Summary

Portland stone mausoleum, dated 1838.

Description

Portland stone mausoleum with cast iron door commemorating James Morison, dated 1838. By R H Shout, mason. It has battered sides and the upper part of the walls are decorated with garlands whilst the frieze is decorated with wreaths and fillets. There are prominent acroteria at all angles. The northern pediment contains an armorial relief.

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 28 March 2022 to update text and reformat to current standards

History

Morison (died 1840) was a proprietor of patent medicines known as 'the Hygienist', and was an early promoter of the cemetery. The original design for the monument is in the Victorian and Albert Museum.

The Cemetery of All Souls at Kensal Green was the earliest of the large privately-run cemeteries established on the fringes of London to relieve pressure on overcrowded urban churchyards. Its founder George Frederick Carden intended it as an English counterpart to the great Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, which he had visited in 1821. In 1830, with the financial backing of the banker Sir John Dean Paul, Carden established the General Cemetery Company, and two years later an Act of Parliament was obtained to develop a 55-acre site at Kensal Green, then among open fields to the west of the metropolis. An architectural competition was held, but the winning entry – a Gothic scheme by HE Kendall – fell foul of Sir John's classicising tastes, and the surveyor John Griffith of Finsbury was eventually employed both to lay out the grounds and to design the Greek Revival chapels, entrance arch and catacombs, built between 1834 and 1837. A sequence of royal burials, beginning in 1843 with that of Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, ensured the cemetery’s popularity. It is still administered by the General Cemetery Company, assisted since 1989 by the Friends of Kensal Green.

Reasons for Listing

The Mausoleum of James Morison is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Artistic interest: one of the largest and most impressive of the early memorials at Kensal Green, its design strongly influenced by Parisian exemplars;
* Group value: with other listed monuments within the Grade I registered Kensal Green Cemetery.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q27082100

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Staffordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings: The Law and Practice of History Buildings, Ancient Monuments and Conservation Areas
• 
  England's Post-War Listed Buildings
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds: Cotswolds Pt. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)