Had you lived and died in Britain prior to 1836, your mortal remains would have found their lasting place in a church graveyard. London's church graveyards were, however, already full fit to burst and had been since before the Great Fire in 1666. Sir Christopher Wren, whilst preparing plans to rebuild the devastated city, called for new cemeteries to be built outside the perimeter walls but his advice, like his plans, went largely unheeded.

In July 1832, after the devastating cholera epidemic of the previous year and influenced by the commercial success of Britain's first purpose-built cemetery (St. James's, Liverpool, created in 1825 from a disused stone quarry), the Bill: 'for establishing a General Cemetery for the Interment of the Dead in the Neighbourhood of the Metropolis' received Royal Assent, and in its passing privatised burial.
Between 1833 and 1836, London's first privately-owned cemeteries, Kensal Green, Norwood, and Highgate, were created. Well-to-do Londoners' clamoured to purchase grave plots and ensured the new graveyards' immediate financial success. Within ten years another four commercial necropoli were raised at Abney Park, Brompton, Nunhead, and Tower Hamlets. The 'Magnificent Seven', as they became to be known, seem conservative in their construction when compared to the host of extravagant applications placed before parliament from other hopeful joint stock companies. One of the most adventurous schemes, the 'Grand National Cemetery', to have been constructed at either Primrose Hill or Kidbrooke, was to cover 15O acres. The proposed cemetery centred around a church modelled on the Parthenon which, in turn, linked to full-scale facsimiles of the Athenian Acropolis and the Temple of the Vestal Virgins in the Roman Forum. Burial space was to be provided on a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class system; the inner 42 acres for the interment of national heroes, the intermediate ground for the moderately wealthy, and the outer for the 'humbler class'.

Another plan, the 'Great Eastern Cemetery', conceived by the social reformer Edwin Chadwick, was to have been built at Abbey Wood and to have utilised the adjacent Thames for the transportation of bodies. From eight London 'reception houses' an average of ninety-six corpses a day would float down the 'Silent Highway' in specially adapted steamboats. Chadwick's plan - which also incorporated a glass covered walkway to protect the mourners from inclement weather, an avenue of colossal statues, and a chapel surmounted by an enormous stained-glass dome - was eventually rejected on health grounds when medical authorities stated that, as twelve-thirteenths of a human body passes into the air, the 62,000 corpses to be buried in the cemetery would produce 3,038,000 cubic feet of noxious gases. The authorities estimated that this caustic effluvium would be swept up the river on every tide, poisoning everything in its path - including the residents of the City of London.

The most fantastic and extravagant of all, Thomas Willson's 'Pyramid Cemetery' would, had it been constructed on Primrose Hill, have dominated London's skyline to this day. The scale of the proposed pyramid was enormous. Standing higher than St. Paul's Cathedral and constructed of brick with polished granite facings, it would have dwarfed the Great Pyramid of Cheops itself. With space for 5,167,104 coffins at a price of £50 per vault, it would also have proved a moneymaking venture for its investors. Willson, the Gold Medal winner architect at the Academy School, planned that the building would be entered by four separate entrances, situated on each of the pyramid's sides, which would lead to the centre where constructed around 'a central shaft for ventilation' a small chapel and the offices of the Superintendent and his minions were situated. Access to the vaults was to have been along inclined walkways which would have wound there way to the monolith's apex.
Willson wrote:

'...to toil up its singular passages to the summit, will beguile the hours of the curious and impress feelings of solemn awe and admiration upon every beholder'.

Willson's grand scheme was eventually rejected as being too adventurous.