Kensal Green Cemetery
A nationally important place of remembrance for Londoners is at risk of irreversible harm.
We ask the Mayor of London to step in now to protect Kensal Green Cemetery — a place of remembrance, peace, and profound human meaning — from irreversible harm caused by development proposals at Kensal Canalside.
Still in daily use for burials, cremations and memorial visits, Kensal Green Cemetery is a place of quiet reflection and remembrance, where generations of Londoners have laid their loved ones to rest. It is a rare green refuge in a dense urban area, valued by families, visitors and local communities. It is also a Grade I listed historic landscape of national significance.
The proposed developments would significantly overshadow the cemetery with a wall of 98m tower blocks, damage its setting, tranquility, and fragile ecology, and permanently alter its character. Added to that, developers want to build a commuter route right through the middle of the cemetery! Historic England has warned that the resulting harm will be “widespread” and “profound”. This is not a marginal impact or a matter of taste. It is a clear and lasting harm to one of London’s most important historic burial grounds. Once this setting is damaged, it cannot be restored.
This threat sits within a wider pattern of serious concerns about the scheme, including:
- unsafe emergency vehicle access
- excessive scale beyond the site’s capacity
- inadequate provision of genuinely affordable housing
- unresolved contamination and unexploded ordnance risks
- poor transport connectivity and traffic impacts
- insufficient green space and public health concerns
Taken together, these failures point to a scheme that does not represent good growth and does not meet London’s strategic planning objectives as a whole.
We therefore urge the Mayor to use his powers to intervene — including calling in or directing refusal of the application — to prevent irreversible harm and to ensure that development here respects human dignity, heritage, safety, and community wellbeing.
Protect Kensal Green Cemetery and London’s history — for the families who visit today, for the wider city that values it, and for future generations.
Why Kensal Green Cemetery Matters
Kensal Green Cemetery was established in 1833 as the first of London’s great Victorian garden cemeteries. It is one of the 'Magnificent Seven' cemeteries, created to provide dignified burial, green space, and places of reflection for a growing city.
Now a Grade I listed historic landscape, the cemetery reflects London’s religious, cultural and social diversity. It contains over 250,000 burials and is both a site of national heritage and a living place of remembrance, visited daily by families, mourners, and local residents.
Those buried here include both ordinary Londoners and figures of national significance — engineers, writers, scientists, reformers, and public figures who helped shape modern Britain — among them Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles Babbage, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope— alongside countless ordinary Londoners whose families continue to visit and care for their graves.
The cemetery also holds powerful social history, including the memorial to Kelso Cochrane, whose 1959 murder became a defining moment in Britain’s struggle against racism and helped galvanise the cultural resistance and community organising that gave rise to the Notting Hill Carnival.
Beyond its cultural and historic importance, the cemetery functions as a vital urban micro-habitat: its mature trees, undisturbed ground, and low levels of artificial lighting support birds, bats, insects and other wildlife that can no longer survive elsewhere in the surrounding city.
Kensal Green Cemetery was designed as a place of peace, greenery and contemplation. Its open character, setting and sense of calm are central to its meaning. Once these qualities are lost, they cannot be recreated.
IF YOU SUPPORT THE CAMPAIGN SIGN THE PETITION HERE
In an update on the petition's progress the Campaign says:
Our hope is simple: that the Mayor of London steps in to overturn RBKC’s decision.
But we face powerful interests — so we must be ready to present our strongest possible case.
Contamination is one of the most serious concerns. When the former gasworks site is excavated, toxic gas and dust will be released. These pollutants do not remain contained to the site — they can spread through air and water, affecting residents and the fragile ecology of Kensal Green Cemetery. The concerns go even further: insufficient affordable housing, inadequate emergency access, lack of social infrastructure, and widespread gridlock.
To be able to act quickly and effectively, we have launched a Crowd Justice campaign to raise £20,000 to secure expert legal counsel and ensure we properly present our case to the Mayor of London.
👉 Please help with a small donation to legal funds.
There are thousands of pages of planning and environmental documents to review, and extensive legal arguments to prepare. Preparing properly takes expertise. And expertise costs money.
If the Mayor does not take positive action, we may need to pursue a full Judicial Review. That would require further funding. But right now, our focus is ensuring we are ready — and that our community is not priced out of defending itself.
We are not asking for large donations. If we all give just £5 or £10, we will be in a strong position to stand up for our neighbourhood and our heritage.
Every little truly helps! If you can, please make a small contribution — and please share the link with someone else who cares.
20 comments:
There is talk of an Elizabeth Line Station as well (behind tallest tower). Image shows no active travel bridging into Brent communities (below cemetery greenery), so Brent residents are scheme excluded by RBKC planners/ Ballymore.
Contamination risk can surely be mitigated. The idea of not integrating Brent residents direct into this part commercial/ economic site is an obvious BAD GROWTH DESIGN FAIL.
There was also an idea to doubling tree cover planting in the cemetery to grow its urban forest for future generations and counter air pollution. Brompton Cemetery works well as a park dual use, Kensal never will because it would serve Brent open space deprived residents as much as those of RBKC.
Maybe the Mayor needs to open his heart and make Ballymore be inclusive of Brent Kensal residents needs as well. MRGIA, Make regeneration growth inclusive again!
The London Mayor at Regional level should seriously question why RBKC/ Ballymore are 'bad growth' focused, by not integrating this re-development with Brent Kensal residents lives. Brent is not North Korea, Brent is not Iran.
This new fragment of the Great West Tower Hundreds City will have the biggest Sainsbury's superstore in the UK, along with other retail and business enterprises. Why this current plan here for Brent residents to be total excluded direct access across the cemetery parkland to these new shops and new jobs?
Brompton Cemetery had a £4.5 million 'Parks for People' National Lottery grant. The first UK cemetery to receive such green space investment funds. Kensal Cemetery Park clearly justifies such funds even more given this massive population growth adjacent to it. The cemetery floods, increased tree planting would help to absorb that excess water too.
Usually such major re-developments are required to have with social mitigations to fully integrated into their entire surroundings. Why is that not happening at Kensal Canalside. Grenfell lessons not learned by the RBKC.
Old Kensal residents would not want to direct access and enjoy new Kensal Canalside adjacent to their homes? Unlikely. Developer ET (Exclusion Think) is extreme interesting.
Agree, the scale and packing is excessive, and likely to be layered even taller i.e. this is not the final towers visual.
Top right is seen Wormwood Scrubs Great Park, from which a new cable car is proposed to Harlesden Old Town via Old Oak Common (HS2/ Eliz), rail junction lands new towers and Willesden Junction Station.
Lower right on the arial view of proposal is Kensal Green Station in Brent. RBKC Tories (in charge since 1965) cannot imagine that anyone living in this new car-free towers development will want to take an Overground train to Richmond, Gatwick or Hampstead Health, and therefore need a new canal bridging direct walk across the Kensal cemetery park.
Looking top left is the vast social rent housing often mid-rise well built area of North Kensington, brownfield estates land, until Grenfell stepped in.
How did RBKC manage to get a front loaded £4.5 million cemetery park green invest for Brompton Park cemetery adjacent to the Earls Court re-development, yet failed to do the same for Kensal Park cemetery/ Kensal Canalside.
Proof here that RBKC is still a deep inequalities borough. Both Labour Mayor and National Labour need to visit RBKC and enforce whole nation resilience building, good growth policies and social inclusion across borough boundaries.
An issue for the Greens otherwise.
Did Brent Master Developer take a view on this obviously bad growth Tory/ Reform policy-led tower re-development that total excludes the Brent neighbourhoods that direct neighbour it?
Developer Extremism, every car-free tower zone a feudal walled-off fiefdom. So few London developments break that ideological mould.
Weak politics.
Ballymore achieved tall car-free packed towers based on the Brent station nearby, then total ignored the station in terms of how car-free families direct access it from the mega population growth masterplan. This is England. This is exclusionary planning policy applied. The Tory ghost lives on, Reform 2.
Brompton Cemetery also 'Magnificent Seven' is the good growth counter argument also in Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, major green invested in as a park cemetery dual use green space. RBKC has zero interest in repeating its Brompton social success at Kensal Green because its partly in Brent and that is THE PROBLEM. Politics before the public good, RBKC should be ashamed.
Under the Greater London Authority Act 1999 strategic transport planning in
London, including for active travel, is the responsibility of the Mayor of
London, exercised through Transport for London. For new development
management within London, the Mayor sets strategic goals in the London
Plan, while the London boroughs deal with planning applications including
whether new development complies with local and London-wide policies.
Active Travel London has been pitched to the GLA to monitor just how bad bad growth tower clusters are being allowed to be in London 2026.
Ballymore are not a one off fail.
Thanks for this Martin. Brent won't get far being misled as if its an excluded barbarian island somewhere 'up north'.
From Kensal to Kensington, from South Kilburn to City of Westminster, from Harlesden to Harlesden Old Oak Common (Britain's new biggest railway station). Reduce vehicle congestion, get social and economic re-connecting London. Humpty Dumpty can be put together again. Green growth, rather than Exclusionary growth.
Cake and eat it.... Tower Lords want massive change which doesn't fully link-in and integrate with what is around it, be that a giant green space, an existing Overground station or a neighbour borough. Astonishing how post Grenfell reform policy held hostage the RBKC is. Astonishing too in hard economic times how Brent Labour is happy to continue to play its North Korea role.
Image top right is seen Wormwood Scrubs Great Park, from which a new cable car (big enough to carry bikes) is proposed to Harlesden Old Town via stops at Harlesden Old Oak Common (HS2/ Eliz line new mega-station), rail junction land new car-free housing towers, new Harlesden Canalside and busy Willesden Junction Station- this, overflying the many electrified railway lines that currently exclude Brent residents. This Brent new public transport journey, the price of a bus fare for local people.
A smart/ growth focused public transport investment for Green politicians to run with?????????????
Ham and High its front page news.
Can see the Tory tactics here of Royal Borough re-development Yes ( its a Sainsburys, a giant car park and waste land afterall), and Brent Kensal residents direct access to new Kensal Canalside being total denied using cemetery as a ploy to be obstructive, when the same Torys are 100% fine with Brompton Cemetery as major walk-cycle through/ green space dual use public good.
Either build on brownfield or greenfield. If the site is toxic, then concrete on top of it makes it safer because it wont be accessible.
Kensal Canalside here will be a great public good. See Paddington Basin, see new Kings Cross Canalside. Enough canal side green space for the likely level of use allowed by Ballymore? Connect to Brent Kensal direct across Kensal Green Cemetery PLS.
Direct pathways in cemetery to its Brent gates are already there. Its just about two new canal bridges.
With OPDC car-free housing towerville pending to right on Willesden Junction lands, there is going to be a lot of movement along the Kensal Canalside as its a direct cycle route to central London. Doesn't look like any account has been take of that. Surprising given its RBKC.
Brent should lobby the Mayor for Brent total inclusion in Kensal Canalside. Ditto OPDC, ditto Fairer Westminster ( shared across borough boundary local centres, shared only park)
If connected-by design, this scheme will be great for Brent Kensal lives. An awkward area of London can finally start to fully car-free travel flow north-south, east-west. Why should RBKC exclusion policy dominate at the borough boundary what is a Regional planning matter?
Kensal Green Cemetery is being used as a barrier by RBKC, while Brompton Cemetery RBKC uses to greenway connect neighbourhoods. Ditto Paddington Old Cemetery, where Brent owns it but will not connect Kilburn into Queens Park by building one small gate onto Salusbury Road.
Lets just grow congestion as London population grows. These should be active travel urban blockages that the Greens would champion un-blocking? From lock outs to freeing movement as London grows. Active Travel England does not operate in London. London a kind of no zone at the moment.
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