Walking The Pirbright Circular and Brookwood Cemetery
Brookwood Cemetery: graves along the route of the old Necropolis Railway
This was a two-for-one trip for us to walk the Pirbright Circular and visit the disused railway station at Brookwood. Both are distinct and interesting destinations in their own right and can be easily combined into a same-day trip.
The Pirbright Circular
Start / Finish: Pirbright Village Green, Ave De Cagny, Pirbright, Woking GU24 0JE
Distance: 6.6 km (4.1 miles)
Elevation Change: +/- 45m
GPX File: get via Buy Me a Coffee
Other Routes Touched (walk): None
Cafe / pub on route: Around Pirbright Green: The Cricketers on the Green, White Hart Pirbright
Map: Guildford & Farnham Map | Godalming & Farnborough | Ordnance Survey | OS Explorer Map 145
Links: Pirbright, Surrey CC Pirbright Circular Leaflet
This is an easy, scenic walk around the boundary of the village of Pirbright. This was our latest walk in the Explore Surrey series whose website is a rich source of information about getting out and about in the county. As with all of their routes, their PDFs have all the details so I won’t cover them again here.
If you’re arriving by train to Brookwood Station it’s a 2 km walk to Pirbright Green around the outside of the cemetary. An alternative route is to enter the cemetery from the entrance on the south side of the train station and walk through the cemetery to Pirbright Green.
Brookwood Cemetery and The Necropolis Railway
Visiting the disused station at Brookwood Cemetery had been on my list for a while having watched the 2 YouTube videos embedded below. I recommend watching them both to understand more about the Cemetery and the Necropolis Railway before you go.
The best way to track down the old railway and station is to arrive by train to Brookwood Station from Waterloo. We were short on time and coming from outside of London so arrived by car and parked just inside the main gates at the entrance to the southern side of the cemetery off Cemetary Pales road. From here you can follow the path of the old railway as it curves to the south-east.
When we arrived at the old South Station, now part of a monastery, we met a monk and his dog taking the bins out. It seemed like he was quite familiar with people visiting the old station and gave us a bit of the history.
More on the railway: Wikipedia, Brookwood Cemetery Society