The Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded the United Synagogue a £1.7 million grant to open its Willesden Cemetery to the general public as a heritage site.
Today's announcement follows two years of planning, with HLF support, towards the conservation of buildings and memorials, the "greening" of the landscape and offering activities for a greater number, and diversity, of visitors. The Lottery cash forms part of a £2.3 million project geared to putting the North London cemetery on a sustainable footing for the future.
Personalities of their time buried at Willesden, which opened in 1873, include Sir Julius Vogel, the Prime Minister of New Zealand in 1876, Rosalind Franklin, who helped discover DNA and film director Michael Winner.
Lionel de Rothschild, one of the first Jewish MPs, Hannah Rosebery, once the world’s richest woman, and Jack Cohen, founder of Tesco’s, are among other notable figures buried there. Although there is still the occasional funeral, the cemetery is virtually full with close-on 30,000 graves.
