The later 19th and early 20th century saw the erection of numerous opulent cemetery monuments which incorporated bronze sculpture. These ranged from single reliefs to substantial sculptures, such as the dramatic group at Brookwood Cemetery by George Wade to Lady Matilda Pelham-Clinton (d. 1892), in which a grief-stricken mourner weeps over a draped corpse while an angel hovers overhead. They have not been considered as a group before and are notable both for their aesthetic quality and for their special place in the fin de siècle British cemetery.

Bronze was a shrewd choice for outdoor monuments. These opulent bespoke commissions, the preserve of the wealthiest of clients, are sometimes notable works of art which display remarkable symbolism. Some early examples have been the victim of theft: poet Thomas Hood’s memorial of 1854 in Kensal Green by Matthew Noble, once a major literary shrine, has lost its bust and reliefs. Sculptors such as Sir George Frampton, Edward Onslow Ford and Sir William Goscombe John were each commissioned to create sculpted monuments for cemeteries, which included portraits, angels, allegorical figures and mythological reliefs. The genre – never numerous – culminated with the late Symbolist array of mortality on Sam Wilson’s monument in Lawnswood Cemetery, Leeds of c.1914 and in the dramatic angel of death on the Lancaster tomb of 1920 in East Sheen Cemetery. It forms an interesting contrast with the much larger category of cemetery sculpture: the mass-produced marble figures imported from Italy.