Grave Concerns: Bringing Highgate Cemetery Back to Life

Highgate Cemetery is perhaps Britain’s most celebrated cemetery, best-known as the last resting place of Karl Marx. But also, of such luminaries as George Eliot and Michael Faraday, and still a sought-after burial ground with the likes of George Michael and Lucian Freud more recently interred alongside another 170,000 mostly ordinary Londoners. Adding to the attraction of celebrity names and fascinating histories is the lure of its remarkable architecture, a striking mix of Classical, Gothic and Egyptian styles setting its catacombs in a dramatic vista which for years was crowned by a spreading Cedar of Lebanon. An unchallenged Grade One landscape. But it has faced a major challenge in fighting the dereliction and the unfettered spread of self-seeded foliage while running short of grave space since it was abandoned by its original owners fifty years ago. Since then, it has been kept going by volunteers. In 2019 they had accumulated enough resources to begin a long-term conservation programme. But first they had to shepherd a Private Bill through Parliament to allow them to reclaim ancient grave-space to keep the Cemetery alive. This is a diary of the two years it took, the unexpected challenges along the way, which included Covid, and some reflections about life in the Cemetery.