Highgate Cemetery is one of the “magnificent seven” Victorian cemeteries created in the 19th century to ease London’s overcrowded churchyards.
The likes of Highgate, Kensal Green, Nunhead, Brompton, and Abney Park became fashionable resting places for the rich, famous, and royalty with elaborate graves featuring gothic angels and Egyptian sarcophagi.
Highgate was built by a private company with the west side opening in 1839 and the east section in 1854.
Among the notable Victorians who popularised the cemetery were the wife and parents of Charles Dickens, poet Cristina Rosetti, novelist George Eliot, ‘father of electricity’ Michael Faraday, and philosopher Karl Marx.
Marx’ tomb, with its bronze bust of the political exile, was funded by the Communist Party of Great Britain, and has drawn acolytes, vandals, two bomb attacks, and early morning visits from high ranking Chinese embassy officials.
But post war, the cemetery entered a period of decline and was effectively abandoned and overtaken by nature.
Its atmospheric crumbling tombs and famous Egyptian Avenue drew the attention of occultists and the makers of movies such as Taste The Blood of Dracula (1970) and Tales from the Crypt (1972).
When local resident David Farrant posed the question on the Ham&High letters page asking about supernatural experiences in the graveyard, a flurry of responses led to TV crews and vampire hunters descending on the burial ground.
The mass hysteria led to notorious incidents of dead foxes, human remains dragged from crumbling tombs, and a proposed occultist duel between Farrant and a rival vampire hunter – but in 1975, the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust stepped in to rescue the historic graveyard from obscurity.
Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams, artist Lucien Freud, and pop singer George Michael are among the famous figures buried there in recent decades.
Fans leave toy fish, towels and pens for Adams – referencing the fictional planet in his books where lost ballpoints go.
George Michael’s ‘lovelies’ leave flowers and other memorabilia for the Wham! star, and punk afficionados decorate painted rocks for McLaren’s grave, which bears the epithet ‘Better a spectacular failure, than a benign success’.
The Friends have had to find ways to fund the upkeep of the 37-acre site and some 53,000 graves.
Activities range from ticketed tours to renting it out to TV and film crews including Luther, Strike, Fantastic Beasts and Cambridge Spies, and Hampstead.
The tours fill you in on the folk buried there who are no less fascinating.
Among them are Frank Matcham, who designed some of London’s most beautiful theatres, James Bunstone Bunning who designed Holloway Prison and Anna Mahler, the sculptor daughter of Gustav Mahler.
Lizzie Siddall is also buried there.
She was the muse and wife of painter Dante Gabriel Rosetti, who buried the only manuscript of his unpublished poems with her then dug them up when he needed the money from them.
Also present is Charles Cruft of the dog show fame, Titanic victim Ernest Barker, Victorian boxer Tom Sayers, Notting Hill carnival founder Claudia Jones, poisoned Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, actors Jean Simmons and Sir Ralph Richardson, and comedian Max Wall.
There’s now an £18 million scheme to secure the cemetery’s long term future.
The Friends are reclaiming long abandoned graves so they can continue selling grave sites which due to high demand, are only available for those over 80, terminally ill, or for immediate burial.
Costs range from £5,000 to more than £50,000 for the chance to lie alongside the rich and famous.
