Our curious capital city certainly has its fair share of stories to tell. But few come more intriguing than this one. Tucked away in Brompton Cemetery, amongst the thousands of other monuments and memorials, is a structure that’s shrouded in secrecy: the final resting place of a woman called Hannah Courtoy.
Why is this particular tomb so interesting, I hear you ask? Oh, well… because this one is also apparently home to a secret time machine. Yes, you read that correctly. Brompton Cemetery is home to what is believed to be an actual time machine, and barely any Londoners know the story behind it. But that’s where we come in, folks. So, grab yourselves a cuppa, because it’s time for a little Secret London history mystery lesson.
The story of the Brompton Cemetery time machine
Hannah Courtoy was a very mysterious Victorian woman who inherited a fortune from a rich elderly merchant. Little is known about Hannah’s life, but like many other people at the time, she had a rather avid interest in Ancient Egypt, which led her to meeting a famous Egyptologist called Joseph Bonomi.
Bonomi was convinced that he’d discovered how to time-travel through his study of Egyptian hieroglyphics. And alongside his inventor friend, Samuel Alfred Warner, he managed to convince Hannah Courtoy to fund (what they claimed to be) the first fully-functional time machine. A questionable investment choice from Hannah – but each to their own, and all that…
They decided to build their groundbreaking device in a cemetery to minimise the chances of it being interfered with over time. And they buried it within a mausoleum (AKA a fancy tomb), which was completed in 1853 – five years after Hannah Courtoy died. The 40 feet structure would stand out regardless of its time-travelling claims, because it’s the biggest and most elaborate in the whole cemetery. But the mystery that continues to surround it certainly attracts a decent amount of attention, too.
Hannah Courtoy and two of her daughters are said to be buried within the tomb alongside the time machine. But unlike every other tomb in the cemetery, there is no archives plan for this one. The key to the mausoleum also mysteriously went missing, meaning that nobody has been able to see inside it for over 150 years – leading to even more speculation.
Bonomi and Warner are both also buried in Brompton Cemetery. But to add to the intrigue, Warner died in ‘suspicious circumstances’. And so many believe that he didn’t die, and instead he hopped in the time machine and went on his merry way. Another theory is that the structure is a teleportation device between similar mausoleums in London’s other ‘Magnificent Seven’ burial sites.
The long and short of it is that nobody knows for sure what’s hidden inside this fascinating structure. And until the key is found, or a new one is created – it’s going to remain one of London’s unsolved mysteries. But it is pretty darn interesting, to say the least.
