St Mary's Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green

St Mary's Catholic Cemetery and St Patrick's Cemetery in Leytonstone (q.v.) are the only two exclusively Catholic cemeteries in London, other cemeteries having Catholic sections, and both are subsidiaries of the Secular Clergy Common Fund. Initially Catholics were buried in Kensal Green Cemetery (q.v.), which had been established in 1832 by the General Cemetery Company, but it was then decided to open a separate Catholic cemetery and an adjacent plot of 29 acres was purchased from the General Cemetery Company. St Mary's Catholic Cemetery opened for burials on 10 May 1858. The Chapel opened in 1860 and together with the cemetery lodge, upper and lower catacombs was designed by Samuel Nicholl; the chapel was restored in the late 1980s/early 1990s. The cemetery has a railed entrance on Harrow Road and railings along the canal and the railway, but a plain brick wall borders the cemetery along Scrubs Lane.

Many thousands of burials have taken place here, among them many notable people. In March 2000 Bob Moulder compiled a list of 'Persons of Note' buried here with a short biography of each, and this document is stored in the St Mary's Cemetery Office. It includes people in all walks of life, from politicians to gangsters, sportsmen and women to artists and writers; music hall performers to classical composers, priests to police chiefs, and much besides. Among those buried here are the Campbell family whose fine mausoleum of 1904 was designed by C H B Quennell; Mary Seacole, Jamaican nurse and herbalist in the Crimean War who died in 1881; Louis Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon's nephew (d.1881), and zoologist St George Jackson Mivart (d.1900). August Gagniere (d.1874) has a large sarcophagus that includes a relief portrait. The Conde de Bayona y Marques de Misa Mausoleum commemorates Manuel de Misa, owner of a sherry estate and a Spanish senator from 1877-1893, who died in London and was buried here in 1904. His widow Helena Busheroy de Misa was buried here in 1916. Dulcie Wornum, elder sister of the architect G Grey Wornum who provided new designs for Parliament Square (q.v.) in the 1950s, was buried here in 1933.

There are two war memorials in the cemetery, the Belgium War Memorial commemorating Belgian soldiers who were wounded in combat in WWI and evacuated to England but then died in hospital, and the Canadian War Memorial, which is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.