Pet cemeteries: where have beloved animals been laid to rest through the centuries?

Following the royal couple’s separation around 1794, Frederica retired to Oatlands Park in Surrey, where she lived surrounded by cats and dogs.

More than 60 animals were buried at Oatlands, all with headstones. Whether or not she started the fashion, the eccentric duchess certainly had one of the first British pet cemeteries.

‘Unceremonial’ burials

Burial of animals owned by humans is unusual before the late 18th century. Some cats were buried in Egypt, and there’s an ancient dog cemetery at Ashkelon in Israel, but the burial of what we might call ‘pets’ was rare.

One notable exception: Alexander the Great is believed to have had a lavish funeral for his favourite dog, Peritas – and named a city in his honour– but this animal was prized at least as much for its ferocity as its companionship.

For most of history, relationships between humans and domestic animals were mostly utilitarian. Dogs fulfilled various roles, and cats were for keeping vermin at bay.

Aside from lapdogs and ‘exotic’ creatures such as monkeys and parrots, few were kept as pets. Once they died, they were either ‘unceremonially’ buried, flung on the bonfire, or dumped somewhere – unless money could be earned from selling the skin, meat, fur, or feathers.

When and why people in Britain started treating animals as pets is open to debate, but a more certain fashion for keeping animals in the home emerged in the later 18th century, the age of ‘sensibility’.

By the end of Queen Victoria’s reign, even working-class households were keeping animals at least partly as pets, or for leisure and sport

By Victorian times, domestic pets had arrived, and were no longer just for the middle- and upper-classes. By the end of Queen Victoria’s reign, even working-class households were keeping animals at least partly as pets, or for leisure and sport. Dog shows were a regular feature of British life by late 1800s, and the prizes were often carried off by working-class breeders from urban homes.

By that stage, some deceased pets were being buried, their last resting places often accompanied by simple headstones. Large country houses very often had a burial ground for pets – mostly dogs, some of which can still be seen today.

Some cemeteries were less visible than others. The Earls Spencer buried their pets on ‘Dog Island’ in the middle of a lake at their Althorp estate in Northamptonshire. (The headstones were removed in the late 20th century to make way for the tomb of Diana, Princess of Wales when she was buried there in 1997.

The royal family got in on the act as well. Queen Victoria had a cemetery at Windsor for a number of horses and dogs. There was another at Sandringham. They soon appeared in other places, too, such as colleges and educational institutions.

The first public pet cemetery

The first pet cemetery for public use in Britain was at London’s Hyde Park, and came about by chance more than design, in the early 1880s.

By one account, the owners of a Maltese named Cherry asked one of the park gatekeepers, Edward Wimbridge, if they could bury their dog in the park as it had loved to play there. He agreed and the garden of his gate lodge would go on to become the last resting place for hundreds of pets.

By another account, it was the Duke of Cambridge who asked Mr Wimbridge if he could bury a pet dachshund that his family had owned.

Whichever story is true, the business of pet burials became a sideline for Mr Wimbridge, an elderly widower, who charged £5 for a basic headstone and would perform a burial ceremony, sometimes with a small coffin.

Mr Wimbridge and his successor(s) continued the tradition until the early 20th century. By then there were well over 500 gravestones, mostly paid for by wealthy owners who lived near the park.

London’s Hyde Park pet cemetery is currently closed to the public, though you might be lucky enough to get a tour courtesy of some local historical or archaeological society. If you do, admire the little headstones and wonder at a different age in which people might call a pet animal ‘Scum’, or what the back-story was to poor Balu, who was “poisoned by a cruel Swiss.”

A trend for pet burials

Other pet cemeteries followed. There was a large one at Molesworth in Huntingdonshire, though possibly the best-known was the Ilford Animal Cemetery.

This was originally the grounds of an animal hospital run by the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) and opened in the 1920s. Owners were soon requesting burials in the grounds, and more than 3,000 animals would be laid to rest, including a number of animals who won the PDSA’s Dickin Medal for courage in wartime. At the start of the Second World War, fears of food shortages led to hundreds of thousands of pets being put down; some of these are said to have been buried in a mass-grave at Ilford, though stories of up to half a million animals being buried at this one particular site are almost certainly exaggerated. The Ilford site has long since stopped taking burials, but was restored some years ago and is open to visitors.

Blue Cross, another animal welfare charity, also had a pet cemetery of its own, and which is now maintained by volunteers.

We blithely say that Britain is a nation of animal lovers, but when it comes to commemorating pets, other countries are equally extravagant. The grandest pet cemetery in Europe was surely the Cimetière des Chiens et Autres Animaux Domestiques, opened in the 1890s at Asnières-sur-Seine on the outskirts of Paris. This veritable Père Lachaise for pets is now a visitor attraction. In its early days, it even had a resident coffin-maker who would make a casket to the bereaved owner’s requirements, and a tricycle that served as the hearse.

By the 20th century there were numerous pet cemeteries in Europe, including one at Kaknäs in Sweden, which is arguably older than the Hyde Park ground.

In America, the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in New York state was opened by vet Samuel Johnson in the late 1800s and is still open today, alongside numerous other establishments, from tasteful to tacky, across the United States. But the country which memorialises its pets the most is probably Japan, where there are hundreds of cemeteries, many attached to Buddhist temples.

You can argue that the first European and American pet cemeteries were a reflection of the fashion for extravagant funerals and grave monuments for humans. They were also a reflection of prevailing religious beliefs.

Changing traditions

In Victoria’s early days it would have been shocking to claim that you would be reunited with your pet in the afterlife. This started to change later; for example, an engraving on the grave of ‘Thomas Puss’ (1888–95) at Woburn Abbey, a pet of the then-Duke and Duchess of Bedford, wondered if the creatures we have cherished “shall give us joyous greeting when we pass the golden gate. Is it folly that I hope it may be so?”

By the middle of the 20th century, a fair few headstones bear memorials that are in no doubt that “all dogs go to Heaven.” In more recent times, we also see memorials in which pets are treated as members of the family rather than just domestic animals.