Great Northern cemetery

New Southgate Cemetery is a 22-hectare cemetery in New Southgate in the London Borough of Barnet. It was established by the Colney Hatch Company in the 1850s and became the Great Northern London Cemetery, with a railway service running from near Kings Cross station to a dedicated station at the cemetery, similar to the service of the London Necropolis Company to Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey.

The railway service to Great Northern London Cemetery soon closed, but the cemetery has remained open. Perhaps the most famous person buried at the cemetery is Shoghi Effendi (1897-1957), a leader of the Bahá'í Faith.

After the closure of burial grounds in central London in the 1850s, there was a movement to establish new cemeteries further from the centre of the city. The Cemeteries Clauses Act 1847 allowed for the creation of commercial cemeteries, expanded upon by the Burial Act 1852.

The Colney Hatch Company acquired land for a cemetery near Colney Hatch (now known as New Southgate; the name was later changed to avoid association with the nearby Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum). Originally intended to cover 200 acres, the cemetery eventually reached covered 150 acres.

The cemetery is located about 1 mile (1.6 km) north of Colney Hatch Station, now New Southgate railway station, which is about 7 miles (11 km) on the Great Northern Railway main line north of King's Cross station, which had opened in 1852, only a few years before the cemetery. The Great Northern London Cemetery Company was formed as a joint venture between the Great Northern Railway Company and the Colney Hatch Company under an 1855 local Act of Parliament. with a view to providing cheap and convenient burial services to the residents of central London.

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