London cemetery tour walks to the graves of William Makepeace Thackeray and Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

YOUR LONDON WALK THROUGH KENSAL GREEN CEMETERY CONTINUES TO THE GRAVE OF WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

DIRECTIONS

Continue ahead, bearing right onto the rough earth path. The moment that wall on your left gives way to railings, turn right to the low-railed, white tomb of William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63).

Thackeray’s funeral took place in crisp, clear winter sunshine on 30th December 1863, and it was estimated that close on 2,000 mourners came to Kensal Green to pay their last respects to the man who, according to Anthony Trollope, ‘kept his heart strings in a crystal case’. Dickens, who had only just been reconciled with Thackeray shortly before his death, appears to have taken the death particularly hard. According to one account Dickens stood by the graveside with ‘a look of bereavement in his face that was indescribable. When all others had turned aside from the grave he still stood there, as if rooted to the spot, watching with almost haggard eyes every spadeful of dust that was thrown upon it’.

DIRECTIONS

Two graves along to the left, the inscription now illegible, is the grave of Thackeray’s life-long friend and principle Punch cartoonist, John Leech (1817-64).

Leech also provided illustrations for A Christmas Carol and for successive of Dickens’s Christmas books. In September 1849, whilst holidaying with Dickens on the Isle of Wight, Leech was knocked over by a giant wave and suffered a concussion that left him in constant pain and unable to sleep. Dickens, however, came to his rescue and used his newly learnt art of hypnotism to send Leech into a ‘magnetic sleep’ which cured him of his affliction. When Leech died suddenly in November 1864, Dickens was deeply affected by the loss. ‘This death of poor Leech’, he wrote to his friend, John Forster,’ has put me out woefully’. For several days Dickens was unable to work upon the book he was then writing Our Mutual Friend.

SIR MARC ISAMBARD BRUNEL. In 1825 operations began for building the Brunel-designed tunnel under the Thames, an unprecedented scheme that was made possible by his specially designed Thames Tunnel Shield, which excavated the earth in front of it as it went and literally cut its way through the river’s subsoil. The project was halted a number of times but fortunately the shield held. These stoppages, however, placed a severe strain on the endeavour’s finances, and at one point the operation was halted for seven years and the tunnel bricked up. When it started again a much larger shield was used. It is worth noting that at its lowest section construction took place a mere 14feet below the river bed!

The Thames tunnel finally opened in 1843. As a reward for his labours Marc Brunel was elected to the Royal Society and knighted, in 1841, for his services to the construction of the Thames Tunnel. In the first four months more than a million people passed through the long awaited tunnel. The first trains used the tunnel in 1865. It had a total length of 1,506ft.

ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL. Sir Marc’s son, Isambard, was responsible for the design of numerous bridges, steamships and railways, such as the Great Western, which passes close by the cemetery and the noise of its trains shattering the silence, act as apt though thundering epitaph to the great Victorian engineer!

Sir Henry Hawkins.To the left of the Brunels, beneath a pink ledger tomb, lies Sir Henry Hawkins, Baron Brampton, one of the 19th century’s most respected legal advocates (lawyers). He was called to the bar in 1843, at the age of twenty-six and spent the rest of his illustrious career in and around the legal area of the Temple, situated just off Fleet Street.. His most famous case was that of the Titchbourn Claimant in 1873, when he appeared for the prosecution against Arthur Orton, an Australian butcher who claimed to be Roger Titchbourn, heir to a vast fortune and title. The complex case dragged on for 188 days and was at the time the longest criminal trial in history. At the end of it Orton was found guilty of perjury and sentenced to fourteen years’ imprisonment. It was following this sensational trial that Hawkins was made a judge, and then in 1899 he was created Baron Brampton.

DIRECTIONS

At the end of the path go left onto the asphalt surface, and on arrival at the junction, take the left fork along the gravel footpath, South Branch Avenue. Pause seven graves along after the holly bush on the left where you will find a memorial to Sir John Rennie (1794-1874).

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