Week 45 - learning about Highgate cemetery

I realise that throughout this process (urgh, I sound like I'm on The Apprentice), the year has been very top-heavy with "makery-type" workshops and not nearly enough talks or even tours around London.  I had wanted to do a Jewish East End tour round the old Jewish quarter as I know absolutely nothing about it, but it never quite happened.  

For some reason I was drawn to doing a tour of Highgate cemetery.  I have never even been near it and weirdly I have been surrounded by cemeteries for the last few years.  I often drive past Kensal Green cemetery, (which you can also do a tour of), but mainly I walk my dog, Cleo in Paddington cemetery every day as it is just five minutes from my house.  It is a weirdly beautiful and romantic place.  Nothing like an ordered and regular burial cemetery.  It dates back to the 19th century and I love it there because I notice something different on every single visit.

I chose Highgate cemetery over Kensal Green purely because of its popularity and also its celebrity status, as it is known for housing a host of infamous, historical and accomplished figures, no more famous than Karl Marx.  But other than that, I knew very little about it.  It is split into the West and East cemeteries and the West can only be visited with a guided tour.  Initially I thought this was perhaps because of all the "celebrity" graves but in fact, as our tour guide Sue informed us, it is purely because the cemetery is so overgrown that many of the graves have become unstable and dislodged from trees, plus its a bit of a maze to navigate.  In actual fact, the majority of the famous graves are over in the East cemetery.  The West cemetery is known more for its architecture and rural composition.

I was lured in immediately.  It felt almost like I was in another place in time or some other land that escapes normal life, like a separate entity.  It is utterly vast and an alluring wonder of overgrown plants, trees and vegetation with a higgledy-piggledy array of graves everywhere you look.  I felt like monkeys should be swinging from the tree tops.

The West cemetery alone is 20 acres and the same is on the other side.  Across the two there are 53,000 graves and around 170,000 people buried here.  There are still people being buried but it is very rare and amounts to about 30 per year, although Sue said there have only been 13 this year.  Highgate cemetery is one of the "Magnificent Seven" - one of seven commercial cemeteries that were built in London in the mid 19th century to alleviate overcrowding in the local Parish burial grounds and to deal with the rising population.  Before these seven cemeteries came along, people were just buried on top of one another in parish churchyards.  The overcrowding led to disease, epidemics and also bodysnatchers digging up graves.  These new cemeteries at least provided a level of security to families, who could buy vast plots for their generations.  This is a huge mausoleum for a family.

I just wanted to wander round on my own with my dog here, rather than in an ordered group.  It really is a phenomenal place and because of all the trees, the sunlight pokes through and catches so beautifully in so many different places.  But, it is massively overgrown.  The reason being is that the cemetery fell into disrepair in the 20th century and it was only in 1975 that it was taken over by the "Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust" who maintain the land and chop things down as necessary.

There were a couple of notable graves in the West section.  We passed by the gave of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian spy who was poisoned with polonium in 2006.  Our guide Sue told us that his wife comes every single week and that there are always fresh flowers on his grave.  We also spotted the artist Lucien Freud's grave.

We went through a section called Egyptian Avenue, where there are a lot more mausoleums and crypts for individual families.  Walking around here actually reminded of another very famous and alluring cemetery in Buenos Aires; Recoleta, where Eva Peron is buried.  

After a few more twists and turns and delving into the undergrowth, the tour was finished.  Sue was a wonderful guide and I absolutely recommend doing the hour-long tour if you get the chance.  I did pop over to the East cemetery but it didn't quite have the same romance for me.  It really is an odd thing to find such an attraction and appeal in cemeteries, but there is something undeniably mystical and captivating about death.  Perhaps it is the circle of life but there is certainly beauty in both life and death.