Highgate Cemetery Totally Explained

Everything about Highgate Cemetery totally explained

Highgate Cemetery is a cemetery located in Highgate, London, England.

History and setting

The cemetery in its original form — the western part — opened in 1839, part of a plan to provide seven large, modern cemeteries (known as the "Magnificent Seven") around the outside of 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.
   Highgate, like the others, 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, both of which were part of the former Dartmouth Park which covered the area.
   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.
   The cemetery's grounds are full of old-growth trees, shrubbery and wild flowers that 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 newer 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.
The nearest transport link to the cemetery is Archway.
Additionally, the Highgate Cemetery is well known for its so-called occult past, being the site of the alleged Highgate Vampire.

Interments

Although its most famous occupant in the east cemetery is probably Karl Marx (whose attempted tomb's bombing in 1970 is still recalled by some Highgate residents), there are several prominent figures, Victorian and otherwise, buried at Highgate Cemetery. Interments include:

Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and other novels
Edward Hodges Baily, sculptor
Farzad Bazoft, journalist, executed by Saddam Hussein's regime
Jacob Bronowski, scientist, creator of the television series The Ascent of Man
Robert Caesar Childers, oriental scholar and writer
John Singleton Copley, artist
Charles Cruft, founder of Crufts dog show
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist
Michael Faraday, scientist
Paul Foot, campaigning journalist
Robert Grant VC. soldier and police constable
William Friese-Greene, cinema pioneer. The memorial is credited to Edwin Lutyens
Radclyffe Hall, author of The Well of Loneliness and other novels
Mansoor Hekmat, Communist leader and founder of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran and Worker-Communist Party of Iraq
James Holman, sightless 19th-century adventurer known as "the Blind Traveller"
Alexander Litvinenko, Russian spy turned critic, murdered by poisoning in London
Charles Lucy, artist
Karl Marx, father of Marxist philosophy, the basis of Communism
Ralph Miliband, left wing political theorist, father of David Miliband and Ed Miliband
Henry Moore, (1841–93), marine painter
Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-83), actor
Christina Rossetti, poet
Frances Polidori Rossetti, mother of Dante Gabriel, Christina and William Michael Rossetti
William Michael Rossetti, co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Thomas Sayers, Victorian pugilist
Elizabeth Siddal, wife and model of artist/poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Sir Donald Alexander Smith, Canadian railway financier and diplomat
Herbert Spencer, creator of social Darwinism
Feliks Topolski, Polish-born British expressionist painter
Arthur Waley, translator and oriental scholar
Max Wall, comedian and entertainer
George Wombwell, menagerie exhibitor
Mrs Henry Wood, author
Adam Worth, criminal and possible inspiration for Sherlock Holmes's nemesis, Professor Moriarty

Fictional references

The first chapter of the third Young Bond novel by Charlie Higson features the kidnapping of an Eton College professor in the cemetery grounds.

Herbert Smith is shadowed through Highgate Cemetery in Visibility, a murder/espionage/thriller by Boris Starling.

Tracy Chevalier's Falling Angels is set in and around Highgate Cemetery.

Highgate Cemetery is the 5th level of Nightmare_Creatures game.

Media link

The BBC 1 Programme The One Show visited and toured the cemetery during November 2007.

Gallery

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