FOWNC Newsletter No 45. September 2002.

Free to members. Price £1.00 to non-members

Chairman's Report - Bob Flanagan

Progress with scrub clearance and monument restoration has continued apace this year and the effect has been to open up new vistas, especially at the top of Ship Path. Details of one particular success story, the reinstatement and rededication of the memorial to Dr Alphonse de Normandy, will feature in the January 2003 Newsletter. Ken Dry (cemetery manager), and Keith Tallantire and Gideon Taylor (Lambeth Environmental Services), continue to work hard on these and related projects. Ken and Mike Dickens (Lambeth Legal Services) have also produced a detailed revision of Lambeth's cemetery regulations intended to ensure harmony with the Diocesan Churchyard Regulations. The draft regulations have been subject to detailed scrutiny by both the Management Advisory Group and the Scheme of Management Committee and Lambeth are to be congratulated on bringing them forward to the agreed timescale.

The new regulations will be implemented in October this year to coincide with Lambeth taking over much of the day-to-day workload of the Archdeacon's Official Nicholas Long. They will also ensure that graves in the unconsecrated part of the cemetery are afforded similar protection to those in the consecrated areas. The initiative and consultation over signage in the cemetery continues, although not as much progress has been made as was hoped when this initiative was suggested earlier in the year. We now await formulation of an agreed Land Management Strategy by the Scheme of Management Committee and its adoption by the Council before external funding bids can be made.

Burials in Reused Graves

As members will know Lambeth have been obliged to produce a website giving details of illegally re-sold graves (http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/LCem/cgi-bin/lcem.exe?). Until recently no relatives of the original owners of these graves had come forward. However, firstly Mrs Gill Griffin has come forward as the only surviving relative of the Lambeth potter George Tinworth. George (1843-1913) and his mother Jane Tinworth lie in a re-used grave (18,786, square 118). Born in Walworth, he was apprenticed to his father, a wheelwright. He studied at the Lambeth School of Art whilst running his father's business, and joined Henry Doulton as a potter, ca. 1867. He became the leading potter of his generation. Many examples of his work still survive, although the famous fountain in Kennington Park is now lost. His gravestone too has been destroyed and Mrs Griffin would like to see a tombstone reinstated on his grave. We await clarification from Lambeth on the legal position. There is no stone on the gave at present.

The second relative to come forward is Janet Hobbs Johnson who lives in the US. Her ancestors include the vocalist John William Hobbs (1799-1877) and his son-in-law Dr William Hayman Cummings (1831-1915). Their gravestone (grave 444, square 112) has been destroyed and the grave re-used, although I don't know if there is a new stone commemorating the recent burials. Both Hobbs and Cummings were well known in their day (Hobbs was a Gentleman of the Chapels Royal and Cummings Principal of the Guildhall School of Music, for example) and feature in my booklet West Norwood Cemetery's Musicians (1998), copies of which are still available from the FOWNC bookstall.

The Mausolea and Monuments Trust

The Mausolea and Monuments Trust (MMT) is a charitable foundation (1997) which aims to protect and preserve for the public mausolea and sepulchral monuments in the UK. Their leaflet features a photograph of the Dodd mausoleum at Norwood, although unfortunately this is labeled as being at Kensal Green - poor old Norwood looses out again! Be this as it may we wish the Trust well and hope that we can work with them to help safeguard Norwood's rich collection of mausolea (some 30 of them).

A mausoleum is a house of the dead. They take their name from one of the Wonders of the Ancient World, the tomb of King Mausolus at Halicarnassus in Asia Minor. Most British mausolea date from the 18th and 19th centuries - the Maddick mausoleum at Norwood is one of our most prominent 20th century mausolea. Symbols of dynastic pride, pious respect and love, they stand in their hundreds in churchyards, cemeteries, and parks. Many of Britain's finest architects were involved in their design. Neoclassical, Egyptian or Gothic (all exaemplified at Norwood), they form a varied and irreplaceable part of our built heritage. And unlike tombs, they have interiors that need protecting

So far, the MMT cares for five mausolea. The part-collapsed Guise mausoleum at Elmore, Gloucestershire of c. 1736; the Neo-classical Nash Mausoleum of c. 1775 at Farningham, Kent; the neat brick Heathcote Mausoleum at Hursley, Hants of c. 1800: the massive, sunken Wynn-Ellis mausoleum at Whitstable, Kent by Charles Barry Jnr of c. 1872; and Bodley's ornate Gothic Sacheverell-Bateman Mausoleum at Morley, Derbyshire of c. 1895. The roof and stonework of this latter structure we have been conserved recently.

The MMT exists to celebrate and protect funerary structures. They have taken the mausolea listed above into direct care, and will go on working towards their conservation. They are also compiling a national mausoleum gazetteer. When completed, the gazetteer will be a vital tool for future conservation. For the first time, a true picture will emerge of the plight of this remarkable building type. There is a crisis in our burial grounds country wide. Tombs, exposed to the elements and the assaults of vandals, and sometimes cemetery owners, are all too often abandoned and friendless. And mausolea, the largest funerary structures of all, present the greatest challenge.

Parish councils, local authorities, or cemetery companies must ensure that mausolea and monuments do not become dangerous, but upkeep is left to descendants of the original owners. Some families have taken such responsibilities seriously. Others, for whatever reason, have not: the upkeep of a distant ancestor's mausoleum may not be a top priority. Many are desperately in need of long-overdue maintenance or more serious repair. Under current Heritage Lottery Fund rules, private individuals are not eligible to apply for Lottery funding towards the repair of their mausolea. The MMT, however, is eligible for such grants if it has taken the building into its guardianship

The MMT aims to raise large amounts of money for conservation projects, and wishes to enlist fellow enthusiasts. They invite individuals to become Friends of the MMT. Membership is free, and there is a regular newsletter. They plan to organise events and days of practical rescue work. Details of the Friends of the MMT can be found at:

http://www.mausolea-monuments.org.uk/docs/main.html

The Mausolea and Monuments Trust (Friends)

24 Hanbury Street

London

E1 6QR

e-mail: mausolea@btinternet.com

#######John - include photo or drawing of a Norwood mausoleum to illustrate this note?

John Francis Crook (1847-1922) and Alice Julia Burville, Mrs Crook (1856-1944) - Bob Flanagan

Mr Andrew Lamb kindly wrote some time ago to point out an omission from my booklet West Norwood Cemetery's Musicians (FOWNC, 1998). John Crook was for many years a conductor for the London and provincial musical stage who, late in his career, found major success as a songwriter for touring musical comedy. His wife Alice Burville was a noted soprano in her day. They were living at 221 Norwood Road at the time of Crook's death on 10 November 1922 and are buried at Norwood (grave 36,079, square 70). No monument survives.

Crook, who was born in Marylebone, was one of the conductor/composers who took musical control of the Manchester Prince's Theatre and Theatre Royal in their heyday in the 1870s and 1880s. Crook was known, along with Alfred Cellier (also buried at Norwood - grave 24,291, square 77/78 - see 'Norwood Musicians') and Frederic Stanislaus, as one of the 'Manchester three'. Crook is said to have received piano lessons from his aunt Madame de Belleville Oury, a pupil of Beethoven. At Norwich he was taught harmony and counterpoint by James Hill and received the appointment of organist to St. John's Catholic Chapel.

Subsequently he became a conductor with the Henri Corri Opera Company and took over at Manchester in succession to Stanislaus. Like his two predecessors, he successfully composed a full-scale comic opera for production at Captain Bainbridge's theatres and although, like Stanislaus's The Lancashire Witches the previous year, The King's Dragoons did not reach London, it found success elsewhere in the provinces and as far afield as Australia and New Zealand.

From his Manchester base Crook supplied the songs for two long-lived touring shows, the burlesque comic opera Merry Mignon and the musical comedy Larks, before he caught the attention of the influential librettist and director H.B. Farnie, who took him to London with the comic opera Indiana, which had been produced at Manchester's Comedy Theatre, to oversee the musical side of his new collaborations with Audran and Planquette.

Crook conducted Indiana at the Avenue Theatre, interpolating music of his own into Audran's score, and simultaneously organized the musical side of the remaking of Planquette's Les Voltigeurs de la 32ème into The Old Guard (1887), one of the most durable touring comic operas of the period, of Chassaigne's Les Noce's improvisées as Nadgy (1888) and of Wenzel's Les Dragons de la reine as The Young Recruit (1892). Largely uncredited, he also composed such music as was necessary to the rewriting of the pieces. When the French connection faded out, the Avenue Theatre returned to burlesque and Crook composed original scores for the old favourite The Field of the Cloth of Gold and the Arthur Roberts vehicle Lancelot the Lovely while maintaining his place in the pit for both shows and also for the Tito Mattei comic opera La Prima Donna which followed.

He subsequently moved to the Prince of Wales Theatre to conduct the Carl Rosa Light Opera Company's Captain Thérèse and the mime L'Enfant prodigue, and worked regularly as a conductor in London thereafter, leading the orchestras at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the Adelphi (1895-8), the Lyceum, the Duke of York's, and the Vaudeville (1901) before going to Australia to conduct The Scarlet Feather for George Musgrove.

He continued throughout as a prolific songwriter both for the theatre and the music hall, supplying songs for many stand-up stars - most famously The Coster's Serenade for Albert Chevalier - and as interpolated numbers for various musicals. He also composed and compiled the songs for several of the earliest and the most outstanding touring musical comedies of the turn of the century. His score for the Methusalemic variety musical The Lady Slavey became encrusted with interpolations over 20 years of constant touring, but the success of the songs which he wrote for The New Barmaid was such that the bulk of the score remained as written over its 20-year run around the provinces and colonies.

Capable of writing a score in the classic vein, as he had proven with his very first stage piece, Crook found himself instead one of the most successful composers of popular burlesque and musical comedy songs of his time, a talent witnessed by his large contribution to these two most successful variety musicals of all time. When that particular craze had passed, however, he continued his conducting career in Britain and in Australia, and turned his hand to a different kind of theatre music, composing the original, and for a long time standard, incidental music for Barrie's Peter Pan and, alongside songs by Darewski and Kern, for the same author's musical comedy Rosy Rapture.

Alice Burville, who was born in Stepney, was a favourite soprano of the 1870s and early 1880s. She rose from the tiny rôle of a Maid of Honour in the West End production of La Branche cassée (1874) to take the leading ingénue roles in the London presentations of Dagobert (1875, Princess Fleur d'amour), Fleur de thé (1875, Fleur de thé), The Duke's Daughter (La Timbale d'argent, 1876, Malvina), La Chanson de Fortunio (1876, Laurette) and Le Petit Duc (1878, Duchesse). She also took over as Rosalinde in London's first Die Fledermaus (1877) and as Josephine in the original production of HMS Pinafore and played the title-rôle in a West End revival of Geneviève de Brabant.

Alice visited America in 1877 with Lydia Thompson's troupe playing Polly Hopkins in Robinson Crusoe, Suzel in Oxygen, Joconde in Piff-Paff, Fatima in Bluebeard, and also appeared there several years later in more conventional comic opera, when her credits included Arabella in Billee Taylor (1881) and Lady Angela in Broadway's Patience (1881-2). She returned home to appear as Fiametta in the British production of Boccaccio (1882), but this was her last major London rôle, her work thereafter being largely in the provinces where she appeared in the tide rôle of Merry Mignon, composed by John Crook, and took the lead in the provincial musical The Bachelors (1885). Her first husband was William Henry Leigh Dugmore (1853-1915), who as W.H. Denny created the roles of Wilfred Shadbolt in The Yeomen of the Guard and Don Alhambra del Bolero in The Gondoliers. She died in Littlehampton on 4 July 1944. In her will she bequeathed £30 to be given for upkeep of her and her husband's grave in perpetuity. No photograph of her is known.

Legend to Figure

1. Mr John Crook (Strand Musical Magazine, December 1895)

Joseph Bernard Clark (1868-1940) - Master Plasterer by Ellen Barbet

There can be few visitors to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane who have not marvelled at the magnificent decoration of the auditorium. Bathed in blue and gold, the richness of the ornamental plasterwork, with its intricate designs, commands a sense of splendour. Credit for the workmanship must go to the Mitcham firm founded in 1913 by Joe Clark and Harry Fenn. Joe Clark's modest grey tombstone at Norwood could not be in greater contrast to the trade which became his life's work.

Joseph Bernard Clark was born in Dundee on 25 March 1868, the son of a plasterer. The eldest child of a large family, Joe started work aged ten. A slump in the Glasgow building industry forced his family to leave Scotland and seek work in London. Years of poverty followed for the parents and their ten children. Joe ran errands and delivered newspapers in order to bring in a much needed wage. His grandchildren still recall Joe's tale of the paper shop owner who gave the shoeless Joe a pair of boots. Joe followed in his father's footsteps and learned the trade of decorative plastering.

In 1913, Joe Clark, together with Harry Fenn, a surveyor, founded the company of Clark and Fenn. Little did they realise that they had founded a company which would become one of the major specialist contractors within the construction industry. From humble origins at Loughborough Junction SW9, with a later move to Clapham Old Town, Clark and Fenn really made its name in the developing cinemas and theatres where decorative plasterwork was used extensively.

Over the years, using fibrous plasterwork, which is made from gypsum casting plaster (more commonly known as Plaster of Paris), Clark and Fenn became specialists in ceilings of every form. Fibrous plaster was first used for ornamental plaster-work by the Frenchman Leonard Desachy in 1856. It had the advantage of being able to be made to the required design 'off site' and in manageable sections which could then be taken to the site complete, dry, and ready for installation. The fact that there was no lengthy drying-out period and no mess on site was very important, for this type of work needed meticulous planning and could only be carried out in theatres during limited periods between performances and rehearsals.

Clark and Fenn, together with their associate company G. Jackson and Sons, created one of the finest collections of decorative plasterwork in the country. The ancestry of G. Jackson and Sons dates back to 1780. Many of their vast store of plaster moulds could be dated back to the period when, as co-founder of G. Jackson and Sons, Robert Adam achieved fame as an outstanding interior designer and architect.

As well as the auditorium at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Clark and Fenn's contracts have included restoration and decoration of the Grand Theatre Leeds, and London theatres including the London Palladium, Victoria Palace, Queens Theatre, and Royal Court. They have also done work at Somerset House in the Strand, The Plaisterers' Hall in the City of London, and Hertford House in Manchester Square, London, the home of the Wallace Collection. They have restored the ceiling of the Royal Air Force Church of St. Clement Dane in the Strand, the Granada, Tooting, and have also worked at Windsor Castle. In 1987, refurbishment work at the Clockworkers Hall in London earned Clark and Fenn a prestigious City Heritage Award. Indeed, their name is connected to many of the most magnificent ceilings in London.

Joe Clark was a Union man. Aged 23 he joined the National Association of Operative Plasterers and occupied all the most prominent positions until he resigned in 1915, although he was never a full-time paid official. He served eight years as Branch Secretary, as President of the Union's London District, and finally Chairman of the National Association. Joe Clark represented his trade on the London Trades Council, and on the Housing and Workman's Trains Committee in the late 1890s. He was sometime President and Secretary of the London Master Plasterers Association, President of the National Association of Master Plasterers, and served on many Committees and Councils connected with the building industry.

Joe Clark still found time to enter local politics. He served from 1903-9 on the Fulham Borough Council as Alderman, and also contested an LCC election at Fulham, having as opponents Sir Cyril Cobb and Harold Spender. During all these activities, Joe Clark continued to work a full day at his trade.

In 1892, Joe Clark married Mary Brown, a housekeeper, at St John's Church Hammersmith, They lived from 1893-1915 in Iffley Road, Fulham. World War One found the family living in Herne Hill, where he purchased a plot of land in Ferndene Road, overlooking Ruskin Park. In 1924 he built a substantial detached villa here, introducing his decorative plasterwork to the domestic scene.

Joe's leisure pastime was bowls, and he was never happier than when he was on the green. Typically, he took an active part in the running of his clubs. In 1918 he joined the Ruskin Park Bowling club, migrating a couple of years later to the Temple Bowling Club in nearby Sunset Road, Herne Hill. Here he became President, Ranger for a number of years, Director and Vice-chairman, and President in 1935 for the London Scottish B.A.

Joe Clark died at Hove on 1 February 1940. His wife Mary purchased the double plot at West Norwood in which he lies (grave 39,267, square 56) on 3 February for one guinea! Clark & Fenn Limited are still in business in Mitcham. In 1976 Clark & Fenn (Holdings) were taken over by Trafalgar House and their current parent company is Kvaerner, who acquired Hong Kong Land (ex-Trafalgar House) in 1996. Kvaerner's recent activities include a number of shopping centres, including Bluewater and the Glades in Bromley, plus major commercial and office developments nationwide. There has been much expansion and many many changes on the long road from Loughborough Junction, but the name Clark and Fenn still appears on Kvaerner Group's website.

Sources: Bowls News 21 March 1935. Clark & Fenn: Mr Maurice Rugg (retired). The Clothworkers Company. The Plaisterers Company. Mrs Rita Barker (granddaughter of Joe Clark). www.kvaerner.com/construc/clark_fenn/catalogue

Legends to Figures

1. Joe Clark (circa 1903)

2. Detail of Clark & Fenn plasterwork at the Grand Theatre, Leeds

3. Joe Clark's tombstone at Norwood (line drawing by Don Bianco)

Treasured Offerings: The Legacy of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of St Sophia, Moscow Road - Review by Don Bianco

This exhibition at the Hellenic Centre, Paddington Street W1 (7-25 March 2002) celebrated the 125th anniversary of the founding of the church that remains the pride of the Greek Community in London. Increased wealth had enabled many members of the Communty to move from the City to the more fashionable areas of Bayswater and Lancaster Gate. The church was commissioned to accommodate this growing congregation.

The church was dedicated to St Sophia, the Divine Wisdom of God, as a symbol of the Community's national ambitions and aspirations. It was founded on 18 July 1877 by the eminent Greek Eustracios Stephanou Ralli to the designs of John Oldrid Scott, who adopted the established Byzantine style of cross-in-square with dome. Kirk & Randell of Woolwich were the main contractor. The interior walls were decorated with marble revetment and mosaic representations executed by G.N. Macenera to the designs of A.G. Walker and later by the Russian mosaicist Boris Anrep. The impressive despotic icons and Dodecaorton of the iconostasis are by the Bavarian artist and philhellene Ludwig Thiersch. The church was consecrated on 5 February 1882 by the Archbishop of Corfu, Antonios Hariates.

The architect selected for the commission was the second of five sons of the eminent architect Sir George Gilbert Scott, who originated from a family of clergymen. Oldrid was his mother's maiden name. Educated at Bradfield College, he entered his father's office as a pupil in 1860 and remained there until 1878, though he practiced on his own account from 1864. He made a name for himself in the Manchester Town Hall competition, but also distinguished himself on the building of Leicester Town Hall and the Foreign Office. He specialised in English and French Gothic churches such as St John the Baptist, Hythe (1869) and St Mary, Speldhurst, Kent (1870), vigorous High Victorian buildings in the lancet and geometrical models. But his masterpiece was, surprisingly, not in the Gothic style, but a milestone in the Byzantine revival following the tenets of John Ruskin's The Stones of Venice and Viollet-le-Duc's rational study of Byzantine architecture, Entretiens sur l'architecture, and the work of the Byzantine scholar Edwin Freshfield. Scott was to all intents a very quiet man, not mixing much with his fellow professionals and taking no part in the various issues discussed at professional gatherings. Indeed, he avoided any kind of réclame. He was a not an architectural genius, but a sound workman in his chosen province of architecture, a conscientious professional, and no one better upheld the dignity of the profession.

Eustratio Stephen Ralli, the elderly Patriarch of the Greeks, had been unanimously elected by the Building Committee to lay the foundation stone of the new church. A natural and respectful choice, since with a stay in London extending over a period of 52 years he had experienced all the places of worship the Greeks had used. Married in the Russian Orthodox Chapel in 1825, his first children were baptised there, and he frequently attended liturgies and other services at the Greek Chapel at 9 Finsbury Circus. Later on he was one of the champions of Our Saviour Church, London Wall, built by the renowned Greek architect Lysandros Kaftantzoglou, from which several of the sacred liturgical vessels and icons in the exhibition originated. Lucky to have had a long life during which he placed the foundation stone on the fourth place of Orthodox worship, he was to see the church open for liturgies and its official inauguration in 1882.

Presented in the exhibition were ecclesiastical treasures of the Church of St Sophia, generous offerings of the wealthy members of the Greek Community. These treasures outlined three centuries of Hellenic history, culture and Orthodoxy, in the form of portable icons, liturgical and ecclesiastical vessels, sacerdotal vestments, and rare religious books. Together they provided witness to the activity of distinguished members of the Greek Community of the day - tangible proof of their love of their churches, and their wish to maintain continuity of tradition, language, history, religious and national consciousness of expatriate Hellenism in London. The exhibits included silverwork, embroidery, woodcarving, and painting, and discussed the attribution of them to specific workshops or schools, and the interpretation of their use. Items donated by all of the prominent 19th and 20th century London Greek families were featured - Ralli, Schilizzi, Mavrocordato, Argenti, Spartalis, Ionidis, Ballis, Vlastos, Michalinos - reflecting their prosperity, a result of their success in the trade, industry, and shipping sectors.

The exhibition shed no new light on the attribution of St Stephen's mortuary chapel at Norwood to J.O. Scott, but fleshed out the background history of the families and individuals buried in the enclave. An interesting exhibit was the Greek Cemetery Register Book (Norwood). This heavy ledger is a priceless source of original information, not only on the history of the Hellenic Cemetery of West Norwood, since it documents the purchase of the plots and the burial dates in the corresponding tombs, hence the erection of some monuments, but also the history of the Community, since the relations between its members and their desire to make a statement even in the afterlife are reflected in their final places of rest. The first part of the Register, Particulars of Plots, provides brief information regarding the buyer and the family owning the plot, its area and location and the price. When used in conjunction with the Cemetery plan, this facilitates secure attribution for some of the obscure or long destroyed monuments. There are entries for 358 plots. In the second part of the Register are page-long entries for each allocated plot and lists of names and burial dates. The third part is an index of families owning land in the enclave. Some handwritten notes are attached to the pages providing additional information about certain plots.

The cathedral of St Sophia and West Norwood Cemetery are reminders of the determination of the Hellenic diaspora to maintain their cultural and spiritual identity, not only while in this world but also in the afterlife. The enormous amount of work and money required to preserve this valuable source of modern Hellenic history is an outstanding debt owed to the founders of the Community by us all.

#######Legends to Figures - JB to check

From exhibition booklet: 'View of the interior of St Sophia showing the mosaic decoration and the iconostasis 1793-1865 Pandia Stephanou Rallis'

Book Review - Don Bianco. Mausoleums by Lynn F Pearson (Shire Publications, 2002. 40 pp. £3.50)

I have lying over me in Helicarnassus a gigantic monument such as no other dead person has, adorned in the finest way with statues of horses and men carved most realistically from the best quality marble. (King Maussollos, Lucien's Dialogues of the Dead)

Lynn Pearson provides the briefest history of the mausoleum as a building type, but nevertheless offers a tantalising invitation to study further this extraordinary legacy of symbolic dynastic pride, pious respect, and love. She shows how aspirations to the important fin de siècle have been achieved in the varied, emotionally charged and irreplaceable part of the built heritage. The study ranges from early Neolithic burial mounds to the first acknowledged mausoleum as an architectural form - the sepulchre of King Maussollos of Caria by his wife and sister, Artemisia, at Helicarnassus, Asia Minor in 352AD, the fifth of the seven wonders of the ancient world - through the golden age of the second half of the 18th century and on into the exuberant and prolifically inventive Victorian period which was burdened by its overt preoccupation with death, until the Edwardian era when, with cremation on the ascendant and the vogue for statements of wealth in funerary art in decline, interest all but abated.

The second part of the book is a gazetteer of mausolea in Great Britain, covering 104 towns in 35 counties in England, 18 towns in 8 counties in Scotland, and 2 towns in 2 counties in Wales. Being drawn from a database of 350 mausolea of special architectural or historic interest, it is, by necessity, a taster for the national mausoleum gazetteer currently being compiled by the Mausolea & Monuments Trust which when completed will form an invaluable record and tool for conservation. This is an armchair guided tour where the illustrations and stories provide an evocative sense of these provocative, often peculiar, but always beautiful buildings. There are many missed, but then we all have our own particular favourites - and, of course, West Norwood cemetery is barely touched on. For maximum experience it is essential that each and every one be visited, inside as well wherever possible.

The overview of the book is restricted to mausolea in Great Britain. The scene, however, is very different on the continent and overseas where mausolea are still designed and constructed on an unprecedented scale resulting in buildings of some size and pretention that continue the progressive architectural evolution of the building type with power to invoke awe and wonderment.

Alas, the largest of funerary structures, mausolea present a picture of plight and a challenge to the crisis of vandal attack, decay through natural causes and neglect prevalent in burial grounds. Long-overdue maintenance and need for serious repair place these incomparably important and diverse private buildings in the public domain into a situation that falls outside normal patterns of care.

Forthcoming FOWNC Events - September-December 2002

General tours will be held on the first Sunday of each month (1 September, 6 October, 3 November and 1 December). September and October tours start at 14.30, and November and December tours start at 11.00, at the Cemetery main gate off Norwood Road, and they last for 1-2 hours. There is no formal charge but we welcome donations of £1 per person (£0.50 concessions) towards conservation projects.

Sunday 22 September: London Open House Weekend

For this London-wide event in which buildings normally closed to the public open their doors, there will be tours of the cemetery starting at the main gate at 14.00, 14.30, 15.00 and 15.30, lasting about 1 hour and finishing at the Greek Chapel, which will be open for viewing, with the FOWNC bookstall on display. Volunteers to help will be most welcome!

Autumn Lectures

Talks will be held at Chatsworth Baptist Church, Chatsworth Way (off Norwood Road), SE27 (enter by second door on right in Idmiston Road) as detailed below, starting at 14.30. There is no formal charge but we welcome donations of £1 per person to help cover the hall hire.

Saturday 19 October: AGM and Lecture - The City of London Cemetery - David McCarthy

Following this year's AGM, the Deputy Superintendent of this, the second largest cemetery in London, founded in 1856 near Ilford and owned by the City Corporation, will be giving a presentation.

Saturday 16 November: Lecture - Sir John Jackson: the world-wide adventures of a 19th century civil engineering contractor - Patricia Spencer-Silver

Patricia has followed up her work on the builder George Myers with a biography of his son-in-law who, amongst much else, built the foundations of Tower Bridge. His monument at Norwood still survives, although somewhat hidden in vegetation.

Other forthcoming events

Friday 20 September, 19.30: Lecture - The mysterious murder of Charles Bravo - Nicholas Reed. Balham Library, Ramsden Road, SW12.

Following Nicholas's talk on this notorious Victorian crime, whose victim is buried at Norwood, James Ruddick (author of the latest book on this case, 'Death at the Priory', £8.99 from the FOWNC bookstall) will be presenting his entirely different conclusions, and a debate with audience participation will ensue. Organised by Wandsworth Library Services.

Sunday 22 September, 14.00: Beckenham Cemetery tour and meeting

Beckenham (Crystal Palace) Cemetery, Elmers End Road. A one-hour tour, starting from the entrance gate, of the notable monuments (including cricketer W.G. Grace, Alderman Stanley of South Norwood's Stanley Halls, and Mr Wolseley of the Wolseley car) will be followed at 15.00 by a meeting in the cemetery chapel to discuss setting up a Friends group. Information from Nicholas Reed, 0208 659 5776.

Saturday 28 September, 10.00-17.00: Lambeth Archives Open Day

Minet Library, 52 Knatchbull Road, SE5. This year's theme is 'Made in Lambeth - looking at local industry'. Some of the most notable Lambeth industrialists, including potters Sir Henry Doulton, James Stiff, and Henry Millichamp, and sanitaryware pioneer George Jennings, are buried at Norwood. The FOWNC bookstall will be present - volunteers please!

FOWNC Committee - September 2002

Chairman & Publications Officer:

Bob Flanagan, 79 Durban Road, London SE27 9RW (Tel: 020 8670 3265)

General Secretary & Tours Organiser:

Jill Dudman, 119 Broxholm Road, London SE27 0BJ (Tel: 020 8670 5456)

Hon. Treasurer:

George Young, 12 Swinburne Court, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8EP (Tel: 020 7274 5267)

Membership Secretary:

Rosemary Comber, 63 Bradley Road, London SE19 3NT (Tel: 020 8653 2741)

Conservation Coordinator:

Paul Graham, Flat 4, 9 St Andrews Road, Surbiton, Surrey KT6 4DT (Tel: 020 8287 6976)

Publicity Officer:

Pam Gray

The FOWNC Newsletter is published three times a year by the Friends of West Norwood Cemetery, 79 Durban Road, London SE27 9RW.

Registered Charity No 1063450. Member of the National Federation of Cemetery Friends

If you would like further information about the Friends, please contact the Membership Secretary (address above). The annual subscription is £3. Copyright FOWNC, September 2002.