Highgate Western Cemetery

 Highgate West Cemetery

 

Approaches to Highgate Village from the suburbs on the South side are long and steep. As most cyclists in North London know (either to avoid or meet the challenge), the steepest bit of all the roads is the upper part of Swain’s Lane. This ancient route branches from near Parliament Hill, past the southern corner of Holly Lodge Estate, and then gradually but firmly rises along the western edge of the lower, East Cemetery.

 

There’s a slight plateau where the entrances to both sides of Cemetery and a gate to Waterlow Park cluster. (The Western entrance is through a chapel into a biggish courtyard, for funereal processions.)

Then the road enters a narrower, darker, and steeper section, a fairly brutal test for all but the fittest cyclist. On your right are the fence and dense boundary trees of Waterlow Park. On your left is the tall wall of the Cemetery’s higher side. It’s a three-dimensional hemming-in: the brooding sides and the sharply inclining narrow road, often greasy in the wetter months (little sunshine gets to it). 

 

Slogging up Swain’s Lane is one way of discovering how very steep is the slope on which the older part of the Cemetery is set (you’ve already passed the relatively gentler slope of the eastern side). It used to be the grounds of some Highgate mansion, and, when bought in the C19 for the Cemetery, was essentially a park with stunning views down to London.

 

That became the great attraction for the deceased (or, more correctly, those planning their decease) and the living. The promoters devised family mausoleums in circular or linear terraces, designated as catacombs. 

 

Extravagant funerary architecture dominates the upper slopes. But all down the hill are other mausoleums and large graves.

 

During the Cemetery’s C20 decline, the original elegant park with its view was gradually blotted out by neglect. Undergrowth and rogue trees were rampant, spreading destruction among the graves. This side of the Cemetery was deemed unsafe, and closed for many years. But ghouls, vandals, and the merely curious, often broke in.

 

Now, with the stewardship of the Cemetery resurgent, the Western side has reopened, albeit with more restrictions than apply to the other side. 

 

There are three aspects which immediately strike one about the place as a whole. First, the great elaborate pile of funeral buildings at the top; second, the wilderness of trees and undergrowth, which, for the moment, persists far more extensively than in the Eastern side;

third, the sudden enclaves of clear and well-tended spaces, where there are recent graves. The Western side is still “open” for new burials, including Lucian Freud

and George Michael (whose grave is unmarked, to avoid mobbing by fans).

 

And there is a fourth thing: a big mausoleum erected in the last few years, just inside the entrance.

It is the tribute of the widow of the deceased. One of the Cemetery volunteers told us that she often comes to sit in contemplation inside the mausoleum. A perpetuation, perhaps, of Highgate’s Victorian Gothic tradition.

 

May 2021