The massive London civil engineering projects of the mid-19th century-the railways, the sewer system and from the 1860s the precursors to the London Underground-often necessitated the demolition of existing churchyards.
In 1878 the LNC sold an isolated piece of its land at Brookwood, close to St John's village, to the Cremation Society of Great Britain, on which they built Woking Crematorium, the first in Britain, in 1879.