Charles Reed (British Politician) - Abney Park Cemetery

Abney Park Cemetery

Reed had an interest in London's open spaces and their educational benefits, and became a subscriber to the Abney Park Cemetery, a joint stock company in whose trust lay parkland once owned by Lady Mary Abney, in which Dr Isaac Watts had written hymns. The associated members sought to maintain the site for its religious associations and for its value as open space. It was the only surviving example of a landscape designed by the nurseryman George Loddiges and boasted an arboretum of 2500 trees and shrubs. As the only New World cemetery design in Europe it had commissioned an entrance in an Egyptian revival style, to reflect its non-denominational character. The originality of the design and the motive force for acquiring and preserving the site had been George Collison, its first secretary, whose father had tutored Reed's father.

Reed, with a firm understanding of the historical importance of the landscape and its educational value, won election as a director of the company for 16 years between 1866 and 1881 and became a principal influence during its last decades as a joint stock company. Reed himself is buried there. Soon after Reed died, the cemetery was made over on 11 April 1882 to a new company run on commercial lines. This laid out a new cemetery at Chingford Mount in 1883-4. Others at Hendon Park and Greenford followed.