Fixing the Bazalgette Mausoleum
Help us to raise further funds to restore the elegant Bazalgette Mausoleum in Wimbledon to its full potential.
- Raised £1,095.00
- Target £15,000.00
Habitats & Heritage is working to conserve the Bazalgette Mausoleum in Wimbledon and to remove it from Historic England’s at-risk register. The Grade II listed mausoleum is the final resting place of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the eminent Victorian engineer who pioneered the London sewer system, and his family.
The project has received substantial funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Rochester Bridge Trust to enable the works and to deliver an extensive education and outreach programme about sewage treatment and water supply which has so far reached 3,000 school children in its first year.
The funding has also enabled us to engage with architects and structural engineers to fully scope the repairs and decide on the best course of action. Through further investigation and practical consultations, we have found that the structural work required to save the building will be more expensive than initially anticipated. This is largely due to safety concerns for contractors working on the project.
Our priority is to secure the building and make it safe for future generations so this is where the funding will be allocated first. However, there are other, non-structural improvements we still want to make!
We are committed to making this conservation project as complete as possible, but we need a little extra help. Any support for this project will go a long way.
Thank you.
The Mausoleum
The mausoleum is located in the graveyard of St Mary’s Church, Wimbledon and contains Sir Joseph Bazalgette, his wife Maria, and five of their eleven children. The Portland Stone mausoleum features an obelisk, sitting above a vault, which is protected by heavy metal doors and contains space for 12 coffins, eight of which are occupied.
Unusually, the mausoleum was not built for the Bazalgette family. It was constructed 15 years before Sir Joseph Bazalgette was born, having been commissioned by John Anthony Rucker who died in 1804. Rucker’s coffin occupies one of the nine spaces inside, and is the only person outside of the Bazalgette family to interred in the mausoleum.
Rucker was a banker and merchant who owned extensive slave plantations in Grenada, a former British colony in the West Indies. With no children of his own, he left most of his wealth to his nephew Daniel Henry Rucker, who inherited John Rucker’s estates and it is assumed the mausoleum.
Sir Joseph Bazalgette purchased the eighty-year-old tomb in 1886 due to the space in the graveyard being exhausted. We do know that the Bazalgette family lived locally and had a close relationship with the church – the graveyard of which, was already full when Charles Norman Bazalgette, Sir Joseph’s son, died. Bazalgette heavily modified the structure, replacing a pyramid on top with a tall obelisk. The mausoleum signifies the resting place of two men with legacies polarised from one another.
The Project
Habitats & Heritage is delivering an extensive project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund to secure the future of this mausoleum which is deteriorating. The vaulted roof has begun to collapse onto the crypt and the iron railings have broken away. Our project aims to restore the stonework, repair the brick vaulting, re-align the stairs, replicate the iron railing and gates and generally improve the surrounding of the structure.
Alongside the work to repair the structure, we are delivering an outreach and education programme which celebrates the work of Bazalgette, addresses the issues of plastic pollution in water courses, educate the importance of water conservation and promote STEM learning.
Follow this link to read more about the project: Sir Joseph Bazalgette & the Great Stink of London Project which delves deeper into the mausoleum story.
All efforts will be made to restore the mausoleum. However, if for some reason this is not possible, the charity reserves the right to use donations for other charitable purposes unless stated by the donor.
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Comments
Visited the tomb decades ago, and wondered why such an a illustrious figure did not have a looked after mausoleum - especially as his descendants are around, and quite high profile…
Nicola Medawar
I’m a big fan of JB and was dismayed when the ornate entrance gates to the mausoleum were stolen some years ago. So happy that the resting place of this great man is being restored. All done to all involved!