Graves
Thousands of people have been interred in Fulham Cemetery since it was consecrated on 3 August 1865. The first interment, on the same day, was of a child. Unusually for the 1860s, the thirteenth interment was that of a centenarian from the Fulham Union Workhouse. There are also a large number of WWI military graves, scattered throughout the cemetery – a result of its proximity to Fulham Hospital (now Charing Cross Hospital.)
One of the aims of the Fulham Cemetery Friends is to research the history of the graves in the cemetery, to bring to light some of their stories.
On this page
Notable graves
War graves
Notable graves
Publisher of Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley and other Decadents.
Evangelical preacher and social reformer, founded Twynholm Hall at Fulham Cross, named after the village of Twynholm in Scotland.
Victorian diocesan architect, associated with the Pre-Raphaelites.
Proprietor of the Queens Arms public house in Knightsbridge.
A member of one of the oldest Scottish families and a representative peer for Scotland.
Major-General Sir William Galbraith KCB was a British Army officer who came to prominence in the Afghan Wars and served as Adjutant-General in India.
George Nicoll Barnes
Trade unionist, MP for Glasgow, Labour leader and signed the Treaty of Versailles.
Sergeant Joseph John
American civil war soldier.
Lieutenant-General Sir Burke Douglas Cuppage KCB
Veteran of Waterloo, Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey 1863–68.
Travers Twiss
Professor of international law, who, at the invitation of King Leopold III of Belgium, drafted the constitution for the Congo Free State.
Maxwell Simpson
Eminent Irish scientist.
William Blakeley
Comic actor well known as a ‘mugger’ on account of the comic faces he pulled on stage.
William Harrington
Proprietor of the Halfway House pub on Lillie Road. (Later the Chancery, currently a Co-op.)
John Pearce Flew
Property developer, partner with W. H. Gibbs in the building up of Fulham until 1885.
War graves
There are 179 Commonwealth burials of the 1914-1918 war in Fulham Cemetery, not arranged as usual in neat serried ranks within an enclosure, but scattered higgledy-piggledy throughout the cemetery.
This large number is due to the fact that the former Fulham Hospital just up the road, now the site of the Charing Cross Hospital, was used as a military hospital during WWI. The soldiers were buried before the War Graves Commission was set up. It was obviously decided to mark their graves in situ, and not to dig them up and move them to a formal setting.
Many regiments are represented, e.g. Royal Hussars, Dragoon Guards, London Battalions, Royal Fusiliers, Royal Engineers, Army Auxiliary Corps, Labour Corps, East Kent, Wiltshire, Yorkshire, and also from HMS Glatton, HMS Pembroke and the Air Force. There is also one grave of the South African Infantry.
WWI war graves around the cemetery. Photo by Ian Wood
War plot
This enclosure at the center of the cemetery, near the Cross of Sacrifice war memorial, commemorates 57 Commonwealth burials of the 1939-1945 war. Those whose graves are not marked by headstones are named on a Screen Wall memorial.
There is also a single Special Memorial headstone here, commemorating 7 burials of the 1914-1918 war.
Read more: Memorials 👉