London Necropolis Railway Station - Destruction

Destruction

During the Second World War Waterloo station and the nearby Thames bridges were a significant target for Axis bombing, and there were several near-misses on the Necropolis station during the London Blitz of 1940–41. Although there were several interruptions to the Necropolis train service owing to enemy action elsewhere on the line, the Necropolis station was undamaged during the early stages of the bombing campaign, and services generally continued as normal.

During the night of 16–17 April 1941, in one of the last major air raids on London, bombs repeatedly fell on the Waterloo area, and the LNC's good fortune in avoiding damage to their facilities finally ran out. In the early stages of the air raid the rolling stock stored in the Necropolis siding was burned, and the railway arch connecting the main line to the Necropolis terminus was damaged, although the terminal building itself remained unscathed.

At 10.30 pm multiple incendiary devices and high explosive bombs struck the central section of the terminus building. While the office building and platforms survived, the workshops, driveway and Chapelle Ardente were destroyed, along with the third class waiting room. The Divisional Engineer of the Southern Railway (SR, which had absorbed the LSWR in the 1923 restructuring of Britain's railways) inspected the damage at 2.00 pm on 17 April, and his report read simply "Necropolis and buildings demolished".

On 11 May 1941 the station was officially declared closed. The last recorded funeral carried on the London Necropolis Railway was that of Chelsea Pensioner Edward Irish (1868–1941), buried on 11 April 1941. The SR offered the LNC the temporary use of platform 11 or 12 of Waterloo station to allow the service to be continued, but refused to allow the LNC to continue to sell cheap tickets to visitors travelling to and from the cemetery stations other than those involved in a funeral that day, meaning those visiting the cemetery had little reason to choose the LNC's irregular and infrequent trains over the SR's fast and frequent services to their own Brookwood railway station. The LNC attempted to negotiate a deal by which bona fide mourners could still travel cheaply to the cemetery on the 11.57 am service to Brookwood (the SR service closest to the LNC's traditional departure time), but the SR management (themselves under severe financial pressure owing to wartime constraints and damage) refused to entertain any compromise.