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- Apr 18, 2015, 2:06pm
- ☀️ 14 °C
- Altitude: 17 m
- EnglandLondonNelson's Column51°30’26” N 0°7’40” W
Highgate Cemetery
April 18, 2015 in England ⋅ ☀️ 14 °C
It is a glorious day in London today. It's cool and breezy but the sun is warm and the sky is blue. Ever since I moved to West Hampstead I've wanted to visit Highgate cemetery in Hampstead. It has cool people there and is consistently mentioned as a place to visit in timeout guides.
With only 3 weekends left here I took the weather as a signal and headed out. There are two cemeteries here, the East and the West. The West is the oldest and can only be accessed on an official tour. The East is a few years younger and you are free to wanderer at your own will. Karl Marx resides here.
I arrived under the impression that the East gives a tour as well, it wasn't, only the West was today. So I signed up for the 2:30pm session. For Ł12 I got a 1 and a quarter hour tour of the west and access into the East.
I roamed around the East first, visiting the Karl Marx plot and just generally wandering and enjoying the view. It was nothing like a cemetery I'd never seen before. It was forest like, people were buried all over the place, no straight lines. You could hear only the sounds of the wildlife going about their day. It was peaceful and quiet. At one point I saw a black cat sharpening it's nails on fallen down tree.
At 2:20 I headed back to the chapel entrance of the west cemetery and waited for our tour to start.
We were just a smallish group, probably 10-15. And started off in a courtyard. Our guide tells us that the cemetery was built in the Victorian era when there was a burial crisis. Too many dying people and not enough ground space. Eventually the idea of the great 7 was developed and set up.
Given the era it was very fashionable to have a flashy funeral. You must always keep up appearances apparently, even in death! There were also these mourning fazes. Where the women had to wear certain clothes and colours and they were only allowed out if the house after a certain period of time.
Keeping in mind the it was necessary for a flashy funeral, the design of the cemetery catered for this. There was an area called the Egyptian corridor, there were giant above ground buildings which families owned so that people could be buried together.
Some of the interesting tombs we saw / met included :
Russian spy
Coloeir outbreak in soho
Adam worth - Henry j Raymond, the Napoleon of crime
The doctor who did the first surgery under anesthetiser
Michael faraday - quote about tax
I had a great time and would recommend it if you've some free time in London and not sure what to do.Read more