The magnificent seven

A ring of spectacular cemeteries, developed at the edges of London in the decade from 1832, have long been referred to as The Magnificent Seven.

At the time, they set a new aesthetic for the burial of the dead, and remain rich in social history and beauty to this day.

It was entrepreneurs, rather than the religious authorities, who responded to the squalor of the City's brimming churchyards by fi nancing seemly, hygienic concepts of burial in the rural outskirts, now embraced by inner London.