East Sheen Cemetery

The site is shown in 1893/4 as woodland and opened as Barnes Cemetery in 1905. In 1913 the northern triangular section of the site was laid out as the cemetery while to the south was a nursery. The cemetery is linked to the main road to the north by an avenue of plane trees, with a lodge at the entrance and a mortuary chapel on the south boundary. In the 1930s the area to the south of Barnes Cemetery was laid out on a grid and the cemetery was subsequently renamed East Sheen Cemetery. Although it now forms a continuous area of graves with Richmond Cemetery, the old Barnes Cemetery boundary is still clearly defined by a holly hedge. The cemetery contains various fine trees, clumps of pampas grass, with yews behind the chapel and on either side of the main roadway between the entrance on Kings Ride Gardens and the chapel.

In the C18th King George III had a farm to the west of East Sheen Common (q.v.) near the parish boundary and King's Ride recalls the route from Kew Palace to the farm and Richmond Park.The chapel at the main entrance of the cemetery was built in 1906, designed in C13th-Gothic style with a slender fleche by the local architect Reginald Rowell, who is buried in the cemetery. A monument of note is the family tomb of the Lancaster family of 1920 by Sydney March, which has a dramatic bronze mourning angel, described by Hugh Meller as 'arguably the most dramatic sculpture in any of London's cemeteries'. The Lancasters made their money in coal mining in the north country. Sydney March and his 6 brothers and 1 sister were all artists; together they created the Canadian National Memorial in Ottawa in 1939. The memorial to Louise Espinosa (d.1943) and her husband Edouard (d.1950) takes the form of a walled garden; together they had founded the British ballet organisation in 1930.