including one unidentified soldier) in the North-West corner.

[7] The purchase evolved from Güney's role as Chairman of the UK Turkish Islamic Trust, which wanted suitable burial facilities for its members.

[3] In 2017, work began on the exhumation of the remains of approximately 40,000 to 50,000 people who were interred at the former burial ground of St. James's Church[52] due to construction of the new HS2 terminal at Euston Station in London.

The land was set aside during World War I to provide a burial site for men and women of Commonwealth and American armed forces who died in the United Kingdom of wounds and other causes.

There is a large Royal Air Force section in the southeast corner of the cemetery which includes graves of Czech and United States nationals who died serving in the RAF.

The new memorial that replaced it was created in 2004, and currently (17 November 2024) commemorates 407 Commonwealth service personnel who died in the First World War in the United Kingdom but have no known grave.

)[60] The Brookwood Memorial stands at the southern end of the Canadian section of the cemetery and commemorates 3,428 Commonwealth men and women who died during the Second World War and have no known grave.

This includes commandos killed in the Dieppe and St Nazaire Raids; and Special Operations Executive personnel who died in occupied Europe.

With large numbers of American personnel based in the west of England, a dedicated rail service for the transport of bodies operated from Devonport to Brookwood.

They were not transferred to Cambridge in 1948, but instead reburied in unmarked graves at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery Plot E, a dedicated site for US servicemen executed during the Second World War.

Opened in November 1862 due to the first recorded death of a Parsee in Britain, it was redesigned in 1901 by Sir George Birdwood to the traditional plan of the Persian paradise.

As Clarke [66] describes, "The Wadia mausoleum, in the centre of the ground, represents the seven-staged 'heavenly mountain' from which the four paths lead east, south, west and north.

The new aviary, or Fire Temple, is based on designs from the ruins of a double gateway of the Palace of Xerxes, and replaced the original agiary.

He established the city of Jamshedpur, D.H. Hakim, one of the founding members of the London Zoroastrian Association and whose death in 1862 was the catalyst for the opening of the burial grounds, and Bapsybanoo, Dowager Marchioness of Winchester (1902-1995), the flamboyant daughter of the Most Reverend Khurshedji Pavry, high priest of the Parsees in India.