Highgate Cemetery:
The Wild West Side
First of all, I know that most people (especially the morbidly-inclined) have heard of Highgate Cemetery. It’s not exactly a hidden gem, and many people have written about it. Having said that, I’d been meaning to go to Highgate for a long time. Finally getting to go was so wonderful that I simply have to talk about it.
Honestly, I have no excuse for why I didn’t make it out to Highgate for so long. Maybe it’s because it’s a little further out from where I usually am in London (lazy, I know).
Anyway, I made it out there, and it didn’t even rain! This post will be LONG and quite photo-dense because it was so hard to choose from the squillions of photos I took. I feel compelled to share the stunning surroundings with you as much as possible.
Deciding to make a morning of it, I got a ticket to see both sides of Highgate Cemetery. The ticket costs a tenner, but that money goes back into the preservation and care of the cemetery, so I was more than happy to pay it.
The Making of a Necropolis
Almost 200 years old now, Highgate Cemetery opened in 1839. It was created out of a desperate need for more space to bury London’s dead. By the 1860s, Highgate had almost doubled in size, with tens of burials happening every single day.
During the Second World War, the terrible effects of the Blitz had a very morbid silver lining. Bombing cleared a lot of space for even more burials (which I imagine were needed during that time).
For a while in the 20th century, though, Highgate became disused and was in serious decline. It could’ve just been left to rot but luckily, local conservation efforts have kept it alive (ha) until today.
The Friends of Highgate Cemetery trust are the ones keeping the place up today. Since the 1970s they’ve been working hard on restoration and conservation of the cemetery, in order to keep it open and available for people to visit and enjoy. They’re also notable for being the first ever cemetery friends group established in the United Kingdom!
Highgate Cemetery houses about 53,000 graves and monuments, with a lot of famous and well-known names from architecture, the arts, philosophy, politics, and more. I mention several of the famous graves in this post, but for a pretty comprehensive list of all of them, Wikipedia’s gotchu.
An Imperfect, Living Cemetery
One of my first observations was just how lush Highgate is (especially the west side). There are tall trees, and lots of what people may call overgrowth. To me, this adds to the beauty and charm, the peace, and the thoughtfulness of Highgate. I don’t know… I sometimes find over manicured graveyards a bit soulless. Here at Highgate, the trees are even trying to reclaim tombstones in some places!
I imagine it was originally very ordered and clear of vegetation but as the centuries rolled by life uh… found a way. An overly-hilly site also would have presented challenges in keeping things set in place and maintaining control of the lively plants.
An interesting sign at Highgate told me that some trees were even self-seeding, creating more tree brothers! It’s a continuous challenge for the cemetery Friends as the trees could potentially damage the cemetery, but I’m torn because the trees are so gorgeous.
Some things in Highgate Cemetery are broken and aged, which added to its overall charm for me. Things are carefully restored and repaired, but obviously this can take time. In the meantime, there’s safety tape and cordons around potentially dangerous collapsing things, but I like that they don’t stop you from walking around these areas.
I also like that they’re not in a huge rush to fix everything, so there isn’t a load of noisy construction efforts. Personally, I think the broken pieces add to the imperfect beauty of Highgate – it’s very wabi sabi.
The Highgate Vampire
You read that right! As well as rumours of a shady, occult history, Highgate Cemetery is said to have its very own vampire!
It began in 1969. Reports began flooding in to the British Psychic and Occult Society about a tall, black apparition stalking the cemetery. The thing took the form of a man with ‘glaring eyes’. Witnesses also recounted stories of being ‘hypnotised’ and seeing apparitions of the dead rising from their graves.
When dead foxes started turning up in and around Highgate Cemetery, the local media picked up the tale. Unfortunately, the poor critters hadn’t died naturally – their throats had been cut. Reporters suggested that the foxes were evidence of the Vampire, or at least some Occult activity.
Finding the Vampire
At this point, the British Psychic and Occult Society felt compelled to intervene. David Farrant, an investigator in the Society, led an investigation into the Highgate Vampire. He claimed that they had evidence of both the Vampire and Satanic activity occurring in the cemetery. Farrant even wrote a book about it.
Now, if you thought this story was weird, it’s about to get a lot stranger. Enter, stage left – Seán Manchester. Apparently an exorcist and vampire hunter, Seán alleged that the Highgate Vampire was actually a ‘King Vampire’. This sort of a vampire is apparently very much like Count Dracula. You have to drive a stake through its heart, cut off its head with a grave-digging spade, and burn whatever’s left in order to truly kill it.
Manchester loudly told several reporters that he was determined to rid Highgate of the vampire scourge for good, ‘by any means necessary’. He also claimed that David Farrant would be joining him at the helm (untrue, and Mr Farrant was not happy about that, as you’ll see later).
© DavidFarrant.org
The Storming of Highgate Cemetery
What followed can only be described as a good old case of mass hysteria. (Editor’s Note: this is one of my favourite psychological phenomena!) Locals converged upon the cemetery with shovels and wooden stakes, in order to hunt down and dispatch the Highgate Vampire.
Several people reported seeing something ‘crawling in the dark’, causing them to flee the cemetery. One man said he heard a high-pitched noise, then saw ‘something grey moving slowly across the road’.
Now, I’m a true agnostic and will never pooh-pooh someone’s story. I don’t know what any of these people saw or experienced, but I imagine it was heightened by all of the furore.
A Grave, Desecrated
After the excitement of the vampire hunt, sightings and reports of the Highgate Vampire seemed to wane a bit. Until two girls walking in the cemetery found a century-old, disinterred body lying on the path. The corpse, a woman, had been staked through the heart and decapitated.
Of course, this triggered a police investigation, and David Farrant reassessed the danger level of the Vampire. Upon attempting a cleansing séance, he was caught and arrested.
I can’t find any information about the outcome of the grave desecration case. Honestly, I’m inclined to believe it was a kook whipped up by all the drama. Why would a vampire ‘vampire kill’ a very obvious corpse?
Titans of Horror
Remember Sean Manchester telling porkies about being in a team with David Farrant? Yeah, they decided to settle their differences in 1973. By having a ‘magical duel’ on Parliament Hill. It was eventually called off, but I just wanted to add that little titbit as a testament to how nuts this whole thing was.
The Highgate Vampire incident has been written about in many books and articles. It has even inspired films, including Dracula AD 1972 from the incomparable Hammer Horror studios. The film starred horror legends Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing – awesome!
I’ve summed up the whole story as concisely as possible here (read: NOT AT ALL), but there are so many sources online about the whole thing. Definitely go and research more if you enjoyed the story (I like this article by Far Out magazine). It’s absolutely wild, and I’m sure I’ve probably missed loads of random details.
A Martyr’s Grave
Anyway, now we’ve had a nice vampire story to settle us in, let’s get back to my day in Highgate Cemetery. When I bought my ticket, I was furnished with a map of the west side that pointed out all of the big areas of interest.
I started on the west side of the cemetery because I knew that was where the famous Egyptian Avenue and Circle of Lebanon were. You’ve probably seen photos of this area, even if you don’t recognise the name. I was very keen to see how it measured up in real life. The west side of Highgate is much older, much wilder, and less organised than the east side.
Very quickly, I bumped into Alexander Litvinenko’s grave. It’s a small and simple headstone, with a picture of Mr Litvinenko resting at its base. But the effect it had on me was surprisingly big.
Suddenly I was whiplashed back to 2006, when he was photographed on his deathbed. All over the news as he struggled for the better part of a month before passing away. His face etched on the newspapers as they scrambled to find out what and who had killed him.
In the end it was radiation poisoning, deliberately inflicted, which is one of my biggest fears ever (along with Ebola and prion diseases). The poor guy. He was buried in Highgate in December 2006.
The case continued in 2007, as more people around Litvinenko at the time of his poisoning were found to have traces of polonium-210 in their system. The same isotope that Alexander had been killed by. Allegations maintain that Russia was the culprit, irradiating Litvinenko to stop him from spilling Kremlin secrets he was party to. Mr Putin, of course, denies any involvement.
It was a horrifying, scary case and I remembered everything just from looking at his grave. Standing there, looking at his healthy face that the news never showed us, I felt very sad and hollow. I said sorry to him and assured him that we haven’t forgotten about what happened.
(We Gonna Rock Down To) Egyptian Avenue
Eventually, I found the Egyptian Avenue entrance. I’d taken my time strolling along the path, eyes on stalks as I tried to look every which way at once. There was hardly anyone around, so I felt very peaceful and unrushed.
Egyptian Avenue was built in 1839, at the height of Victorian Egyptomania. Everyone was obsessed with Egypt, particularly their funerary rites (classic Victorians!). Let’s not talk about mummy-unwrapping parties or ‘mummy brown’ paint or we’ll be here all day. Those are stories for another post.
Wealthy Victorians were very taken with the idea that important Egyptian people had tombs that sat above the ground. So there was suddenly a demand for something similar. Stephen Geary, who designed the majority of the west side of Highgate, was the designer and architect of Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon beyond it.
The Egyptian Avenue gate is immensely huge, and overgrowth makes it look like the entrance to some ancient settlement. I was awestruck at its size and splendour. Inside the avenue, it’s very dark, cool, and mossy. You can just make out the vaults in the walls where caskets were placed.
While I wrote this post, I read a wonderful story about the vaults sometimes exploding! Due to the rules of above-ground burial (the vaults had to be lined in lead and airtight), decomposition gases built up with no outlet until kaboom! Like the world’s most macabre pressure cooker. I feel bad for finding it so funny, but it seems such a silly mistake to make. They knew about the gases at this time in history!
Emerging from the other side of Egyptian Avenue, you find yourself in the exquisite Circle of Lebanon. It is indeed a circle, lined on both sides with family vaults. The architecture is just beautiful, and still near-perfect all these years later. I had a dreamy time just walking slowly around the Circle, in the quiet.
Part of me was seething a bit, though. I’m so jealous of the well-off families who have entire vaults for their remains. Life goal (or death goal???), tbh.
There’s also a columbarium vault in the Circle of Lebanon. It’s pretty full now, but apparently caretakers of the cemetery have dibs on being interred there. I think it’s only fair that they get a chance, having been so kind to Highgate in their lives.
After my visit, I read that you can actually access the catacombs there. They lie beneath a 320ft terrace, with skylights providing some light. Inside, compartments big enough to house a coffin line each side of the corridor. Don’t worry, they made sure that these compartments were adequately ventilated, so no exploding corpses here!
Once occupied, the niches would be closed with either a granite or marble block. Some of them have a glass pane or even just an iron grate, so I imagine you can actually see the casket. The catacombs are Grade-II listed, and thought to be the oldest remaining asphalted building in the country. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my man Isembard Kingdom Brunel was a consulting engineer on the asphalted roofing.
Heads up, if you’re visiting Highgate Cemetery and want to see this bit, you need to pre-book a guided tour of the Terrace Catacombs. Because they’re listed and very precious, visitors can’t just wander willy-nilly into them. I would really like to go on that tour the next time I’m at Highgate.
While I was pottering somewhere above the catacombs, admiring the increasingly huge vaults near the church, bells began to toll in the silence. I stopped dead (heh) right outside of the absolute behemoth that is the tomb of Henry Eaton, Lord Cheylesmore:
The bells were just telling me the time, with eleven strikes in all. Once I’d gotten over the suddenness and the vague unease of standing alone in a cemetery with a bell tolling, it was a very lovely, peaceful interlude. I even made a video for you to listen to, and see some of the gorgeous area I was standing in. Apologies for the terrible picture quality; the video has been cropped and compressed for the blog. The sound quality should be unaffected though, I hope:
Animals Immortalised
Slowly, I wended my way back down from the church hill, snapping millions of photos as I went. After I emerged from the Egyptian Avenue gate, I continued along the clockwise path to see more of the west side of Highgate. I began to notice that there were a lot of animals carved out of stone at people’s graves.
A Faithful Dog
One of these statues was the gravesite of a Victorian bare-knuckle boxer name Thomas Sayers. I’ll confess that I didn’t really know who he was when I found his tombstone, but I was immediately in love.
You can see a relief portrait of Mr Sayers on the stone itself and – lying sleepily at the base of the headstone – is a life-size marble carving of a dog. Reading more about Sayers’ grave told me that the statue is of his beloved and loyal dog, Lion.
The statue made me feel sad, but also really uplifted. I imagine Lion must have passed away before Thomas, so imagining them reunited made my heart swell (not literally, that’s myocarditis and it’s Not Good). Looking at Lion, forever protecting his master’s resting place, reminded me of the story of Hachikō, Japan’s most loyal dog.
The Weathered Horse
Another animal-themed tombstone is one with a very weathered and battered horse on top of it. This graves belongs to a Sarah Mansfield, who is buried along with her son John, and her husband’s stepson, Henry. Her husband is absent from the grave, though he is buried in the west side of Highgate.
John Mansfield (senior), Sarah’s husband, was considered a bit of a villain when he lived in Victorian London. He trained at a slaughter school (apparently a thing back then), and became a horse slaughterer. You can see why that’d leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. His grandiose claims of being Queen Victoria’s horse slaughterer were unsubstantiated, but he did slaughter horses.
The horse atop Sarah Mansfield’s grave has been subject to vandalism because of John’s occupation. He’s not even buried there, but I imagine the horse statue seemed rather tongue-in-cheek to people who recognised the surname. Anger does weird things to us.
Regardless, the horse has been mostly left alone now, only weathered by the elements. It made me sad to look at it.
The Lion Sleeps (in Highgate)
When I’d emerged from the Circle of Lebanon earlier, I spied a stone lion lying (lion’ around?), apparently dozing, on top of a sarcophagus-style tomb. Of course, I immediately went over to investigate.
The lion’s name is Nero, and he marks the grave of George Wombwell, owner of Wombwell’s Travelling Menagerie. The menagerie started with George impulse-buying two South American boas from a shady character for £75, and eventually swelled to over 600 animals of various exotic species. Apparently it was quite the spectacle, seeing all of the huge wagons rolling down the road.
Like many old-timey attractions involving animals, many of the exotic species didn’t fare well. Somehow, Wombwell still turned a profit on the dead animals by selling taxidermy and bones, or even putting a corpse on display for visitors to poke and prod. Ghoulish!
On the other hand, Mr Wombwell was also the first person to breed a lion in captivity in Britain. He named the beast William Wallace (yes, that one). George also helped Prince Albert himself to figure out what was killing his dogs; it was their water. I imagine gross bacteria in it was poisoning them. All Wombwell wanted in return was some oak timber from the Royal George, which he promptly used to make a coffin for himself…. That he then put on exhibit. The man really did make money from everything.
Nero the lion actually existed as part of Wombwell’s menagerie, and was apparently very docile and sweet in life. That good nature is perfectly captured in his statue. It’s simply lovely. He’s so sleepy and beautiful, with a glorious curly mane.
I was compelled to reach out and gently pat him on the flank – despite being made of stone, he looked so lifelike. And a stone lion is very safe to pet. A Morbid Tourist top tip: DON’T PET LIVE LIONS.
Living Wildlife
Highgate Cemetery also has non-stone animals, though! Because of its lush, verdant landscape, all sorts of pollinators are attracted to the cemetery. Bees, butterflies, and hoverflies all enjoy flitting around the tombstones to gather nectar. It’s not unreasonable to assume that there are bats at night, too. I’m a very save-the-pollinators kind of person, so this is uplifting information!
I also spied some very cheeky squirrels gambolling around, looking for nibbles. I followed one for a while, just watching his antics from a distance. Here’s a couple of really low-quality snaps:
While researching, I read that there are also a clutch of rare cave spiders in Highgate Cemetery! CAVE spiders, you ask? Well, they mostly hang out in the Egyptian Avenue, where it’s very dark and cool (and cave-like). No one really knows how they migrated to Highgate, but they’re now thriving on the wealth of woodlice, snails, beetles, and centipedes living in the cemetery.
Apparently there’s a huge cave spider in there, but he and his family are very elusive. I don’t really blame them, but I wish I could’ve spotted him. Instead I’m just picturing Aragog and his awful family and it’s giving me the pip.
Having spent an hour in the west side of Highgate, I decided to make a move to the east side. I think this warrants a second post, as there’s been a lot to talk about (and still more to go, lucky you!).
Have you ever been to Highgate Cemetery? What was your favourite part of the west side? If it’s something I haven’t mentioned, tell me about it! Planning on going to Highgate? I hope this post has informed you and gotten you all geared up for your trip. Tell me your plans in the comments so I can live vicariously through you!
