Mill Hill Cemetery

In 1923, the Paddington Metropolitan Borough 's cemetery in Willesden Lane, NW2, was almost full and a new cemetery site was required. Offers for land within 8 miles of Paddington Town Hall were sought by advertisement in 1929. 26 acres were purchased in Mill Hill, and E E Lofting was appointed architect in 1933. The New Paddington Cemetery was opened in 1936. The Cemetery Committee approved estimates of £5,945 for building the chapel and the foundation stone was laid on 27 October 1936. It was completed in May 1937 when the apse and part of the burial land were consecrated by the Rt. Rev. Lord Bishop of Kensington. The first private interment took place on 22 February 1938. Entrance gates at the junction of Milespit Hill and Wise Lane lead to the driveway to the chapel. On the roadside opposite this entrance is a 0.9-hectare fragment of the former manorial waste of Hendon Manor listed as Milespit Hill Waste in the Commons Registration Act of 1965 (CL102).

After World War II a small plot of land, c.0.2025 ha., was given to the Netherlands War Graves Commission to form the Dutch National War Memorial in Great Britain. It contains graves that were gathered from all over the UK of 254 servicemen and women from the Netherlands Merchant Navy, Royal Netherlands Navy and Royal Netherlands Army. The names of another 185 casualties not buried here are commemorated on the larger memorial stones. The central memorial has a bronze sculpture of a dying man by Cor Van Kralingen, inscribed on the plinth 'In Memory of the Netherlands War Victims 1940-45'. It was opened on 12 May 1965 by H H Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in the presence of HRH The Duke of Gloucester, President of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. In April 1972 Queen Juliana visited the memorial. Just below the chapel, surrounded by a yew hedge, are two memorial plots, a plot of Commonwealth War Graves, and a Royal British Legion War Memorial. In the south are civilian memorials to people in Paddington and Hendon killed during World War II.

Others buried there include Billy Fury, 1960s popstar (real name Richard Wycherely); Bebe Daniels, actress and television personality, Princess Diana de Faucigny-Lucinge et Coligny (d.1973) who was descended from a C13th French aristocratic family; Air Vice Marshal Owen Boyd (d.1944), who joined the Indian Army in 1909, was Balloon commanding officer in 1938 and later escaped from POW Camp in 1944; Sir John Laing, Life President of firm of contractors John Laing & Son and President of the London Bible College (d.1978).

In 1987 Westminster City Council sold this cemetery as well as its other two cemeteries, St Marylebone and Westminster (q.q.v) to a private company for 15 pence, in order to pass on the £400,000 maintenance costs. All three cemeteries were immediately sold on again to speculative property companies keen to profit from the land, leading to much neglect of the cemeteries. In 1988, following complaints by relatives of the deceased, the Ombudsman ruled that WCC had to buy back the cemeteries, but the price then asked was c. £10million. However, it was later ruled that WCC had had no powers to sell in the first place so the original sale was void. In 1992 WCC bought back all three cemeteries, although c.5.26 hectares at Mill Hill was lost to development.