Highgate Cemetery is a place of burial in north London, England. It is designated Grade I on the Historic England Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. It is divided into two parts, named the East and West cemetery. There are approximately 170,000 people buried in around 53,000 graves at Highgate Cemetery. Highgate Cemetery is notable both for some of the people buried there as well as for its de facto status as a nature reserve.
The cemetery is located on both sides of Swain's Lane in Highgate, N6, next to Waterlow Park. The main gate is located just north of Oakshott Avenue. There is another disused gate on Chester Road. The cemetery is in the London Boroughs of Camden, Haringey and Islington. The nearest transport link is Archway tube station.
History and setting
The cemetery in its original form – the northwestern wooded area – opened in 1839, as part of a plan to provide seven large, modern cemeteries, now known as the "Magnificent Seven", around the outside of central London. The inner-city cemeteries, mostly the graveyards attached to individual churches, had long been unable to cope with the number of burials and were seen as a hazard to health and an undignified way to treat the dead. The initial design was by architect and entrepreneur Stephen Geary.
On Monday 20 May 1839, Highgate Cemetery was dedicated to St. James by the Right Reverend Charles James Blomfield, Lord Bishop of London. Fifteen acres were consecrated for the use of the Church of England, and two acres set aside for Dissenters. Rights of burial were sold for either limited period or in perpetuity. The first burial was Elizabeth Jackson of Little Windmill Street, Soho, on 26 May.
Highgate, like the others of the Magnificent Seven, soon became a fashionable place for burials and was much admired and visited. The Victorian attitude to death and its presentation led to the creation of a wealth of Gothic tombs and buildings. It occupies a spectacular south-facing hillside site slightly downhill from the top of the hill of Highgate itself, next to Waterlow Park. In 1854 the area to the east of the original area across Swains Lane was bought to form the eastern part of the cemetery. This part is still used today for burials, as is the western part. Most of the open unforested area in the new addition still has fairly few graves on it.
The cemetery's grounds are full of trees, shrubbery and wildflowers, most of which have been planted and grown without human influence. The grounds are a haven for birds and small animals such as foxes. The Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon (topped by a huge Cedar of Lebanon) feature tombs, vaults and winding paths dug into hillsides. For its protection, the oldest section, which holds an impressive collection of Victorian mausoleums and gravestones, plus elaborately carved tombs, allows admission only in tour groups. The eastern section, which contains a mix of Victorian and modern statuary, can be toured unescorted.
The tomb of Karl Marx, the Egyptian Avenue and the Columbarium are Grade I listed buildings.
Because of the Karl Marx association a variety of Socialist leaders and thinkers are buried within the cemetery grounds.
Highgate Cemetery was featured in the popular media from the 1960s to the late 1980s for its so-called occult past, particularly as being the alleged site of the "Highgate Vampire".
The Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust was set up in 1975 and acquired the freehold of both East and West Cemeteries by 1981, since when they have had responsibility for the maintenance of the location. In 1984 they published Highgate Cemetery: Victorian Valhalla by John Gay.
The most famous burial in the East cemetery is arguably that of Karl Marx, whose tomb was the site of attempted bombings on 2 September 1965 and in 1970.
There are many other prominent figures, Victorian and otherwise, buried at Highgate Cemetery. Most of the historically notable figures lie in the eastern part. Tours of the most famous graves are available but, due to vandalism and souvenir hunters, visitors are no longer allowed to explore unaccompanied, unless they have a personal connection with the cemetery and hold a pass to their deceased relative's grave.
Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and other novelsFarzad Bazoft, journalist, executed by Saddam Hussein's regimeJeremy Beadle, television presenterPatrick Caulfield, painter and printmaker known for his pop art canvassesDiane Cilento, Australian actress and authorhusband and wife William Kingdon Clifford, mathematician and philosopher, and Lucy Lane Clifford, novelist and journalistGeorge Eliot (Mary Ann Evans — the name on the grave is Mary Ann Cross), novelist, common law wife of George Henry Lewes and buried next to himPaul Foot, campaigning journalist and nephew of former Labour Party leader Michael FootLou Gish, actress, daughter of Sheila GishSheila Gish, actressRobert Grant VC, soldier and police constableHenry Gray, anatomist and surgeon, author of Gray's Anatomy.Eric Hobsbawm, historianGeorge Holyoake, Birmingham-born social reformer and founder of the Cooperative MovementAnatoly Kuznetsov, Soviet writerBert Jansch, Scottish folk musicianClaudia Jones, black Communist and fighter for civil rightsWilliam Friese-Greene, cinema pioneerMansoor Hekmat, Communist leader and founder of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran and Worker-Communist Party of IraqGeorge Henry Lewes, English philosopher and critic, common law husband of George Eliot and buried next to her.Anna Mahler, sculptress and daughter of Gustav Mahler and Alma SchindlerKarl Marx, philosopher, historian, sociologist and economistFrank Matcham, theatre architectCarl Mayer, Austro-German screenwriter of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari and SunriseMalcolm McLaren, punk impresario and original manager of the Sex PistolsRalph Miliband, left wing political theorist, father of David Miliband and Ed MilibandDachine Rainer, poet and anarchistCorin Redgrave, actor and political activistYusuf Dadoo, South African anti-apartheid activistBruce Reynolds, (ashes) great train robberSir Ralph Richardson, actorAnthony Shaffer, playwright, screenwriter and novelistSir Donald Alexander Smith, Canadian railway financier and diplomatHerbert Spencer, evolutionary biologist, sociologist, and laissez-faire economic philosopherSir Leslie Stephen, critic, first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa BellLucien Stryk, American poet, teacher and translator of Zen poetrySir George Thalben-Ball, English Organist, Choirmaster and ComposerFeliks Topolski, Polish-born British expressionist painterMax Wall, comedian and entertainerOpal Whiteley, American writerEdward Richard Woodham, survivor of the Charge of the Light BrigadeJane Arden, Welsh-born film director, actor, screenwriter, playwright, songwriter, and poet.Edward Hodges Baily, sculptorBeryl Bainbridge, authorGeorge Samuel Bentley, printer and publisher of the London Standard Newspaper 1879–1890Julius Beer, owner of The Observer, and his eight-year-old daughter, for whom the mausoleum was originally created.Jacob Bronowski, scientist, creator of the television series The Ascent of ManRobert Caesar Childers, scholar of the Orient and writerEdmund Chipp, organist and composerPhilip Conisbee, art historian and curatorJohn Singleton Copley, Lord Chancellor and son of the American painter John Singleton CopleySir Charles Cowper, Premier of New South Wales, AustraliaThe family vault of Robert Monach and WH Crossland. In this vault are buried William Henry Crossland's parents-in-law (the Monachs), his brother, his wife, his mistress, his daughter and eldest son, though not Crossland himselfCharles Cruft, founder of Crufts dog showDavid Devant, theatrical magicianAlfred Lamert Dickens, the younger brother of Charles DickensCatherine Dickens, wife of Charles DickensJohn and Elizabeth Dickens, parents of Charles DickensThe Druce family vault, one of whose members was (falsely) alleged to have been the 5th Duke of Portland.Michael Faraday, chemist and physicistLucian Freud, painterJohn Galsworthy, author and Nobel Prize winner (he was cremated and his ashes scattered, memorial only)Stella Gibbons, novelist, author of Cold Comfort FarmRadclyffe Hall, author of The Well of Loneliness and other novelsWilliam Hall, founder with Edward Chapman of publishers Chapman & HallEdwin Hill, older brother of Rowland Hill and inventor of the first letter scale and a mechanical system to make envelopesJames Holman, 19th-century adventurer known as "the Blind Traveller"Surgeon-General Sir Anthony Home, Victoria Cross recipient from Indian MutinyAlexander Litvinenko, Russian dissident, murdered by poisoning in LondonBarbara Mills, first female Director of Public Prosecutions (ashes)Sherard Osborn, Royal Navy admiral and Arctic explorerChristina Rossetti, poetFrances Polidori Rossetti, mother of Dante Gabriel, Christina and William Michael RossettiWilliam Michael Rossetti, co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite BrotherhoodTom Sayers, Victorian boxerElizabeth Siddal, wife and model of artist/poet Dante Gabriel RossettiJean Simmons, actressAlfred Stevens, sculptor, painter and designerArthur Waley, translator and scholar of the OrientGeorge Wombwell, menagerie exhibitorEllen Wood, author known as Mrs Henry WoodAdam Worth, criminal mastermind and philanthropist. Possible inspiration for Sherlock Holmes' nemesis, Professor MoriartyPatrick Wymark, actorThe cemetery contains the graves of 316 Commonwealth service personnel maintained and registered by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, in both the East and West Cemeteries, 257 from the First World War and 59 from the Second. Those whose graves could not be marked by headstones are listed on a Screen Wall memorial erected near the Cross of Sacrifice in the older (western) cemetery.
Several of John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga novels refer to Highgate Cemetery as the last resting place of the Forsytes; for example, Chapter XI, "The Last of the Forsytes," in To Let (1921).In the 1970 film Clegg directed by Lindsay Shonteff, Harry Clegg, played by Gilbert Wynne, walks into the Cemetery through the Egyptian Avenue entrance.Footage of Highgate appears in numerous British horror films, including Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Tales from the Crypt (1972) and From Beyond the Grave (1974).In the BBC TV series Porridge, Fletcher claims that his eldest daughter, Ingrid, was conceived on Karl Marx's tomb.Herbert Smith is shadowed through Highgate Cemetery in Visibility, a murder/espionage/thriller by Boris Starling.Highgate Cemetery is the sixth level of the Nightmare Creatures game.Fred Vargas's novel Un lieu incertain starts in the cemetery.Barbara Hambly's vampire novel, Those Who Hunt the Night, has the main characters visiting Highgate at one point to examine the remains of a vampire who had taken over an abandoned tomb.Stated in the acknowledgments as the inspiration for the setting of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.Audrey Niffenegger's book Her Fearful Symmetry (2009) is set around Highgate Cemetery; she acted as a tour guide there while researching the book.In the novel Double or Die (2007), a part of the Young Bond series, Ludwig and Wolfgang Smith plan to kill Bond in the cemetery.Tracy Chevalier's book "Falling Angels" (2002) was set in and around Highgate Cemetary. The two main protaganonists met there as children whilst their parents were visiting adjacent family grave s and they continued to enjoy meeting up and playing there.As of 1 March 2013, a new pricing structure was implemented at Highgate Cemetery. The West Cemetery is accessible by guided tour only, the cost of which has increased to £12 per adult and £6 per child. However, this now includes access to the East Cemetery and a map. The tour lasts for approximately one hour.
The cost per adult to access the East Cemetery (self-guiding) is now £4.00 and also includes a map. The cost of a guided tour of the East Cemetery is now £8 per adult and £4 per child.
Booking for a weekday tour (13h45) is essential and can be done via the Cemetery's website. However, weekend tours do not need to be booked online in advance and tickets can be purchased in person on the day for tours later that same day. These start at 11h00 and the last tour during summer hours departs at 16h00.
There are now no longer concessions for students, a decision taken in line with the policy of the National Trust.
