Rudyard Kipling Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, and the marble casket was covered by a Union Jack. Kipling was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium in northwest London, and his ashes interred at Poets' Corner, part of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey, next to the graves of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. In 2010, the International Astronomical Union approved that a crater on the planet Mercury would be named after Kipling—one of ten newly discovered impact craters observed by the MESSENGER spacecraft in 2008–9. In 2012, an extinct species of crocodile, "Goniopholis kiplingi", was named in his honour, "in recognition for his enthusiasm
Rudyard Kipling "I was Secretary for some years of the Lodge . . . , which included Brethren of at least four creeds. I was entered [as an Apprentice] by a member from Brahmo Somaj, a Hindu, passed [to the degree of Fellow Craft] by a Mohammedan, and raised [to the degree of Master Mason] by an Englishman. Our Tyler was an Indian Jew." Kipling received not only the three degrees of Craft Masonry but also the side degrees of Mark Master Mason and Royal Ark Mariner. Kipling so loved his masonic experience that he memorialised its ideals in his famous poem,