A similar service was established in 1854 by the London Necropolis Company, running from London Necropolis railway station near Waterloo station to Brookwood Cemetery near Woking, Surrey, but the 23-mile (37 km) journey took around 45 minutes compared to 15 minutes between Kings Cross and Colney Hatch.

The Great Northern London Cemetery Company aimed at the lower end of the market, charging 6 shillings to carry a coffin, and plus a return fare of 1s 6d for each mourner, plus another fee for burial, starting at 10s or 11s.

The station included a wedge-shaped spire, and gothic arches, built above a retaining wall beside the railway line in a cutting below.

It included a mortuary – intended to avoid the unhygienic storage of cadavers at the deceased's family home – and facilities for mourners, with a lift to carry coffins down to the tracks.

Rail services began in about 1861 and ran twice a week to Southgate & Colney Hatch (now New Southgate) station; north of the station, a single railway track ran to a terminus to the west of East Barnet Lane (later renamed Brunswick Park Road), beside the cemetery, where there were waiting rooms and chapels.

[3] A Standard Telephones and Cables factory was built on the former location of the station in 1922; the site now forms part of North London Business Park.

Dorothy Lawrence (1896–1964), a woman who surreptitiously served as a male soldier on the Western Front in World War I and was institutionalised at the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum[6] where she died in 1964,[6] was buried in a pauper's grave in the cemetery, where the site of her plot is no longer clear.

[citation needed] Other interments include statesman Richard Bethell (1800–1873), physician Alfred Baring Garrod (1819–1907), songwriter Fred W. Leigh (1871–1924) and criminal Tony Lambrianou (1942–2004).

The Greek Orthodox area was developed in 1998 and named after the Reverend Kyriacou Petrou, a local priest, who is also buried in this section.