and memorials at Brookwood after both World Wars. In 1941 London Necropolis railway station, the LNC's London railway terminus, was badly damaged by bombing, and the London Necropolis Railway was abandoned. Rising property prices in Surrey in the 1940s and 1950s made the LNC increasingly valuable, but also made it a target for property speculators. In 1959 a hostile takeover succeeded, and LNC's independence came to an end. From 1959 to 1985 a succession of owners stripped the profitable parts of the business from the company, leaving a rump residual company operating the increasingly derelict cemetery. In 1985 what remained of the company came into the ownership of Ramadan Güney, who set about reviving what remained. Links were formed with London's Muslim communities in an effort to encourage new burials, and a slow programme of clearing and restoring the derelict sections of the cemetery commenced. Although it was never as successful as planned, the LNC was very influential in both the funeral industry and in the development of the area around Woking, and Brookwood Cemetery remains the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom. Background Since the conversion of London to Christianity in the early 7th century, the city's dead had been buried in and around the local churches. With a limited amount of space for burials, the oldest graves were regularly exhumed to free space for new burials, and the remains of the previous occupants transferred to charnel houses for storage. From the 14th century onwards the charnel houses themselves were overwhelmed, and exhumed bones were scattered where they had been dug up or reburied in pits. Despite this practice, by the mid 17th century the city was running seriously short of burial space. A proposal by Christopher Wren to use the reconstruction following the 1666 Great Fire of London as an opportunity to cease burials in the churchyards and establish new cemeteries outside the city was approved by the King and Parliament but vetoed by the Corporation of London, and burials continued at the newly rebuilt churches. In the first half of the 19th century the population of London more than doubled, from a little under a million people in 1801 to almost two and a half million in 1851. Despite this rapid growth in population, the amount of land set aside for use as graveyards remained unchanged at approximately , spread across around 200 small sites. The difficulty