Kensal Green Cemetery

Kensal Green is an oasis of peace in an otherwise crowded, urban environment. A short bus ride from trendy Portobello and Notting Hill Gate, Kensal Green is the oldest of London's public burial grounds and has more mausoleums than any other cemetery in Britain. The cemetery has often been described as 'ramshackle', not least as the plots seem to have no discernible layout, resulting in the great and the unknown, the very old and the fairly recent, the very British and the foreign all abutting one another. In common with most garden cemeteries, much of the 75-acre site is managed as a nature reserve, with a wealth of mature trees, rare plantings and over 33 species of birds nesting there. Over 500 members of the British aristocracy are buried here, including royalty: George III's son, the Duke of Sussex (whose burial in 1843 made Kensal Green the most fashionable place to be interred); HRH Princess Sophia, daughter of George III who created a scandal by having an illegitimate child; and the Duke of Cambridge, the grandson of George III. Uniquely, Kensal Green is still managed by the General Cemetery Company, which was set up to administer the cemetery in 1830.

Notables:
Wilkie Collins; William Makepeace Thackeray; Anthony Trollope; Charles Babbage; Baden Powell; Isambard Kingdom Brunel; Charles Blondin; and one Dr. James Barry, who after 40 years as an eminent army surgeon turned out to be not a man at all but a woman!

Anthony Trollope

Wilkie Collins who wanted a plain cross and not a monument over his grave.  

James Henry Leigh Hunt

Poet of Abu Ben Adhem

Write me as one that loves his fellow man.

Marigold Frances Church daughter of Winston and Clementine Churchill.  She died of fever at 3 years of age.

Harold Pinter / Playwright

William Makepeace Thackeray