Abney Park Chapel - The Landscape Setting

The Landscape Setting

The design team included not only the architect William Hosking, but also the botanist and nurseryman George Loddiges. Moreover, the ethos of Abney Park Cemetery was distinctly botanical. The plans for the chapel therefore featured a nearby rosarium and a collection of American plants on the Chapel Lawn. This, combined with the unusual A to Z arboretum around the cemetery's perimeter, the pre-existing 'stately timber' or 'well timbered grounds' that included some early introductions of trees from North America from around 1700, and the plans for special interest tree collections along some of the northern and central walks, led John Loudon to describe Abney Park Cemetery as the most ornamented of the London cemeteries. This attention to an educational and botanical interest in landscape design was becoming fashionable through the work of John Loudon and his ideas of the 'gardenesque'. However, no garden cemetery in Europe had ventured to adopt this style to the degree it was employed at Abney Park. As Brent Elliot wrote in his "Garden History" journal review of a reprint of Loudon's book on cemetery design (1843;1981 reprint), "It seems to me that much of what Loudon recommends is drawn from the example of Abney Park Cemetery".