Where kings once lay

Today we had to get some legal papers signed for our move back to Toowoomba which involved us visiting the centre of Woking, our train terminus to the heart of London. From there anyone can get to London in about 30 minutes, which makes modern Woking a commuter belt hotspot to live. Hence the traffic. 

Being on a route to the sea accounts for much of Woking's popularity as a destination from even the earliest times. There was once a palace here, Woking Palace. It started life as a much smaller manor and deer park, a pretty spot along the Wye river for nobles to play, but expanded to Palace status very quickly. 

Margaret Beaufort inherited Woking Palace and when her son, Henry V11, became the first Tudor King he expanded the place. His second son, the fabled Henry V111, completed the Great Hall and carried out extensions turning Woking Palace into a large and favoured country retreat enroute from Windsor Park to Portsmouth. Henry would often bring his 'riding court' to Woking Palace for a little hunting and hawking in an attempt to avoid the stench and noise of London. Parks stretched south from Windsor Palace and Hampton Court and life, for Henry, was good. 

After its heyday, under Henry V111 and Elizabeth 1, Woking Palace gradually decayed and fell into ruin. Locals likely used many of its palace stones and bricks to build their village homes around the area. Today, its depleted ruins lie in a distant field, accessible only on foot, barely useful for leaning hay bales. Where kings once lay. 

Canals, for a short time, took over from horses and became the arterial highway from London to the south. Canal traffic became the way to move materials and people to and from London, until London started to feel the squeeze of its expanding population. 

Londoners found they were running out of space to bury all those who died there. They thought to purchase new land around old Woking for a burial place and to move the dead from London to there. This they did. The London Necropolis Company bought over 2000 acres from Lord Onslow, the local aristocrat who owns much of the lands around here, even today. His manor lands virtually abutt the back yards here in Ripley. 

They built a special station called the Necropolis Station near Waterloo, south of the Thames. We visited this when we were last in London. They then installed a line between the Necropolis Station and a newly built station at Woking. Over time that line became extended to Guildford, then on to Portsmouth. 

The cemetery they constructed was called Brookwood Cemetery. It was intended to be a large cemetery, to have space for all of London's dead. And for a time after it opened in 1854 it was the largest cemetery in the world. A branch line from Woking Station to the Brookwood cemetery was built, with one station for the Non-Conformist burial grounds, another for the Anglican. 

Whole churchyards in London that had to be dug up for road building had their graves transferred to Brookwood over the decades, sometimes dozens of coffins being brought at any one time in 'hearse vans' at the rear of the normal carriages. At its peak some 2000 coffins came by rail each week. And soon after, that became one of the reasons why modern Woking exists. Funeral trains bearing mourners and their families from London to visit Brookwood cemetery became a regular Sunday outing. Sightseers came too. Woking station became quite the hub, so services grew up and around the station, and modern Woking came into being thanks to London's dead. 

As time went on much of the land bought for the cemetery was given over to the developing city, so much of present day Woking is being built on old cemetery lands which were once the hunting grounds for kings, nobles, visiting diplomats and parliamentarians. Who are now all at rest. 

Luckily, we found Woking library close to the large inner city shopping centre with lots of parking, and were able to access a printer and scanner and send off our completed digital files. We found time to visit The Lightbox, Woking's stunning museum and exhibition gallery, where we were able to explore the many tales of Woking from its early days.

Brookwood Cemetery

Today the canal is for a man, his cigar, and two dogs

The Lightbox Gallery in Woking