Thursday 26 December 2013

Deceased Online hits multi-million mark for London

Anglican Chapel, Kensal Green Cemetery
Deceased Online has added more than 3million individual burial and cremation records to its London collection with the addition of Kensal Green cemetery. These records represent some 8million-plus data items.

Located in Kensington and Chelsea, Kensal Green is the earliest of London's so-called 'Magnificent Seven' cemeteries.

It opened in 1833, a year after Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. Like Glasnevin, it is multi-demoninational, although the Anglican grounds are by far the largest. It is home to the final resting places of many famous Londoners, including Isambard ‘Kingdom’ Brunel, William Makepeace Thackeray and Anthony Trollope, and a good number of royals and their hangers on. Oscar Wilde's mother, the Irish poet Speranza, is also buried here.

It isn't crammed full of Irish people, that's for sure. You're more likely to find Irish family in St Mary's Roman Catholic cemetery across the way. But the sheer numbers of burials associated with Kensal Green make this new upload by Deceased Online an important collection to check. It joins one other of the 'Seven': Brompton Cemetery, which was uploaded in the summer and is certainly worth checking if your Irish ancestors settled in the west of London, near Earl's Court; while also a very distinguished cemetery, it has a more mixed 'community' clientele.