The Living and the Dead

Exploring minority burial grounds in Brookwood Cemetery

Unknown to most, Brookwood Cemetery in Woking, Surrey is host to the biggest concentration of minority burial grounds in the United Kingdom. By far the largest of the 19th Century cemeteries that opened in the London area, the London Necropolis (later known as Brookwood Cemetery) became known for its association with the railway when it opened in 1852. Burials by train were novel, the idea of a one-way ticket on the ‘stiff express’ became part of popular imagination and was only discontinued in 1941.

From the beginning there were designated parts of the cemetery considered ‘non-consecrated’, thereby providing burial space for communities outside the mainstream Church of England. Amongst a wide range of groups defined on the basis of profession, nationality and faith, Swedes, Catholics and Zoroastrians were the first groups of outsiders to ‘move in’. Many others were to follow and for some communities, the burial grounds in Brookwood Cemetery would have been their first property in the country. They thus became tokens of settlement, identity and belonging.

Over this period I shot and documented many of the 'living' participants who told their personal and community stories associated with Brookwood, which culminated in an exhibition, the outcome of the two year heritage project ‘The living and the dead: Exploring minority burial grounds in Brookwood Cemetery, shown at The Lightbox in Woking between June 11th and July 10th 2022.