Highgate Cemetery
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Highgate Cemetery is a famous cemetery located in Highgate, London, England.
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[edit] History and setting
The cemetery in its original form (the older, Western part) was opened in 1839, part of an initiative to provide seven large, modern cemeteries (known as the "Magnificent Seven") in a ring round 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 purchased 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 wildflowers that are a haven for birds and small animals like 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 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.
[edit] Interments
Although its most famous occupant in the east cemetery is probably Karl Marx (whose tomb's most recent bombing is still recalled by some Highgate residents), there are several prominent Victorians 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 TV series The Ascent of Man
- John Singleton Copley — artist
- Charles Cruft — founder of Crufts dog show
- George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) — novelist
- Michael Faraday — scientist
- Paul Foot — campaigning journalist
- 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, famously murdered by poisoning in London
- Charles Lucy — artist
- Karl Marx — father of Marxist philosophy, the basis of Communism
- Henry Moore, (1841–93) — marine painter
- Ralph Richardson — 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
- Arthur Waley — translator and oriental scholar
- George Wombwell — menagerie exhibitor
- Mrs Henry Wood — author
- Adam Worth — criminal and possible inspiration for Sherlock Holmes' nemesis, Professor Moriarty
[edit] Trivia
- The first chapter of the third Young Bond novel by Charlie Higson features the kidnapping of an Eton College professor in the cemetery grounds.
