Highgate Cemetery (Highgate Cemetery)

Name: hogsflesh

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Product:	Highgate Cemetery
Date:	17.06.03 (231 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Impressive graveyard, type thing with Karl Marx and lots, of trees and foxes

Disadvantages: Scary old ladies, who don't like to talk about, the Highgate vampire

(Sorry, really couldn't think of a better title.)

There are seven large cemeteries in London. All were created in the 1830s (or thereabouts) and were designed to allow interment of bodies in a secure environment, safe from roaming animals, city improvements and grave-robbers. They weren't connected with any of the existing churches, although all had chapels built in them for funeral rites to be performed. They were all built in what were then the outskirts of London, although all have now been absorbed by the ever-growing city.

I guess Highgate is the most famous of all of them. Karl Marx is buried there, it generally has a reputation for being pretty spectacular, as cemeteries go, and of course there was that business with the vampire in the 60s. It's one of the ones I hadn't seen before, so when some of my friends decided to go at the weekend I tagged along with them.

The best way to get there is to go to Archway tube station on the Northern Line (zone 2, I think), although you'll probably need an A to Z when you get off, as it isn't signposted terribly well. There are other ways too - we went to Gospel Oak on the appalling North London line, which was only 20 minutes walk away. There are bound to be buses, although I don't know their numbers as this isn't a part of London I know that well.

There are two halves to the cemetery. The most exciting, the western, is sadly only accessible via a guided tour. This half was damaged by vandals during the 60s and 70s, and has been gradually restored since then. You have to turn up at the gates and wait for the next tour to start. At weekends the tours start every hour or so (from 11a.m. to 4 p.m.) and last for 55 minutes. On weekdays there is apparently only one tour a day, at 2.00. Tour parties only seem to be able to accommodate 12 people at a time, so if there are lots of you going you might want to consider booking a private tour. This half of the cemet
ery isn't open at all in the Winter.

The tours are taken by elderly ladies, all volunteers for the Friends of Highgate Cemetery organisation, which owns and maintains the cemetery. These ladies are notoriously rude and intolerant, and so any complaints you may have are probably best off being kept to yourselves. While one is certainly grateful to be able to see the cemetery at all, it might be nicer if the people showing you around it weren't scary old loonies. That said, the old lady who took our tour was very friendly and funny, and clearly enjoyed showing us around and telling us all about what we were seeing. It's all the luck of the draw, I guess. I've heard horror stories about rude tour guides, but then I've also heard horror stories about American goths sneaking off from the tour to photograph themselves draped naked over graves, so you can sort of see their point. I think that as long as you don't wander off or (very important this) mention the vampire at any cost, you'll be absolutely fine.

The actual cemetery itself is amazing. There are some really very impressive mausoleums and memorials, all splendidly Victorian. The western cemetery is very overgrown, and many of the tombs have been badly damaged by trees, but that adds to its appeal. Somehow the statues of angels or whatever look a lot more interesting when they're partly obscured by ivy - there's probably a crushingly obvious metaphor for something in there, but I can't figure out what right now. Sadly quite a lot of damage has been done by vandals over the years, so some of the tombs aren't nearly as impressive as they once were. Some have been restored, but I don't think there's enough money to do all of them. The centrepiece is an immense mausoleum in Ancient Egyptian style, although I was more taken with various stone animals draped over a few of the tombs - aah, those sentimental old Victorians, eh?

This tour costs £
3, and it costs an extra £1 if you want to take a camera in (they also ask for donations at the end, although these are not compulsory). As this is still a working cemetery, they do insist that you behave in a respectful fashion. Eating, drinking and smoking are not permitted, neither are dogs or mobile phones. If you have bare shoulders you'll need to cover them up. (If you're a goth, I'd suggest dressing in a way that won't arouse the suspicions of the old ladies - they'll almost certainly tell you to clear off if they don't like the look of you.) Children under the age of eight aren't allowed at all.

The Eastern cemetery is just across the road from the western. It's visually less exciting, but it is where the famous bodies are buried. (The western cemetery does have Radclyffe Hall, but I think it might be pushing it a bit to call her famous these days.) It costs £2 to enter, and is open all year round from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can buy a map showing the sites of the famous graves for 50p. This is far more of a typical cemetery, and is still used extensively - we saw several people leaving flowers at recent graves, so obviously you should behave yourself while there. This cemetery was for non-conformists, so the variety of nationalities on display is pretty varied. You can find George Eliot easily enough, who has a traditional Victorian obelisk type grave, and Sir Ralph Richardson is there somewhere too. The main attraction, though, is Karl Marx (who has a lot of foreign communists buried near him). His monument is an enormous block of stone topped with a huge replica of his head. Quite apart from it not really epitomising socialism, what with it being bigger and better than everyone else, it really is rather silly. You kind of expect the head to spout communist slogans, or perhaps to project fearsome death rays from its eyes. It's marvellous.

(We overheard the best conversation ever while strolling near Marx
- two guys wandered past, one saying to the other "He was blind, like Homer, but he could calculate the motions of the planets forwards and backwards." For the rest of my life I'm going to wonder who he was talking about.)

It's a good place for wildlife - unusually green and overgrown for London. We saw two foxes running around, plus a couple of cats that looked quite wild. (60s pop sensation Joe Meek allegedly encountered a cat in Highgate Cemetery that spoke in human tongue - the cats we saw showed no evidence of possessing such powers, sadly. Although it must be said that Joe Meek was crazier than a sack full of weasels, and shortly afterwards shot both his landlady and himself.)

So all in all not a bad place to visit. It would perhaps be nice if more tours were run, and if the tour guides were a little less idiosyncratic. It would be even better if you were allowed to simply wander as you pleased in the western cemetery. But such things would obviously knock the price up a fair bit, and for a total of £5 for both halves you can't go wrong, really. It's also very close to Hampstead Heath, so you could go for a picnic afterwards if you fancied it. Probably the best of the London cemeteries that I've seen.

I was supposed to write my CV this afternoon. Instead I wrote this. Oh well.

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