Life and death at Highgate Cemetery

Successfully managing what is perhaps the most famous cemetery in England depends on balancing burials and tourism, heritage and nature, and the past and the future.

The entrance to the Egyptian Avenue (Photo: Michael Eleftheriades).

Highgate Cemetery, opened in 1839, is perhaps the most famous cemetery in England and one of the world’s finest examples of the picturesque garden cemetery. From its earliest days visitors were attracted by its spectacular hillside setting and unforgettable funerary architecture. A guidebook was published only five years after it opened, pointing out interesting monuments, and no doubt prompting visitors to think about where they might end up when death came for them too. The London Cemetery Company, the private, profit-making enterprise which set it up, would be more than happy, for a fee, to provide space in their beautiful sepulchral garden.

From visitor accounts we know that the rich aesthetic interest came not only from reading epitaphs and looking at sculpture but also from their journey through the landscape: the experience of strolling along the serpentine paths superimposed on a rolling landscape, breathing in the chill air of the Egyptian Avenue. Visitors experienced the crunch of their footsteps on the gravel path, intensified by the darkness, before emerging, to make their way up to the great terrace, past the Lebanon Circle to just beneath St Michael’s Church.

From there could be had one of the finest views of London. Looking over the dead resting peacefully at their feet, the visitor could see a growing mass of houses, towers, spires, domes and crowds of shipping on the Thames, all spread out in front of the Surrey hills in the distance. Much more than just a view, the contrast between the city of the dead and the city of the living was a poignant reminder of where one’s future lay.

Although graves were sold in perpetuity, nobody had really planned for what would happen when the cemetery filled up. In the 1960s, as it became unprofitable to run, the asset-strippers moved in, selling off the Dissenters’ Catacombs and the Superintendent’s House and a large chunk of land, which had been used as the works yard, all the while spending next to nothing on maintenance. In the 1980s the founding company finally folded and the Friends of Highgate Cemetery took charge, plucking it from the jaws of the receivers and then pursuing a pragmatic and affordable policy of ‘romantic decay’, which avoided over-restoration on the one hand and utter ruination on the other.

That aesthetic, in seeking also to promote biodiversity, prioritised ivy and self-set trees over the historic landscape design and the memorials which furnished it. Monuments to the fashionably disparaged, pompous middle classes, in any case the responsibility of the families, were more easily disregarded at a time when anti-Victorian sentiments were still pervasive. It turned out that the condition of both landscape and the monuments was declining: nature will not flourish shrouded with ivy beneath a solid tree canopy, and decay, after all, is decay, however alluring.

That is not to say that the friends were neglectful: far from it. Their achievements were impressive by any standards, but especially for a small voluntary group with limited funds. They repaired the boundary walls and railings, the chapels, the Terrace Catacombs and the Cuttings Catacombs. Their work on the Egyptian Avenue and Lebanon Circle got a Europa Nostra award in 1998 for ‘the inspiring conservation by a voluntary organisation… using the best principles of minimum intervention’. And after a programme of restoration, no monuments were left on the Historic England heritage at risk list.

Through a landscape plan, patchwork improvements were secured but the trees, ivy and bramble grew faster than they were removed. Some of the eroding gravel paths were resurfaced (practically, but unattractively, with tarmac), as was the courtyard with paviors made of repurposed council slabs. But there was no overall shared vision. Greater progress was hampered by a convoluted corporate structure which left three separate charities squabbling over the site. This was only resolved in 2010 by their merger to create the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust, which owns and operates the cemetery today. Even then a lack of shared management objectives continued to cause problems. The task was too big and the allure of the cemetery too mysterious for any solution to be straightforward.

Smaller, manageable projects were preferred over the much more difficult question of an overarching plan: the chapel interior was lavishly restored, for example, and monuments facing the main paths put back together again. It took some time before the advice to commission a conservation plan, first from David Lambert and then from Richard Griffiths Architects, was acted on. Produced by Alan Baxter, this was adopted in 2019. It set out the history and significance of Highgate Cemetery and explained how the trust proposed to look after it in the future. At last there was a solid way forward based on comprehensive research and understanding, drawn up after consultation with members, volunteers and the public. It was not the sort of conservation plan that was produced with a development proposal in mind, but rather an open exploration of how the significance of the place could be protected and enhanced.

One fundamental conclusion was that the cemetery should continue as an active burial ground. By reclaiming grave space that had never been used, or by reusing graves that were no longer wanted, the continuing burial needs of current and future generations could be accommodated without negatively impacting the historic environment; indeed, this would enhance the significance of the place and provide a much-needed source of income. The trust successfully secured the legislation it needed to do this in the form of the Highgate Cemetery Act 2022.

The first of the reclaimed graves will become available later this year, but the grave-renewal programme will not transform the appearance of the cemetery. Implementation will be cautious and incremental. One of the trust’s charitable purposes is conservation, but even if that were not the case, with half of its income coming from visitors, the trust must be careful to look after what they come to see. As well as the constraints of the Act, all monuments erected before 1925 are protected by virtue of being within a conservation area and new monuments are subject to a design code to ensure that they sit happily in their surroundings.

The other two main strands of the conservation plan are that trees, monuments and buildings would be better looked after, and that visiting would be easier and more rewarding. The trust is working on a full planning application for the resulting project called ‘Unlocking Highgate Cemetery’ with a team including West Scott Architects, Hopkins Architects and Gustafson Porter + Bowman. The trust has secured a Heritage Fund development grant of £105,000 towards a delivery phase grant of £6.7 million. This will be supplemented by £10 million of the trust’s reserves, leaving £1.2 million still to be raised for the first phase.

Heritage works include the conservation of the Grade I-listed Egyptian Avenue and Circle of Lebanon and the Grade II*-listed Terrace Catacombs and restoring public access to the Dissenters’ Chapel, presently used as offices. The reinstatement of the missing pinnacles and cupola of the chapel building will enable it to be appreciated as one of the most exciting of its period, with an energy and pizzazz missing from other, more staid, examples. New buildings will be complementary, subservient to historic structures and discreetly sited.

Historic landscape conservation is altogether more complicated. The cemetery has constantly been added to, with graves taking over areas of open ground and many paths themselves buried. Extensive historical research has helped the trust better to understand the original design intent, the varieties of plants used, the state of drainage, paths and borders, and the different characters of the two halves of the site.

From the 1960s onwards, self-set ash trees anchored themselves wherever they could, on and between graves, growing tall and spindly in competition for light. Having now reached a size where their roots are increasingly incapable of keeping them upright, something would have had to be done about the trees. The advent of ash dieback disease has made the problem more urgent, with many trees having to be removed before drainage works and replanting plans are in place.

There are challenges, too, in dealing with climate change. Much effort has gone into thinking about species which, as we replant, will be more resilient to hotter, drier summers and wetter winters and how they will enhance biodiversity. Surveys have been done of what remains of the historic drainage system to see how stainable drainage options can stop it being overwhelmed during increasingly heavy downpours. And new path surfaces are being investigated with an eye to appearance, accessibility and durability.

Getting the balance right between burials and tourism, between heritage and nature, and between the past and the future, will be crucial.

This article originally appeared in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s (IHBC’s) Context 180, published in June 2024. It was written by Ian Dungavell, chief executive of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust.

--Institute of Historic Building Conservation