A Victorian burial ground, still open for burials

Stephen Geary built a cemetery that quickly filled

Highgate Cemetery is a 19th-century burial ground in north London, still used for burials today. Around 170,000 people lie here, in roughly 53,000 graves, spread across its west and east sides. The point sits right by the Colonnade and the old mortuary chapel, close to the main east entrance on Swain's Lane.

The cemetery opened on May 20, 1839. The Bishop of London, Charles James Blomfield, dedicated it to St James. Architect and entrepreneur Stephen Geary designed the original grounds, working with surveyor James Bunstone Bunning and landscape designer David Ramsay. Geary laid out winding paths and planted exotic trees over land bought from the old Ashurst estate. He later died in 1854, and was buried here himself, in the cemetery he had built.

The first burial came six days after opening. Elizabeth Jackson, of Little Windmill Street in Soho, was laid to rest on May 26, 1839. Fifteen acres were consecrated for the Church of England, and two acres set aside for Dissenters. Families could buy a grave for a fixed term or forever.

Highgate quickly became fashionable. Londoners came not just to bury their dead but to walk the grounds and admire the view. The Victorian taste for elaborate mourning filled the hillside with Gothic tombs, stone angels, and private vaults. Builders cut the Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon straight into the slope, lined with catacombs behind cast-iron doors.

By 1854, the original grounds were full. The cemetery company bought 19 acres across Swain's Lane and opened the new eastern side a few years later. A lift and an underground tunnel let workers move coffins from the older west side chapel straight down to the new ground, without carrying them through the street above.

Famous names filled the hillside, then the company failed

By 1865, Highgate was famous enough to stop the city. Tom Sayers, a bare-knuckle boxer, was buried here that year. His funeral reportedly drew 100,000 people, and his dog rode in the procession.

Michael Faraday, the scientist, died in 1867. He was buried in a plain grave with his wife, a few paces from the ornate tombs around him. Karl Marx was buried in Highgate in 1883. A grander monument, topped with his bust, was built over it in 1956 and later listed Grade I.

By 1888, the cemetery held more than 25,000 graves, many holding four or more bodies each. The hillside was by then dense with Gothic monuments, built for families who wanted their dead remembered in stone.

The 20th century was harder on Highgate. The London Cemetery Company, which had run the site since the start, went bankrupt in 1960. Its Tudor-style chapels closed in 1956, and by the mid-1970s the grounds were overgrown and the tombs cracking. Ivy swallowed whole avenues of graves.

Vampire rumours spread as volunteers rescued crumbling vaults

Rumors of something darker took hold in these years. From the late 1960s into the 1970s, stories spread of a vampire haunting the cemetery at night. Newspapers covered the panic, and self-styled vampire hunters climbed the walls looking for it. Guides still tell the story, though it belongs to legend rather than record.

In 1975, a group of local volunteers formed the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust. The trust took on the task of clearing the undergrowth and stabilizing the crumbling vaults. By 1981, the trust had acquired the freehold to both the east and west sides, and the cemetery began its slow recovery.

Writers and broadcasters still lie among the wild graves

The restoration held. Today the west side can only be seen on a guided tour, winding through the Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon, where cast-iron doors still carry their torch symbols, flame pointing down. The east side, including Marx's tomb, is open for anyone to walk through alone.

Burials still happen here. David Storey, the novelist and playwright, was buried on the east side in 2017. Jeremy Beadle, the television presenter, was buried here in 2008. The grounds, left wild for decades, are now also a nature reserve, home to foxes and nesting birds among the headstones.

A short walk from the cemetery gates, Camden Council installed a memorial to Boris Nemtsov, the murdered Russian opposition politician, on the Swain's Lane roundabout in 2021. The move angered some local residents, who said they were never consulted about naming part of their street after him.