London – Waltham Forest (Borough of) – Chingford Mount Cemetery

There’s something quite reassuring about the large ‘no’ in the above photo since it’s the entrance to the cemetery in Chingford Mount.

This information plaque notes “developed in 1884 by the Abney Park Cemetery Company on land originally called Caroline Mount, named after the landowner. The original chapel and gate lodges are now gone, but the impressive gates, railing and gate piers survive”. The Abney Park cemetery had been created in Hackney as a non-conformist site, but it was running low on space, hence this new opening.

It’s an enormous site, taking up just under 42 acres. It was run by a private management company who managed to go bust in the 1970s, meaning that some of the unused section of the site would have been turned into housing. Local opposition to this arrangement was quite strong, with the site eventually being taken over by the London Borough of Waltham Forest in 1977. Unfortunately, the lodges and chapel had become vandalised by this time, hence their demolition.

The war memorial at the cemetery. There are 137 war graves from the First World War and 182 from the Second World War located around the cemetery.

One of the avenues which was useful during my visit as the graveyard was particularly soggy in places as I tried to look for some of the war graves.

One of the most infamous graves in the cemetery, the gravestone of Ronnie and Reggie Kray.