Willesden Jewish Cemetery


The Willesden United Synagogue Cemetery, usually known as Willesden Jewish Cemetery, is a cemetery for Jews at Beaconsfield Road, Willesden, in the London Borough of Brent, England. It opened in 1873 on a site. It has been described as the "Rolls Royce" of London's Jewish cemeteries and is designated Grade II on Historic England's Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. In 2015, the United Synagogue, which owns and manages the cemetery, was awarded a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to restore some key features of the cemetery and to create a visitor centre, a permanent exhibition and a web-based education project.

History and heritage listing

The cemetery, developed on ground purchased from All Souls College, Oxford, was opened in 1873, three years after the United Synagogue was established by Act of Parliament. It was expanded in 1890, in 1906 and between 1925 and 1926. The cemetery and its funerary buildings, in English Gothic style, were designed by the architect Nathan Solomon Joseph.
In 2017 Historic England listed the cemetery at Grade II on the grounds of: its being the first venture of the United Synagogue; its having associations with many influential families and individuals who are buried there; its overall design by a prominent Jewish architect; "the quality, opulence and variety displayed by the monuments as a group, reflecting both Jewish traditions and English influences"; and its survival – "the Old Cemetery remains intact, whilst the subsequent evolution of the cemetery is well-documented and legible".
The cemetery, which has 29,800 graves, has many significant memorials and monuments. Four of them are listed at Grade II.

War graves and listed war memorial

The cemetery has 33 Commonwealth service war graves from World War I, six of which form a small group by the Assembly Hall, and 77 from World War II, 22 of them grouped in a war graves plot. These include the grave of Dudley Joel, businessman and Conservative Party politician, who died in World War II.
In place of a Cross of Sacrifice, a memorial designed by Ralph Hobday in the form of an obelisk was placed in 1961 by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission opposite the World War II war graves plot. The first national Jewish war memorial in the UK, it is Grade II listed.

Other listed monuments

Other notable burials

Some of the other notable persons interred here include:

Architects

Artists and art dealers

Lawyers

Medical doctors

Musicians

Politicians

Rabbis

Other