page_title: London Necropolis Railway
section_title: Second London terminus (1902–1941)
hierarchical_section_title: London Necropolis Railway / London stations / Second London terminus (1902–1941)
caption_attribution_description: English: A photograph of 121 Westminster Bridge Road, London, near London Waterloo station. The building is all that remains of the London terminus of the London Necropolis Railway system, which originally linked London with Brookwood Cemetery. The railway platforms were bombed during the London Blitz, and were never repaired.
context_page_description: The London Necropolis Railway was a railway line opened in November 1854 by the London Necropolis Company, to carry corpses and mourners between London and the LNC's newly opened Brookwood Cemetery 23 miles southwest of London in Brookwood, Surrey. At the time the largest cemetery in the world, Brookwood Cemetery was designed to be large enough to accommodate all the deaths in London for centuries to come, and the LNC hoped to gain a monopoly on London's burial industry. The cemetery had intentionally been built far enough from London so as never to be affected by urban growth and was dependent on the recently invented railway to connect it to the city.
  The railway mostly ran along the existing tracks of the London and South Western Railway but had its own branches from the main line at both London and Brookwood. Trains carried coffins and passengers from a dedicated station in Waterloo, London, onto the LSWR tracks. On reaching the cemetery, the trains reversed down a dedicated branch line to two stations in the cemetery, one for the burial of Anglicans and one for Nonconformists or those who did not want a Church of England funeral.
context_section_description: A site for the replacement terminus was bought by the LSWR in 1899, south of the existing site and on the opposite side of Westminster Bridge Road. It was completed on 8 February 1902, and the LSWR viaduct was widened to serve a greatly enlarged Waterloo station, destroying all traces of the original LNC terminus.
  The new building was designed for attractiveness and modernity to contrast with the traditional gloomy decor associated with the funeral industry. A narrow four-storey building on Westminster Bridge Road held the LNC's offices. Behind it was the main terminal; this held a communal third-class waiting room, mortuaries and storerooms, the LNC's workshops, and a sumptuous oak-panelled Chapelle Ardente, intended for mourners unable to make the journey to Brookwood to pay their respects to the deceased. This building led onto the two platforms, lined with waiting rooms and a ticket office.
caption: The Westminster Bridge Road offices of the LNC and the first class entrance to the 1902 terminus.
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