Death the Leveller

sir roy strong (b.1935) once said that in order to assure the success of any artistic enterprise it was essential to have at least one of the following three ingredients: death, sex or jewellery. Happily for me, my professional life can be seen an unholy cocktail of all three. Thus far in this memoir, I have described a good deal of jewellery and hinted at a little sex and so now it is time to consider death and its part in my life. From a very early age I have been fascinated by church architecture and decoration and the funerary sculptures that are invariably part of them. These range in quality from the plain slate ledgers on every chancel floor to the magnificent ‘cloudy trophies’ adorning the walls of abbeys and cathedrals, the most costly and magnificent of which were carved by the finest sculptors of the time, such as the white marble monuments in Westminster Abbey by John Michael Rysbrack (1694–1770) and LouisFrançois Roubilliac (1702–62)

By the late eighteenth century, the burial grounds in most cities – and particularly in London – were quite full and, despite gifts of land from the Church for new cemeteries, these too were rapidly overflowing. Under these unfortunate circumstances ‘overflowing’ is exactly the right word and the consequences were not only grisly in the extreme but also particularly unsanitary, polluting drinking water and spreading all manner of diseases, including cholera.

In the mid-nineteenth century, steps were taken to solve the urgent problem and plans were submitted for all manner of catacombs and elaborate mausoleums. Some of these were quite outlandish and a little ridiculous. One such was the Metropolitan Sepulchre, known as the Pyramid of Death, designed by Thomas Willson in 1820. It was intended to tower 950 feet above Primrose Hill in London and have enough spaces for 5 million bodies. Unsurprisingly, it was never built. A more practical solution was found in the suburbs of London, where over time a series of spacious cemeteries called the Magnificent Seven were laid out to receive the dead. One of these was situated at Norwood and boasts a number of celebrated burials including the cookery writer Isabella (Mrs) Beeton (1836–65), Sir Henry Tate (1819–99) the sugar magnate and founder of the Tate Gallery, the Pre-Raphaelite painter and model Maria Zambaco (1843–1914), and the famous architect William Burges. However, the importance of Norwood Cemetery derives not so much from the celebrity of those interred there but from the architectural importance of the tombs designed to commemorate them. The range of inspiration is enormous; many elaborate, not to say fussy mausoleums line the thoroughfare. In sharp contrast, a simple but truly majestic monolith casts a long and mournful shadow at dusk in memory of the antiquary John Britton (1771–1857), who hoped it would last as long as Stonehenge; against considerable odds, there is every chance it will.

In 1986, Caroline and I were living in Upper Norwood, which, as the name suggests, was on the hill above Norwood Cemetery. In common with the other Magnificent Seven London cemeteries, Norwood was in a pitiful state of neglect. The positive side of this was that the 40 acres of 42,000 graves had become a quiet wildlife haven full of fascination. In the autumn, we would gather a limitless supply of rich plump blackberries that Caroline turned into the best jam. Lack of maintenance and vandalism were a serious threat to Norwood’s exceptional funerary sculpture but the worst enemy to its unique heritage was the owner of the cemetery itself: Lambeth Council. It had recently instigated a policy euphemistically dubbed ‘lawn conversion’. Apparently, the idea was to help grave owners make ‘each cemetery a green and pleasant garden of rest and remembrance for years to come’. These were honeyed words indeed but of course the bitter truth was a destructive incentive to remove the majority of tombs dating from before 1876. That done, the spaces were, of course, rendered available to be resold as fresh burial plots and the proceeds used for the Council’s benefit. On one occasion, Caroline and I witnessed the demolition of a fine Victorian monument and asked the driver of the bulldozer who chose which tombs were to go and which were to stay. He replied: ‘I do Guv!’. As the marble statuary crashed left and right, I decided that enough was really enough. Armed with my research into the best tombs within the Magnificent Seven, I wrote a protest piece for The Times newspaper drawing special attention to those in urgent need of protection. Certainly, the Berens Tomb in Norwood, designed by Edward Barry (1830–80), architect of the Palace of Westminster, took pride of place. My piece was published as a full page on 26 July 1986 under the title ‘Where Great Art Lies Dying’; and, I am happy to say, it caused a real rumpus. Lambeth Council attempted to defend the indefensible with yet more municipal pap, and the private cemetery owners were also on the run. The article gave fresh impetus to a growing group of conservationists, lead by the Friends of Highgate Cemetery in 1975 and followed by the Friends of Norwood Cemetery in 1990. It was then, in Norwood at least, that the bulldozers finally fell silent forever.

That is not to say that the London cemeteries were completely safe, far from it. Spectacular sculptures by the best artists were still at risk not so much from municipal philistinism but the insidious danger of tree roots, subsidence, frost damage and, worst of all, gratuitous vandalism.

The reality is that the costs of maintaining the cemeteries were prohibitive and they still are. That said, I did think there was the strongest case to permanently preserve one the greatest masterpieces of nineteenthcentury sculpture: the exquisite catafalque in the Brompton Cemetery designed in 1892 by Sir Edward Burne-Jones for the patron and art collector Frederick Leyland (1831–92). Loosely inspired by Byzantine prototypes, it is made of Portland stone inlaid with highly sophisticated bronze ornaments in the form of ivy and lilies and roofed in repoussé copper. When I first encountered this beautiful work of art in the late 1970s, next to nobody had a clue that it was by Burne-Jones and this revelation added enormous art historical weight to my campaign. Apart from the usual weathering, the Leyland tomb remained in fairly good condition, which was almost entirely due to the protective railings that were part of Burne-Jones’s very practical design. Nonetheless, it was extremely vulnerable and in need of permanent preservation. Strange as it seems, the ownership of tomb furniture usually belongs, not to the cemetery in which it stands, but to the descendants of the deceased. Preservation orders are now in force for the very best examples, but this was rarely, if ever, the case in 1986.

The Victoria and Albert Museum has a number of tombs in its collection and its associations with Sir Edward Burne-Jones are too numerous to recount here. Suffice it to say, he has been described as the most important British artist of the nineteenth century and so it seemed to me that the Leyland tomb would not only be a spectacular addition to the Museum’s collection but its long-term safety would be assured. All I needed to do was trace Leyland’s descendants. Once again, I resorted to advertising in the Daily Telegraph in the hopes of finding them; and I did. Over a cup of tea in a Victorian house by Wandsworth Common, I was told informally that if the Museum would accept the tomb, then they would donate it with pleasure. The costs of dismantling it would surely be less than the commercial value of a comparable masterpiece by BurneJones and, so, it seemed the way forward, if not completely clear, was very much within sight. With only these costs as my remaining obstacle, I made my proposition to the Museum. To my enduring frustration, I bumped into a curatorial wall and, despite reviving the idea on more than one occasion, I have completely failed to advance it. The feeblest excuse offered to me for leaving the Leyland tomb to its increasingly uncertain fate is that the dereliction of funerary sculpture is part of its history and charm!

Six years after my article was published, another appeared in The Times on 20 August 1991. It reported the necessity for a patrolling policeman in the Brompton Cemetery to protect visitors from vandals and to prevent the theft of valuable metal lettering from tombs.

Since I began my incentive to secure the Burne-Jones tomb the scrap value of all metals has risen dramatically, and thefts have become commonplace and increasingly audacious. Church roofs are frequently stripped of lead and even a monumental sculpture by Henry Moore, weighing several tons, was stolen for melt in 2009. So, I fear that the Leyland tomb will not survive intact for much longer. My only hope is