THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
'The Magnificent Seven' London cemeteries were built to relieve the curden placed upon the city's myriad small parish churchyards, which had become dangerously overcrowded after hundreds of years of burials. In the first half of the nineteenth century the population of London more than doubled from 1 million to 2.3 million and its graveyards had become a serious health hazard with visible body parts and decaying matter flushed directly into the sewer system and Thames. Seven new "great gardens of sleep' were built by order of Parliament as private enterprises in the then suburbs at: |
Kensal Green (1832)
West Norwood (1837)
Highgate (1839)
Abney Park (1840)
Nunhead (1840)
Brompton (1840)
Tower Hamlets (1841)
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