The Cemetery Today

Today, Horton Cemetery bears little resemblance to the burial ground that once existed here.

The chapel has gone. The headstones have gone. Paths and grave plots have disappeared beneath decades of uncontrolled vegetation. Trees, shrubs and brambles have taken over much of the approximately five-acre site, while the surviving Victorian iron railings have deteriorated.

It is privately owned and inaccessible to the public.

But describing Horton Cemetery as simply “overgrown” seriously understates its condition. The Council’s own heritage documentation has described the site as a “feral wilderness”.

The neglect has had consequences for the graves themselves.

Human remains brought to the surface

Human remains have been exposed within the cemetery.

In April 2012, the Your Local Guardian reported the disturbing discovery under the headline “Dead rising from grave in Epsom as child finds bones.” The discovery brought public attention to the condition of a burial ground containing thousands of people.

Dead rising from grave in Epsom as child finds bones — Your Local Guardian

The problem is compounded by extensive animal activity within the cemetery. Badgers have established setts across the burial ground, excavating large quantities of soil in an area containing densely packed graves. Where burials are disturbed, human remains can be brought towards or onto the surface.

The unmanaged trees present another threat. Trees have been allowed to deteriorate, die and fall, while their extensive root systems penetrate the burial ground. When a mature tree falls or is uprooted, enormous root plates and quantities of surrounding earth can be lifted with it. In a cemetery where graves lie beneath and between those trees, this creates an obvious risk of disturbing burials and exposing remains.

This is not a theoretical concern about what might eventually happen to an abandoned cemetery.

Human remains have already been found.

That fact changes the nature of the argument about Horton Cemetery.

This is not simply a neglected heritage site whose railings need repairing or whose vegetation needs managing. It remains a place of burial in the most fundamental sense: almost 9,000 people are still beneath this ground.

These are not archaeological remains from some distant, unidentified population.

The people beneath Horton Cemetery have names.

Many have living descendants.

Some descendants have been unable to visit their relatives’ graves, one travelling from Australia to Epsom to pay his respects. Yet the cemetery has been allowed to deteriorate to the point where animal activity and the unmanaged landscape threaten the dignity of those burials.

And families should not have to learn that human remains from a cemetery containing their relatives have been found exposed above ground.

That is one of the reasons the Friends of Horton Cemetery continue to campaign for the site to be protected, properly managed and ultimately restored as a place of dignity and remembrance.

A cemetery used as a dumping ground

The indignity does not end there.

The abandoned ground has been used for fly-tipping and dumping. Accounts of the site record builders’ rubble, broken sanitary ware and discarded white goods among the waste left within the cemetery.

The Friends have also encountered evidence of drinking and drug use, adding another layer of concern to a site that should be treated as a place of burial.

A 2026 academic study of Horton Cemetery, “Unmarked lives, unsettled spaces”, describes the cemetery as suffering from tree regrowth, overgrown brambles, fly-tipping and deteriorating Victorian railings. It also notes that the precise location of individual graves can no longer be identified and that relatives cannot enter the privately owned site to pay their respects.

This is why the condition of Horton Cemetery cannot be dismissed as nature simply reclaiming an old burial ground.

If human remains can be brought to the surface by animals or exposed through the deterioration of the landscape, while rubbish is dumped above the graves, then the issue is no longer merely one of heritage.

It is one of dignity.

Fighting for recognition

The Friends of Horton Cemetery were formed because this situation should not be allowed to continue.

One of our important early objectives was to secure formal recognition of the cemetery’s historic significance.

That campaign succeeded in September 2021, when Epsom and Ewell Borough Council agreed to add Horton Cemetery, its surviving boundary railings and the memorial outside the cemetery to the Local Heritage List.

Local listing was an important victory.

But listing a cemetery does not restore it.

The land remains privately owned. The public cannot freely enter. The graves remain unmarked and the cemetery continues to require protection, management and restoration.

That is why the Friends’ ambition has always been greater than simply obtaining recognition on a heritage list.

We want to see Horton Cemetery reclaimed, protected and restored as a place of remembrance – a peaceful garden-arboretum where relatives and members of the public can finally enter, remember those buried there and understand the extraordinary history beneath their feet.

Until that happens, our work continues.

Because the greatest argument for saving Horton Cemetery is not the surviving railings, the trees or even its place in the history of the Epsom Cluster.

It is the people.

Almost 9,000 of them are still there.

And whatever happened to them during their lives, they deserve dignity in death.