Highgate Cemetery

THE LONDON CEMETERY COMPANY In 1831 the General Cemetery Company ran a competition to design a cemetery at Kensal Green, which duly opened in 1833. Stephen Geary, architect, entered but was unsuccessful so decided to found a rival, the London Cemetery Company (LCC). It planned to establish not one cemetery but three: north, south and east of London. It was incorporated by Act of Parliament on 17 August 1836. THE SITE The site of about 17 acres on the slope of Highgate hill was purchased early in 1836. The land was just below the new church of St Michael (completed in 1832) and had fine views over London. The church and part of the West cemetery is on the site of the late seventeenth century Ashurst House, built for Sir William Ashurst, Lord Mayor of London. The garden was probably swept away in the mid eighteenth-century when such expensive-to-maintain grounds became unfashionable. By 1801 a map shows the area as fields. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN Highgate was the third of eight private cemeteries which opened in the 1830s and 40s. The other seven were (in order of opening) Kensal Green, West Norwood, Brompton, Tower Hamlets, Abney Park, Nunhead and Victoria Park. After Victoria Park closed in 1876 these became known as the ‘Magnificent Seven’. CEMETERY TOURISM Soon Highgate Cemetery was so popular that ways had to be devised to control the number of visitors on Sundays. People had even been spotted having picnics on consecrated ground. (This was allowed in Père Lachaise but very much frowned upon here in England!) The first guidebook was published in 1845, followed by another twenty years later. A visit to a cemetery would be educational and improving: reading epitaphs would lead one to reflect on the achievements of the deceased, more generally on the nature of life and death, and the contemplation of funerary art was also thought to be positive. A visit could be physically improving, too: the clear air of Highgate was healthy, far removed from the filth of the teeming metropolis.