Whitehall

Fabian did not take us to Hyde Park, his reasoning being that most Londoner’s don’t use the space, as it is crowded predominantly with tourists. So instead, we had a short tube ride to East Brompton, where Fabian took us to the Brompton Cemetery, one of the so-called “magnificent seven” that ring central London.

Fabian said that there are seven privately owned cemetery’s around London, six of which are utilised by Londoners as public parks (you have to pay to go into Highgate) - people are encouraged to use the space, and we saw office workers going for a run, people sitting on benches reading, and others (like us) wandering around taking photos. There is even a cafe. It is a working cemetery, and we actually saw people arrive for a burial, although there isn’t much space left. Many of the plots and tombstones are in disrepair, and away from the main paths they are letting nature take over. That is due to families not being around anymore, or not knowing they have relatives buried there.

There is also crypt on site, that has coffins all stacked up on top of each other - again many are crumbling and deteriorating but no one seems to mind. There is also a chapel that is operational. The layout of the buildings was based St Pauls Cathedral in Rome, a cunning marketing plan in its day. The land is kept up by the Parks department, but they really just cut the grass and dismantle crumbling headstones so they don’t fall on anyone (they just leave the stonework on the plot).

While we were wandering around we saw a chap being detained by some coppers - one guy on the ground handcuffed being stood over by four cops - not sure what was going on, but the coppers yelled at one of our group who was trying to get a better look with her binoculars - she thinks they thought she was filming them! I actually took a photo unnoticed.

As we left the cemetery we headed into Chelsea, a very posh neighbourhood. We next caught the bus to Waterloo station to go and look at some graffiti.Read more