Tuesday 26 July 2011

Kensal Green Cemetery with my Brompton

Today I found myself in North London at Kensal Green Cemetery.

With about two hours or so to spare I decided to head for a second visit this year to Kensal Green and its famous cemetery. The cemetery does have modern graves and mausoleums but it is home to some of the great and the good of Victorian society.

I came with one person in mind and that was the great Mary Seacole.  She was a nurse from Kingston, Jamaica who found fame in the Crimean War. Her methods of care were second to none and rivalled those of the more famous Florence Nightingale. I have always wanted to visit her last resting place.



Mary Seacole is buried in the Catholic Cemetery adjacent to Kensal Green.  I do think that it is shameful that up until a few years ago she was all but erased from history. I think her renovated gravestone is rather fitting. It brings a little colour to some of the drab gravestones around it.


The Many Brunel's rest here.

At the main cemetery there really are too many once famous Victorians to mention. The genius engineer Brunel also rests here under quite a modest grave monument.

Below are some other shots I took with my trusty Canon G11. I decided that after Mary Secole, everything  else really shout be black and white. The flip out screen was a godsend as I was at all angles trying to take them.








Going to a graveyard must seem like a very strange way to spend a couple of hours but I can really recommend it.  I was not alone and there were loads of other people with cameras, iPhones etc.., doing exactly the same.  I was of course the only one with a bright orange Brompton!

Mary Seacole




I have at last come back to Kensal Green Cemetery to find the resting place of the great, Mary Seacole!



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