Cemetery sights in London
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Abney Park Cemetery
Unfairly dubbed ‘the poor man’s Highgate’ by some, this magical place was bought and developed by a private firm from 1840 to provide burial grounds for central London’s overflow. It was a dissenters (ie non–Church of England) cemetery and many of the most influential London Presbyterians, Quakers and Baptists are buried here, including the Salvation Army founder, William Booth, whose grand tombstone greets you as you enter from Church St. Since the 1950s the cemetery has been left to fend for itself and, these days, is as much a bird and plant sanctuary, a gay cruising ground and a hang-out for some of Hackney’s least salubrious drug users, as a delightfully overgrown ru…
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B
Highgate Cemetery
The cemetery weaves a creepy kind of magic, with its Victorian symbols – shrouded urns, obelisks, upturned torches (life extinguished) and broken columns (life cut short) – eerily overgrown graves and the twisting paths of the West Cemetery, where admission is by tour only; bookings are essential for weekday tours. In the less atmospheric East Cemetery, you can pay your respects to Karl Marx and George Eliot.
From Archway station, walk up Highgate Hill until you reach Waterlow Park on the left. Go through the park; the cemetery gates are opposite the exit.
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C
Brompton Cemetery
As London’s vast population exploded in the 19th century, seven new cemeteries – the ‘Magnificent Seven’ – opened, among them Brompton Cemetery, a long expanse running between Fulham Rd and Old Brompton Rd. The chapel and colonnades at one end are modelled on St Peter’s in Rome. While the most famous resident is Emmeline Pankhurst, the pioneer of women’s suffrage in Britain, the cemetery is most interesting as the inspiration for many of Beatrix Potter’s characters. A local resident in her youth before she moved to the north, Potter seems to have taken many names from the deceased of Brompton Cemetery and immortalised them in her world-famous books. They include Mr Nutkin…
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D
Bunhill Fields
This cemetery just outside the City walls has been a burial ground for over 1000 years (indeed ‘Bunhill’ supposedly comes from the rather macabre historical name for the area –‘Bone Hill’). It’s probably the best-known ‘dissenters’ (ie non–Church of England) cemetery in the country. Here you can see the graves of such literary giants as Daniel Defoe, John Bunyan and William Blake. It’s a lovely place for a stroll, and a rare green space in this built-up area. Across City Rd to the east of the cemetery is Wesley’s Chapel, built in 1778. It was home and place of work and worship for John Wesley, the founder of Methodism.
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E
Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park
Opened in 1841, this 13-hectare cemetery was the last of the ‘Magnificent Seven’, then-suburban cemeteries – including Highgate and Stoke Newington’s Abney Park – created by an act of Parliament in response to London’s rapid population growth and overcrowded burial grounds. Some 270,000 souls were laid to rest here until the cemetery was closed for burials in 1966 and turned into a park and local nature reserve in 2001. Today it is a quiet, restful site, its Victorian monuments slowly being consumed by vines. There are usually two-hour guided tours from 2pm on the 3rd Sunday of the month.
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F
Kensal Green Cemetery
Thackeray and Trollope are among the eminent dead at this huge and handsome Victorian cemetery, which made a name for itself in the 19th century as the place where the VIPs preferred to RIP. Ambitious two-hour tours start from the Anglican chapel in the centre of the cemetery.
Supposedly based on the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris, the cemetery is distinguished by its Greek Revival architecture, arched entrances and the outrageously ornate tombs that bear testimony to 19th-century delusions of grandeur.
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