Monument to William Burn, Kensal Green Cemetery

Monument to William Burn, Kensal Green Cemetery, Harrow Road, London, W10 4RA

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Overview

Granite chest tomb, 1870. Read the official list entry to find out more.

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1403611
Date first listed:: 03-Apr-2012
List Entry Name:: Monument to William Burn, Kensal Green Cemetery
Statutory Address:: Monument to William Burn, Kensal Green Cemetery, Harrow Road, London, W10 4RA

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Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1403611
Date first listed:: 03-Apr-2012
List Entry Name:: Monument to William Burn, Kensal Green Cemetery
Statutory Address 1:: Monument to William Burn, Kensal Green Cemetery, Harrow Road, London, W10 4RA

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:: Monument to William Burn, Kensal Green Cemetery, Harrow Road, London, W10 4RA

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County:: Greater London Authority
District:: Kensington and Chelsea (London Borough)
Parish:: Non Civil Parish
National Grid Reference:: TQ2315082612

Summary

Granite chest tomb, 1870.

Reasons for Designation

The tomb of William Burn is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Historic interest: commemorates one of the leading Scottish architects of the C19; * Design interest: a bold antiquarian design based on a medieval cross-slab; * Group value: with other listed monuments within the Grade I registered Kensal Green Cemetery.

History

William Burn (1789-1870) was among the foremost Scottish architects of the early to mid-C19. The son of an Edinburgh architect, he trained initially with his father and later in the London office of Sir Robert Smirke. A number of his early independent works were churches, from the Greek Revival of North Leith Parish Church (1813-16) to the Perpendicular Gothic of St John on Princes Street in Edinburgh (1816-18), culminating in the comprehensive restoration of Edinburgh’s St Giles’ Cathedral (1829-32). He also designed schools (most famously the Edinburgh Academy, 1823-32), government offices (including the rebuilding of Inverness Castle in 1836) and other public buildings. Burn was most widely active, however, as a country-house architect. He designed scores of mansions for the aristocracy and gentry on both sides of the border, ranging in style from the late-Georgian castellated Saltoun, East Lothian (1818-26) to the richer neo-Jacobean Stoke Rochford Hall, Lincolnshire (1841-5). He was particularly noted for his skill and ingenuity in planning large houses, which influenced a generation of domestic architects including his pupils Richard Norman Shaw and Eden Nesfield.

The Cemetery of All Souls at Kensal Green was the earliest of the large privately-run cemeteries established on the fringes of London to relieve pressure on overcrowded urban churchyards. Its founder George Frederick Carden intended it as an English counterpart to the great Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, which he had visited in 1821. In 1830, with the financial backing of the banker Sir John Dean Paul, Carden established the General Cemetery Company, and two years later an Act of Parliament was obtained to develop a 55-acre site at Kensal Green, then among open fields to the west of the metropolis. An architectural competition was held, but the winning entry – a Gothic scheme by HE Kendall – fell foul of Sir John's classicising tastes, and the surveyor John Griffith of Finsbury was eventually employed both to lay out the grounds and to design the Greek Revival chapels, entrance arch and catacombs, built between 1834 and 1837. A sequence of royal burials, beginning in 1843 with that of Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, ensured the cemetery’s popularity. It is still administered by the General Cemetery Company, assisted since 1989 by the Friends of Kensal Green.

Details

A large chest tomb in polished grey granite, whose top is in the form of a coped cross-slab with trefoil terminations. The principal inscription reads, ‘Here rests in God William Burn, Architect, Born 20 Dec 1789, died 15 Feb 1870.’ At the head is a line from Psalm 112: ‘And the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance.’ At the foot is an inscription commemorating William Burn’s daughter Janet (1818-1907) and her husband James Scott Walker (1814-1882).

Sources

Books and journals
Curl, Stevens J, Kensal Green Cemetery: The Origins and Development of the General Cemetery of All Souls, Kensal Green, London, 1824-2001, (2001)
Pevsner, N, Cherry, B, The Buildings of England: London 3 North West, (1991)
Websites
William Burn (1789-1870), accessed from http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4044?docPos=1
Other
The Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery, Paths of Glory or 'A Select Alphabetical and Biographical List, illustrated with Line Drawings of their Monuments, of Persons of Note Commemorated at The Cemetery of All Souls at Kensal Green', 1997,

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.