Richmond & East Sheen Cemeteries

Richmond Cemetery is a cemetery on Lower Grove Road in Richmond in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, England. It opened in 1786 on a plot of land granted by an Act of Parliament the previous year. The cemetery has been expanded several times and now occupies a 15-acre (6-hectare) site which, prior to the expansion of London, was a rural area of Surrey. It is bounded to the east by Richmond Park and to the north by East Sheen Cemetery, with which it is now contiguous and whose chapel is used for services by both cemeteries. Richmond cemetery originally contained two chapels—one Anglican and one Nonconformist—both built in the Gothic Revival style. The former Nonconformist chapel, now privately owned, falls outside the cemetery's walls after a redrawing of its boundaries. The former Anglican chapel is now known as Grove Gardens Chapel and is in the care of Habitats & Heritage. Many prominent people are buried in the cemetery, as are 39 soldiers who died at the South African Hospital in Richmond Park during the First World War and many ex-servicemen from the nearby Royal Star and Garter Home. These residents are commemorated by the Bromhead Memorial, which lists the names of those who are not commemorated elsewhere, while the South African soldiers are commemorated by a cenotaph designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, derived from his design of the Cenotaph on Whitehall in central London. The war graves and the cenotaph are the responsibility of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.