In 1842, just 5 years after West
Norwood Cemetery opened, London’s wealthy
Greek expatriate community of merchants and ship owners leased a plot of land
from the cemetery company at a cost of £300 in which to create an Orthodox
enclave. Fenced off from the rest of the
cemetery, the Greek Necropolis contains more grade II listed architectural gems
than any equivalent sized plot in any other London cemetery; 19 tombs and mausolea and the mortuary chapel
dedicated to St Stephen.
Two of the most magnificent
mausolea were built by the Ralli family from Chios, who had settled in England
from 1815 onwards and flourished as grain and textile merchants. The Doric temple was commissioned by Eustratios
Ralli (1800-1884), who was one of the
original committee that acquired the land for the Greek cemetery. As Patriarch of the Greeks in London he also
laid the first stone of the new Cathedral of Saint Sophia in Moscow Place,
Bayswater in 1877. His older brother
John Peter commissioned his mausoleum from the architect GE Street who produced
a design based on the barrel topped tombs at Xanthos in Turkey. In 1872 a
third brother, Stephen Ralli, built the large mortuary chapel.
Other prominent mausolea belong
to the Vagliano brothers, also grain merchants, one of whom, Panaghis, left a colossal
fortune of over £3 million when he died, equivalent to well over a billion in
todays terms. There is also the family tomb of Maria Zambuco, a model to the Pre-Raphaelite
brotherhood, the Caridia family tomb (Aristides the father was an India
merchant, his son an Olympic silver medal winning tennis player) and, a
descendent of the “Greek Emperors of Byzantium”, Princess Eugenie Paleologus.
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| The Mausoleum of Eustratios Ralli |
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| The mausoleum of John Peter Ralli with Stephen Ralli's mortuary chapel in the background |
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| A detail from one of the many fine tombs |
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A solitary coffin inside one of the vaults
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