Home of the brave - Manor Park Cemetery, London E12

In 1874 the Manor Park Cemetery Company (who still own and run the cemetery today) bought 115 acres of land on Hamfrith Farm from the British Land Company to open a new cemetery. The company quickly disposed of more than half of their new acquisition for the sum of £2939, enabling them to pay shareholders a dividend of 4% before they carried their first burial on March 25th 1875. The chapel was originally built in 1877 but was badly damaged by bombs in 1944, only the spire surviving intact. It was rebuilt after the war and a crematorium added in 1955. Manor Parkis very much a working cemetery – there are historic memorials but large areas of the cemetery have been reused and old headstones removed. Unusually, the cemetery was prone to fires, probably as a result of being built just a little too close to the Great Eastern Railway in the days of steam engines that emitted hot ash and cinders. The first reported fire was in 1901; this is from the West Ham and South Essex Mail of Saturday…