Golders Green Crematorium

Situated directly opposite the Golders Green Jewish cemetery, the Crematorium describes itself as a “secular resting-place for those of all faiths and none”. Aside from my family’s connection with the place, the crem’s Garden of Rest also happens to be a great place for a Sunday walk… with a bit of celeb-spotting thrown in!

View across the Garden of Rest to the crematorium buildings

 

Cremation came later to this country than elsewhere in Europe. In Italy, for example, it had already become popular by the latter half of the 19^th century. In 1873, while attending a conference in Padua, Sir Henry Thompson, surgeon to Queen Victoria, heard a Professor Brunetti speak about theadvantages and practicalities of cremation. The following year, Thompson published an article himself in which he recommended the procedure, and soon afterwards the Crematorium Society was founded. At their inaugural meeting the signatories (among them Millais and Trollope) declared:  “[we] disapprove the present custom of burying the dead, and we desire to substitute some mode which shall rapidly resolve the body into its component elements, by a process which cannot offend the living, and shall render the remains perfectly innocuous. Until some better method is devised, we desire to adopt that usually known as cremation.”

One of the three columbaria
 

The Society met with difficulties from the outset. Public opposition made finding a suitable site in London – where need was most urgent – extremely hard. Then in 1879, despite an increasingly desperate shortage of space in which to bury people, the government decided to set its face against cremation, and made it illegal. However, a public appeal was launched and consent was eventually given for the country’s very first chapel and crematorium to be built in Woking, the first service taking place in 1885.

 Golders Green Crematorium was the first of its kind in London. Built of red brick in an Italianate

Philipson Mausoleum

style, the main crematorium building was constructed in a series of stages, as and when money became available. It was finally deemed complete in 1939, although extra sections have been added since then, including a shrine for Jewish memorials in 1959. The land on which it stands was purchased in 1900 for £6,000 and the crematorium itself opened in 1902. There are two cremation chapels and a chapel of remembrance. A long arcaded cloister links the various buildings.

The Garden of Rest covers a total area of 12 acres and is Grade I-listed. There are several large tombs, including the grand Philipson Mausoleum of 1914 (both this and the main crematorium building are Grade II-listed), three columbaria, two ponds, a bridge and a large crocus lawn. It also has a children’s section and a “communist corner”.

The bronze statue (left), depicting a mysterious draped figure lifting a young girl heavenwards, is called “Into the Silent Land” and was a gift from the Royal Society of Arts in 1937.

People from all walks of life are commemorated at Golders Green, from politicians to artists, writers and musicians, as well as many big names from stage and screen. Enid Blyton, Ronnie Scott, Duke Ellington, Sid James, Jimmy Jewel, Bernard Bresslaw, Peter Sellers, Anna Pavlova, Ivor Novello, Joe Orton, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Bram Stoker are some of those whose ashes are scattered here. Much-visited memorials include those of suffragist Millicent Fawcett, Sigmund Freud and Marc Bolan – his commemorative tablet is stolen on a regular basis and has to be replaced.

Many other famous figures have been cremated here, but had their ashes moved to a different location, including Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, Ernest Bevin, the poets TS Eliot and Rudyard Kipling, and the writers Henry James and HG Wells.

On average, over 2,000 cremations are carried out at Golders Green every year.