Gunnersbury Cemetery

Gunnersbury Cemetery

Gate of the Gunnersbury Cemetery
Details
Established 1929
Location 143 Gunnersbury Avenue Acton LONDON W3 8LE
Country United Kingdom
Coordinates 51°29′42″N 0°17′01″W / 51.49497°N 0.28350°W / 51.49497; -0.28350
Type Public
Owned by Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Size 8.9 hectares (22 acres)
Website
Find a Grave Gunnersbury Cemetery

Gunnersbury Cemetery, also known as Kensington or New Kensington Cemetery, is a cemetery opened in 1929. Although it is owned and managed by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea,[1] it is geographically located within the London Borough of Hounslow at 143, Gunnersbury Avenue in Acton - most of the rest of which is in the London Borough of Ealing.

History

A triangle of land between the Gunnersbury Avenue and the Great West Road, part of the Gunnersbury Park, was bought in 1925 from the Rothschild family by the borough. The cemetery was founded soon afterwards, in 1929, on the former parkland.[2]

Location and facilities

The cemetery is situated adjacent to Gunnersbury Park and covers about 8.9 hectares. It has numerous floral displays and shrubberies, and a chapel.[1] The cemetery's buildings, including the chapel, are simple brick structures.[3] A Garden of Remembrance serves as the place for the interment of cremated remains.[2] There is also a Book of Remembrance for memorial inscriptions.[2] Gunnersbury Cemetery is the location of the main office for both the Borough's cemeteries (the other being the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Cemetery, Hanwell).[1]

The Katyn monument

A notable landmark at the cemetery is a monument, in the form of a black obelisk, dedicated to the Polish victims of the Katyn massacre.[3] It was designed by Louis Fitzgibbon and Count Stefan Zamoyski.[3] This monument was unveiled on 18 September 1976 amid considerable controversy.[3][4] During the period of the Cold War, successive British governments objected to plans by the UK's Polish community to build a major monument to commemorate the massacre. The Soviet Union did not want Katyn to be remembered, and put pressure on Britain to prevent the creation of the monument.[5][4] As a result, the construction of the Katyn monument was delayed for many years.[6][7] After the local community had finally secured the right to build the monument, no official government representative was present at the opening ceremony (although some Members of Parliament did attend the event unofficially).[6][7][4]

Gunnersbury cemetery also contains the graves of 49 Commonwealth service personnel of World War II.[8]

There used to be a notable sculpture by Nereo Cescott in the cemetery but it was destroyed by vandals prior to 1994.[2][3]

Opening hours

MonthMon-SatSun
January 9.00-16.30 9.00-16.30
February9.00-17.309:00-17.30
March9:00-17.309:00-17.30
April9.00-19.009.00-18.00
May9.00-19.009.00-18.00
June9.00-20.009.00-19.00
July9.00-20.009.00-19.00
August9.00-20.009.00-19.00
September9.00-19.009.00-18.00
October9.00-17.309.00-17.30
November9.00-16.309.00-16.30
December9.00-16.309.00-16.30

[9]

Burials

As of January 2010 Find a Grave describes this cemetery as having "49 famous interments."[10] They include:

References

  1. 1 2 3 Official entry on the Royal Borough's Libraries
  2. 1 2 3 4 Cemeteries services, The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Hugh Meller (10 March 1994). London cemeteries: an illustrated guide and gazetteer. Scolar Press. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-85967-997-8. Retrieved 14 January 2011.
  4. 1 2 3 Anna M. Cienciala; Wojciech Materski (2007). Katyn: a crime without punishment. Yale University Press. pp. 243–245. ISBN 978-0-300-10851-4. Retrieved 16 February 2011.
  5. George Sanford (2005). Katyn and the Soviet massacre of 1940: truth, justice and memory. Psychology Press. pp. 195–. ISBN 978-0-415-33873-8. Retrieved 16 February 2011.
  6. 1 2 Katyn in the Cold War, Foreign and Commonwealth Office
  7. 1 2 Brian Crozier, The Katyn Massacre and Beyond, National Observer, No. 44, Autumn 2000 >
  8. CWGC Cemetery Report.
  9. http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/az/az.asp?searchletter=&orgid=685
  10. Find a Grave, Gunnersbury Cemetery
  11. Find a Grave, Lancers & families, 24th
  12. Find a Grave, Denzil Batchelor
  13. Find a Grave, Bor-Komorowski, Tadeusz
  14. Find a Grave, Hugh Burden
  15. Find a Grave, William Davison
  16. Find a Grave, Charles Benjamin Dowse
  17. Find a Grave, Matila Ghyka
  18. Find a Grave, George Humphreys
  19. Find a Grave, Harold Brownlow Martin
  20. Find a Grave, Charles Langbridge Morgan
  21. Find a Grave, John Ogdon
  22. Find a Grave, Vera Page
  23. Find a Grave, Carol Reed
  24. Find a Grave, Prince Vsevolod Ivanovich
  25. Find a Grave, Kazimierz Sabbat
  26. Find a Grave, Matthew Smith
  27. Find a Grave, Marda Vanne
  28. Find a Grave, Aston Webb
  29. Find a Grave, Dixie "Elmira" Ross
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