Sunset, Kensal Green Cemetery 28.01.2026

This anonymous article appeared in the New Court Gazette of Saturday 17 September 1842, when the cemetery was just 9 years old. The style is rather overblown, the wind is a ‘balmy zephyr’, a troubled heart is an ‘afflicted breast’ and the text is liberally sprinkled with adverbs, adjectives and lofty thoughts. It starts with a quotation from a ’favourite author’ but I have not been able to trace where it comes from or who the author is. Google AI overview told me that the phrase evokes the atmosphere of Gray’s ‘Elegy in a country churchyard’ presumably because it mentions country churchyards and tombs! I find it very difficult to take AI seriously.

The pictures were all taken in Kensal Green Cemetery on a beautiful winter’s sunset that I have been waiting for for the last couple of months and which I had begun to despair was never going to happen, in this, the wettest winter we have had for a long time.

 

MUSINGS IN KENSAL-GREEN CEMETERY.

"I like," said a favourite author, "to muse in the still solemnity of a country churchyard, notwithstanding it is but a gloomy reminiscence to reflect on the tomb." The cold, cold hand of death, which hath, however distant the period, separated us from those we have dearly and truly loved, is, indeed, a melancholy remembrance; but yet, it is sometimes necessary, in order to prepare us for our future fate; and to such as require reminding that the vanities of this life must be brought to a period, a drive to that beautiful spot, the cemetery at Kensal-green, and a pensive walk through the various intersections—from tomb to mausoleum, from catacomb to grave—must bring the mind to a sublime tone for reflection, and the heart to a desire of peace. The gentle breeze, flitting over the sweet flowers that bloom around each sacred depository, shedding its balmy zephyrs on each consecrated sod, encourages a ray of pleasure to arouse and warm the afflicted breast so truly irresistible, and not to be explained, that we are led involuntarily to exclaim, "Here, indeed, seems a place of rest!" On one side lies the Quaker—onward the Dissenter's tomb stands forth, enshrined in the luxurious foliage that buds and blossoms so abundantly in this truly hallowed spot.

It may be justly said, that every department puts forth its own peculiar claims, and calls the attention to the whole. The poor cannot say it is exclusive—the rich, that it is not as attractive as it is safe; for to the former the arrangements are such as to render it to them attainable, and to the latter it presents all the advantages of seclusion and security which wealth can purchase, or the impulse of affection to the departed friend can procure.

Few spots are equal to this cemetery for extensive beauty and solemn grandeur, and the vanities of this life seem as nothing when there reflected on, weighed, as they are, by compulsion, against the unavoidable ordination which so faithfully points to our becoming also one of the cold occupants of the tomb. Vanity, without alternative, yields patiently to the conviction, and any asperity of temper for a time, at least, is subdued, on thinking of the uncertainty of our existence, and the short space that may occur ere our friends may visit us, in a similar resting place to Kensal-green.