London cemeteries to visit before you die

Highgate Cemetery

Visitors have flocked to London’s most famous resting place since 1839 (now over 100,000 annual visitors), to gaze upon the graves of the great and the good, and to admire the views over London, one of its original marketing strategies. A site this popular needs a visitor’s centre, and the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust, which maintains the cemetery without public funding, is launching a competition to design one, plus shop and café.

The must-see tomb is that of Karl Marx, with its bust and ‘Workers of all lands unite’ inscription. The Victorian fascination with all things Egyptian is evident in the obelisks and lotus flowers of Egyptian Avenue, and the influence can be seen in numerous graves. Take a look at the unusual-for-the-UK catacombs, at the site’s highest point.

Other famous names include George Michael, whose location is private. As a welcome change from angels, weeping women and floral, see artist Patrick Caulfield’s minimalist ‘dead’ headstone – a style contrast to Malcolm McLaren’s.

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Brompton Cemetery

Its layout evokes an open-air cathedral, with a central domed chapel reached via colonnades based on those in St Peter’s Square in Rome. Among the 60-plus species of tree, planted to shade the graves, the limes date from 1838. It’s Grade I listed, with graves, including Dr John Snow, who proved that cholera is spread through infected drinking water, suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and actor Brian Glover. Combine sightseeing with sustenance at Café North Lodge.

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Photo: Robert Stephenson

Postman's Park

For commemoration of deaths of a different kind, visit Postman’s Park, where no one’s actually buried. Instead, 62 individuals, who lost their lives trying to save someone else’s, are remembered. The 54 glazed ceramic memorial plaques tell their moving tales in beautiful script, with the heroes’ ages, where they lived, their jobs, along with the circumstances of their heroic act and death: burning, drowning, run down by horses and hit by trains. The first plaques were installed in 1900, and the last in 2009, commemorating Leigh Pitt, who saved a drowning boy from a canal in Thamesmead in 2007. The Park’s name comes from the staff from the former General Post Office HQ nearby, who, like countless other local workers, spent their lunch break here.

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Bunhill Fields Burial Ground

Its name is a corruption of ‘bonehill’, as the site had been used for burials since Saxon times, but also became a dumping ground for bones from St Paul’s charnel house (skeleton store) in 1549. It opened in 1665 and closed for burials in 1852. ‘Big names’ buried here include poet and visionary William Blake and Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe, but among the most eye-catching memorials is that of Dame Mary Page, who probably suffered from oedema (fluid retention). Her enormous sarcophagus records the draining of ‘240 gallons’ of fluid (over 1,000 litres) from her. A small site, and surrounded by tall buildings, it’s popular for local workers’ lunch-breaks.

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Photo: GrindtXX

Hyde Park Pet Cemetery

Only open to the public on guided tours (although you can get a glimpse through the Bayswater Road park railings, or take a virtual tour on YouTube), the Lodge garden was never intended as a graveyard. The first pet, a Maltese terrier named Cherry, was buried here in 1881 as its owners were friendly with the park keeper who lived here. Three hundred burials later, the site officially closed in 1903. The inscriptions of the dogs’, cats’, birds’ and monkeys’ stones: ‘our dear wee Butcha’; ‘Sandy. A faithful friend for 12 years, May 1900’; ‘Darling Dolly – my sunbeam, my consolation, my joy’,and their names – Bogie, Smut, Fattie, Scum – are much less formal than those of humans, and therefore more poignant. Not everyone was touched, though. George Orwell described the cemetery as, ‘Perhaps the most horrible spectacle in Britain.’

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Abney Park Cemetery

Opened in 1840, Abney was originally laid out as an arboretum, with 2,500 plant varieties. Trees were planted alphabetically around the perimeter, with oaks, pines and others within. As an inclusive cemetery, it catered for burials of people from all faiths. Many abolitionists, opposed to slavery, and the first black activist, Olaudah Equiano, are buried here, as are Salvation Army founders William and Catherine Booth, many Victorian music-hall stars, and wildlife enthusiasts. With the last burials in the 1970s, it’s run by Hackney Council in conjunction with the Abney Park Trust, balancing wildlife protection with safeguarding the listed monuments, and is now a nature reserve. Listen to early-morning birdsong, recorded here.

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Kensal Green Cemetery

Inspired by Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, Kensal Green, lying between Harrow Road and the Grand Union Canal, was London’s first commercial cemetery, opening in 1833. The buildings are neo-classical and neatly laid out on long avenues lined by impressive Gothic mausoleums. Famous names with their final resting places here include engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Freddie Mercury.

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Photo: User:Justinc

Nunhead Cemetery

Second largest yet least known of the ‘magnificent seven’, it opened in 1840, but had fallen into disrepair by the middle of the 20^th century. In 1975 Southwark Council bought it for £1 and in the 1980s the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery got involved. After restoration, it reopened in 2001. Now designated as a nature reserve, it can best be described as an elegant wilderness, with occasional glimpses of the city, including a view of St Paul’s Cathedral framed by trimmed trees. It may lack the famous names of other sites, but makes up for it with a wilder nature. However, among the residents are omnibus magnate Thomas Tilling (whose no.12 route still runs between Peckham and Oxford Circus) and – possibly – Jack the Ripper. A few years ago, Thomas Cutbush was identified as the most likely Ripper suspect, and this is where he’s buried.

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Photo: Irid Escent