Nunhead Cemetery - Layout and Other Structures

Layout and Other Structures

The Victorian part of the cemetery is currently in a poor state of repair, being best described as an elegant wilderness; locals like to call it a nature reserve. Many areas of the cemetery are fairly overgrown with vines, as visible in newer tourist photos. Numerous tombstones lean to the side. Although the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery are doing their best to restore some parts of the cemetery it is badly in need of care and funding. It is about 52 acres (210,000 m2) and is a popular place to walk.

The lodges and monumental entrance were designed by James Bunstone Bunning. There is an obelisk, the "Scottish Political Martyrs Memorial", the second monument (the other is in Edinburgh) dedicated to the leaders of the Friends of the People Society, popularly called the Scottish Martyrs, including Thomas Muir, Maurice Margarot, and Thomas Fyshe Palmer, who were transported to Australia in 1794. It was erected by Radical MP Joseph Hume in 1837. It is immediately on the right on Dissenters Road, when entering through the North Gate.

Percy Baden Powell Huxford (named after but not related to Lord Baden Powell), aged 12, was one of nine Sea Scouts who died in the Leysdown Tragedy off the Isle of Sheppey in 1912. A special memorial was built for these Sea Scouts in this cemetery in 1914, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. This was vandalised: most of it was removed: only the base remains; see for more information the Kent History Forum website ). A picture of the original monument can be seen on the Scouting Milestones website . A new memorial was erected in 1992 (made possible by the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery).

There are a large number of First and Second World War graves in the cemetery, the greater proportion (580 graves) being Commonwealth service burials from the former war. Most of those are concentrated between three war graves plots: the United Kingdom plot (Square 89), holding 266 graves, the Australian plot which holds 23 graves, and the Canadian plot (Square 52) which holds 36 graves including burials of South African and New Zealand servicemen. Those buried in the UK plot and in individual graves outside the three plots are, because of not being marked by headstones, listed by name on a Screen Wall memorial inside the cemetery's main entrance. A second Screen Wall lists 110 Commonwealth service personnel of the Second World War who are buried in another war graves plot (Square 5), and elsewhere whose graves could not be marked by headstones. There is also a Belgian war grave of the First World War.

A conducted tour of the cemetery is run by the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery, open to all, on the last Sunday of each month, starting from the Linden Grove gates at 2:15 p.m. At the centre of the cemetery is a derelict chapel, its roof gone but its stone walls intact.