St Pancras & Islington Cemetery

In 1852 the Metropolitan Burial Act allowed public money to be spent on providing cemeteries, and St Pancras Cemetery was the first result of this. Designed by the firm of Barnett & Birch, it opened in 1854 on 88 acres of Horse Shoe Farm on Finchley Common. In 1877 it added another 94 acres and became the St Pancras & Islington Cemetery – the largest cemetery in London.

Its finest feature is usually reckoned to be the mausoleum in the form of an Ionic temple erected for the millionaire German industrial chemist Ludwig Mond (1839–1909). His collection of early Italian paintings is now in the National Gallery.

But there are also quirkier pleasures to be had. The splendid statue of the road-sweeper and original pearly king Henry Croft (d. 1930) was too often wrecked by vandals and has now been replaced by something simpler, and the stone balloon of the aeronaut Percival Spencer (1864–1913) is awaiting replacement; but a kilted Scotsman, Alexander Lamond ('My Alick', d. 1926), remains (though it does not answer the perennial Celtic sartorial question), as does the parachuting figure on the memorial to the 'famous Lyceum clown' Harry Gardner (1800–51) – though the parachute is not his. Now submerged by undergrowth is the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown (1821–93).