9am: Where to go on the hottest day of the year? 10am: I wonder which boroughs I haven't been to this month. 11am: Is anything on in Barnet, Redbridge or Richmond today? 1pm: This way for the behind-the-scenes crematorium tour.
This is a post about what happens after you die, in case you'd rather go away and read something else.
We generally try not to think about our own death, hoping it'll be as far into the future as possible and can be achieved with a minimum of misery. Whenever it happens there'll be grief and mourning, and loose ends for others to tie up, and also a body to be disposed of. The older we get the more rehearsals for our own funeral we attend, sitting in muted rows listening to heartfelt tributes and watching the curtain close on a life well lived. But did you ever wonder precisely what happens round the back after the coffin rolls away, or might knowing ruin the air of respectful mystery forever?
Mortlake Crematorium opened in 1939 just upstream of Chiswick Bridge. A low Italianate building in brick, with Art Deco features, it's one of London's finer centres of despatch. At its heart is a memorial chapel surrounded by shady cloisters lined by innumerable memorial plaques. The gardens are gorgeous, especially at this time of year with the roses in full bloom and an aisle of lavender straight up the middle. But precisely what goes on at the rear of the building is sympathetically shielded, and yes that is a chimney, because this is simultaneously a place of work.
Yesterday's Full Circle Festival was held to celebrate the crematorium's 80th anniversary, and saw the site opened up to a variety of community groups, bereavement charities and related businesses. Somewhere out back was a "pop-up death cafe", an agenda-free space for open discussion. Out front were two dozen stalls and booths covering all aspects of mortality from hospice support to eco-coffins and from pet burials to organ donation. On the grass were several hearses, one pulled by a perfect pair of feathered horses, another part of a hireable motorbike and sidecar combo. Bottles of wine awaited the unfolding of a winning tombola ticket. A band played. Sausages grilled. The whole thing was eerily normal while simultaneously anything but.
And then there were the behind the scenes tours. Shuffling into the chapel for the opening talk felt quite familiar, the 'congregation' mostly on the old side, the 'celebrant' up front. We learned that the crematorium schedules 13 funerals a day, that any legal form of remembrance service is permitted and that the Compton organ isn't much called for these days. And at the end of proceedings we filed out, not via the rear doors as usual but through the small staff-only access to one side of the central hatch. I decided against taking photos of what lay beyond, although not everybody on the tour was so restrained.
The coffin doesn't roll straight out into a furnace once the curtains close, that's a myth. At Mortlake it doesn't roll out at all until the mourners have left, following certain unfortunate incidents with bodies heavier than the original mechanism was built for. The antechamber out back is merely a holding bay where the coffin is stored until the incinerators are ready, with space for four roller-topped trolleys up one end. Regulations state that bodies must be cremated with 72 hours, so a backlog can build up, but generally here they go to the flames no later than the following day. "Shall we go through?"
The business end of the crematorium features a wall with three large metal doors at shoulder height. One of these was open, revealing a long dark brick chamber within which thousands of southwest Londoners have been burned. An hour and a half generally does it, we were told, and then "that rake" is used to scrape the remains into a metal container underneath. What emerges are chunks of charred bone which are then ground up in a separate smaller machine to create the ashes relatives get to store, or scatter. Nothing is ever quite as it seems.
Chiswick's cremators were upgraded in 2013, the new machinery being more efficient than the old, so the chamber we'd been allowed to look into is now surplus to requirements. The other two work daily, each controlled via a computer touchscreen (which yesterday indicated a pre-heat time of 97 minutes and an internal temperature in the mid-300s). The new system also filters out a lot more pollutants, which is why you never see a plume of black smoke rising from the chimney any more. I confess I did surreptitiously wonder which of the three chambers Margaret Thatcher had combusted in, but thought better of asking.
And yet turn and face the other way and this is just another working environment. Pinned up on a notice board are risk assessments, professional certificates, shift times and holiday entitlements. An old wooden shelving unit is used to store gloves, helmets with heat-resistant visors and a range of cleaning products. Gary's hi-vis jacket rests over the back of a chair. Imagine doing this for a job, day in day out, from seven in the morning. Our guide told us that those who work in front of house with the mourners also work out back, which helps them to connect more respectfully to the departed.
Pacemakers must always be removed before cremation, else they might explode, whereas hip joints and knee replacements are removed afterwards and recycled. The Dutch company that organises the recycling had turned up for the open day with a display table of charred joints and promotional stationery, which visitors pored over with interest. The scheme has raised almost £10m for UK bereavement charities over the last decade, we were told, and only five NHS authorities don't (yet) take part.
The irony of visiting a crematorium on the hottest day of the year wasn't lost on me. But opportunities to see behind the scenes at such a facility don't come round very often, and next time I'm sitting in a chapel waiting for the curtains to close I'll have a far better idea of what comes next. Indeed I probably spent yesterday afternoon staring at my own destiny - boxed, incinerated, swept and crushed - but at a considerably lower temperature than next time round.
