Day 2 - Brompton Cemetery

 I was only able to get reservations to Warner Bros studios at 5:00 pm (even several months in advance), so we had the opportunity to sleep in and recover from our very long day of travel yesterday.  The studios are outside London and required about 1.5 hrs of transit to get there.  First by overland rail and then by shuttle bus.  The rail station was about a mile from our airbnb with a short cut through a very lovely Brompton cemetary.

It was tended but 'wild', with lots of spring wildflowers in bloom. 

It is managed by the royal parks service and is owned by the Crown.  As we strolled through, we were looking for the oldest marker we could find.  A groundskeeper heard us and walked up to us.  He said it was opened in 1840 and there were a lot of famous people buried there.  Small numbered markets showed these tombstones. 

This is for Herbert Fitch (1849-1933!) Herbert Fitch established a respected printing business in the City of London. One of their sons, also called Herbert, was a member of the Special Branch. This is the arm of the police responsible for matters of national security and intelligence.

35,000 monuments mark 205,000 resting places.  It is still open for burials. It is one of the 'magnificent seven' cemetaries built around the outskirts of London during the 1840s. (It is of course in the center of London today).

There were so many different styles of markers.  The celtic crosses were my favorites.

This one marked the grave of a WWI ace who took down a German zephelin.  

Quite the commemorative image!

There are 289 WWI service member burials and 79 from WWII, and a number of older ones.

There were a lot of family mausoleums.

I liked this sign that noted the common symbols found on the markers in the cemetery. 

There are a lot of international burials, including Polish ones and the Japanese one below.

In the 1880s, a visiting 'performing troupe' of Sioux were in London and the chief died and was buried here.  100 years later, a family member successfully petitioned for him to be exhumed and buried in his homeland in South Dakota.

Shoji Marquis Nakato Toasano