Rapid Growth

The cemetery had been created for hundreds.

It would have to accommodate thousands.

As the Epsom Cluster expanded, so did the number of people dying within its hospitals. The Manor was followed by Horton Asylum, the Ewell Epileptic Colony, Long Grove and finally West Park.

The original burial ground quickly proved inadequate and the cemetery expanded.

Ultimately, a site intended for approximately 900 burials received around 9,000.

This extraordinary growth also explains the complexity of the surviving burial records.

Grave numbers were shared and reused, grave suffixes added, and the numbering eventually extended beyond 3,500, despite the actual number of people buried being far greater. The surviving records are themselves imperfect, with gaps and uncertainties.

Horton Cemetery was therefore never simply a conventional cemetery serving the local population.

It became the common burial ground of an enormous institutional system.

And as that system grew, the cemetery filled with people who had often begun their lives far beyond Epsom.