London 2018: Brompton and Highgate Cemeteries, Hampton Heath, Kenwood House

My husband Rich and I have always found cemeteries to be fascinating and are lucky to have a beautiful one in Toronto which is just a block from our home.  In addition to sculptures, mausoleums, botanical gardens, fountains, walking and biking paths, the Mount Pleasant Cemetery is renowned for its collection of rare and distinct varieties of trees.  We search out and visit burial grounds in cities around the world, with our favourite being the iconic Père Lachaise in Paris, which has the most elaborate tomb sculptures that we have ever seen.  It is very interesting to note how cemeteries in different countries have unique personalities in terms of design, layout, landscaping and ornamentation (or lack thereof) of the tombs.  The more scenic cemeteries, such as Mount Pleasant and Père Lachaise, are as much public parks and gardens as well as open-air art galleries as they are grave yards.  While we were vacationing in Venice, we visited the San Michele Cemetery which is actually situated on an island and where many of the tombs are packed together in very tight spaces.  The Arlington Cemetery in Washington D.C. is a military cemetery which is quite sparse in terms of landscaping or ornamentation of gravestones.  However scanning the seemingly endless number of uniformed white headstones spanning row after row was a very touching experience.

The cemeteries in London (and probably all of England?) prescribe to the “Garden Cemetery Movement” which dictates that cemeteries should be pretty places designed in a park-like setting.  For our visit to London, we had two cemeteries on our itinerary.  Brompton Cemetery just happened to be located directly across the street from our rental apartment, while the Highgate Cemetery was a half hour tube ride almost directly north of us.  Both of these cemeteries are part of a group of seven privately owned suburban cemeteries opened in the 19th Century (between 1832-1841) in order to alleviate overcrowding in the burial plots of local churches and parishes.  These 7 cemeteries (also including Kensal Green, West Norwood, Abney Park, Nunhead and Tower Hamlets) were dubbed “The Magnificent Seven”, after the 1960 Western film of the same name. It was decreed that these public cemeteries must accommodate all denominations including Anglicans and Dissenters

Open in 1840, the 39 acres comprising Brompton Cemetery sit on a long, narrow plot of land that spans just under one kilometer, running north-south along multiple city blocks.  It is one of Britain’s oldest and most distinguished cemeteries, hosting 35,000 monuments and over 200,000 burials.  Created by architect Benjamin Baud, Brompton almost feels like two separate grave yards.  A central “Grand Avenue” runs through the length of the cemetery, but the landscape changes significantly from the North to the South.   The land to the north (closest to our apartment) was designed as a garden cemetery with over 60 types of trees, plants, wildflowers, mushrooms and other vegetation, while the land to the south was built in the Neo-Classical style, highlighted by curved colonnades that form a “Great Circle” (inspired by Bernini’s Piazza in front of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome) that leads to a domed Anglican chapel at the Southern end.  Built beneath the colonnades were a series of catacombs with room for thousands of underground tombs but the idea did not catch on and only 500 spots were sold.  Movies filmed in the cemetery include Eastern Promises starring Viggo Mortensen, Sherlock Holmes with Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. and Finding Neverland starring Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet.

The garden cemetery in the North seems to have been left to grow wild without human intervention, resulting in lush greenery and plants so overgrown that some tombs are almost totally covered.  Various species of birds, insects, butterflies, rodents and other wildlife inhabit this space.  A row of stately lime trees, found along the Grand Avenue, date back to 1846. Rumours are that Beatrix Potter, who lived in Brompton, might have named some of her characters from Peter Rabbit based on names on tombstones from the cemetery.

There are some ornate tombs and interesting burials found in the Brompton Cemetery, although nothing on the level of what is in Père Lachaise.  The chest tomb for wealthy ship owner and arts patron Frederick Leyland is made from Portland stone with a copper roof and floral copper patterns on the sides, while the wrought iron railings surrounding it are topped with designs of lilies.  The mausoleum of oil industrialist James McDonald features a decorative copper door flanked by stone sculptures of angels.  The Burnside memorial commemorates Iris Burnside, daughter of Canadian department store heiress Josephine Burnside (nee Eaton).  Iris died at the age of 20 in the sinking of the Lusitania during WWI.  The Lusitania was operated by the Cunard Ocean liners, whose Canadian founder Samuel Cunard is also buried in this cemetery.  Emmeline Pankhurst was a devoted suffragette who unfortunately died three weeks before the law was passed allowing women to vote.  This year marks the centenary of the triumph of the suffragettes and there were tributes to them in many of the museums that we visited on this trip.  John “Gentlemen” Jackson was a bare-knuckle fighter known for guarding King George IV during his coronation, and for teaching Lord Byron how to box.  His tomb is topped by the carving of a lion, which was paid for by his friends and admirers. John Wisden was considered one of the best cricket players of his day.

The family tomb and mausoleum of Dr. Benjamin Golding, founder of the Charing Cross Hospital is surrounded by ornate fencing and stone carved decorations that invoke the Art Nouveau style, even though he died decades before this style came into vogue.  We first heard of the name Marchesa Luisa Casati when we saw the famous painting of her by Augustus John at our local Art Gallery.  An Italian noblewoman, socialite, and fashion icon with an extravagant and flamboyant style, Casati spent her final years in poverty.  According to the biographical write-up about her on the cemetery website, Casati was buried with her embalmed Pekinese dog and one of her mourners was her former personal Venetian gondolier.  It is surprising to see how plain, innocuous and overgrown the grave of Sir Henry Cole has become, considering his importance in supporting the Great Exposition and the Victoria and Albert Museum and his reputation as the “most influential man in South Kensington”.   Perhaps the most interesting monument that we saw was in tribute to Victoria Cross recipient Reginald Warneford (nicknamed “Reckless Rex”) who became the first airman to shoot down a German airship in 1915 when he bombed a German Zeppelin, made an emergency landing in enemy territory and managed to fix his plane and return home.  Unfortunately he died 10 days later in an accidental plane crash.

En route to visiting Highgate Cemetery, we walked through the neighbouring Hampstead Heath, a 790 acre park in Northern London that hosts numerous ponds, fields, woods, parks, conservation areas, sports fields and green spaces.  The Heath sits on one of the highest points of the city, providing excellent views of the London from the Parliament Hill Viewpoint.  From here you can see the London Eye, Big Ben, The Shard and many other recognizable structures in the London skyline.

Highgate Cemetery comprises of an East and a West section divided by the long narrow road of Swain’s Lane.  Designed by architect Stephen Geary, the West section was initially open in 1839 with 15 acres dedicated for followers of the Church of England and 2 acres for Dissenters (Protestant Christians who had separated from the Church of England).  This area quickly filled up and by 1859,  a large parcel of land to the East of Swain Road was purchased, bringing the total area of the cemetery to 37 acres.  Today there are over 170,000 people buried and 53,000 graves found across the two sides of Highgate Cemetery, which is obviously still a very popular location with limited plots left, since purchases of new plots are restricted to those over 80 years of age, or who are terminally ill.  Both sides are available for touring although the West side is only accessible by taking a guided tour, while the East side can be viewed either by a self-guided or a guided tour.  The former Highgate Chapel is now used as the Visitors’ Centre.  We decided to take the guided tour of the West side but to wander around on our own on the East side.

Like Brompton Cemetery, Highgate was designed in as a garden cemetery full of trees, shrubbery, plants and wildflowers, acting as a haven for birds and small animals.  It is considered a nature reserve where the flora has been allowed to grow freely without human intervention.  Once again, we saw tombs that were so covered with overgrown greenery that the headstones were barely visible.  We learned on our guided tour that the Cemetery is not responsible for the maintenance of the graves.  This responsibility lies with the grave owners, so after a few generations, some of the older graves no longer have active visitors willing to continue the upkeep.  Having the forest grow wild around old Gothic tombs just adds to the atmosphere and mystique of this fabulous burial space.  We saw several black cats roaming around the cemetery which seemed very appropriate given the setting.  In the late 1960s to early 1970s, there was even a media sensation when it was proclaimed by a pair of vampire hunters that Highgate Cemetery was haunted by a vampire and its victims, leading to a mass vampire hunt in March 1970.

On the East side, the most famous as well as the largest tomb belongs to Karl Marx, the German philosopher and revolutionary socialist who wrote the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, anti-capitalist works that formed the basis of “Marxism”.  Topped by a giant bronze bust of his head, Marx’s tomb bears the inscription “Workers of All Lands Unite”.  His wife and other members of his family are also buried in this tomb.  Other noted interments include English novelist and poet George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans) who wrote “The Mill and the Floss”, Douglas Adams of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” fame, whose grave is decorated with a box of pens, sculptor Anna Mahler (daughter of composer Gustav Mahler) whose grave is marked presumably by one of her sculptures, and the self-designed headstone by painter and print-maker Patrick Caufield which whimsically spells out the word DEAD.

There were many other beautiful “tombstones” scattered throughout the cemetery dating from the Victorian era through to current day.  It was interesting to note how the style of grave markers have changed over the years, and how much text used to be etched on the tombstones compared to modern day.  In the 19th Century, it was not unusual for a man’s entire resume to be listed, or a detailed description of how the deceased passed away.  In one tomb was a very sad tale of two brothers who drowned with 5 of their school mates in 1868.  Many of the recent markers are just small black slabs that contain the name, year of birth and year of death of the deceased.  One of the most interesting modern tombstones is shaped like a Penguin book cover with the title “The Final Chapter” written on the “spine” and the word “PARTNER” etched on the front to memorialize the passing of 34-year-old Jim Stanford Horn.

Designed as a Victorian garden, the West Cemetery is home to the most impressive architectural features of Highgate Cemetery.  At the time that Highgate Cemetery was designed, shortly after the Napoleonic Wars in Egypt, Victorian Londoners were obsessed with the culture and art of ancient Egypt.  This resulted in the creation of a set of Egyptian-styled catacombs with a gateway flanked by a pair of massive obelisks that led to “Egyptian Avenue”.  Catering to the wealthiest families, sixteen brick-lined vaults, each with shelves for 12 coffins, were built into a moss-covered hillside.  Cast iron doors to the vaults were installed with extra holes at the top for ventilation purposes to reduce the smell from the decaying bodies.  The circular grass-covered terrace above the tombs is called the “Circle of Lebanon”, with the tombs denoted as the “Terrace Catacombs”.  At the centre of the terrace is a massive Cedar of Lebanon tree that pre-dated the building of the cemetery and was part of the original property upon which the cemetery was built.  Our guide took us into one of the catacombs, but photos were not allowed inside.  We were told that the bodies stored in lead-lined coffins were inserted into recesses feet first, so that the head of the deceased would be closest to his visitors.  The terrace catacombs provided more security from grave robbers than the plots found outside.  However if such a plot was desired, the catacombs were used as temporary holding places until a permanent plot was chosen.

By the 1870s, the Egyptian craze had passed.  When architect Thomas Porter built a new ring of catacombs encircling the original Egyptian styled terrace catacombs, the new vaults were created in Neo-Classical style with the triangular pediments.  Included in these new vaults was a Columbarium where urns containing cremated remains could be stored.  Around the same time as the new catacombs, wealthy businessman and newspaper baron Julius Beer commissioned a grand mausoleum to house the remains of his beloved daughter Ada who died at age 8.  Inside the vault is a touching sculpture depicting Ada being lifted to heaven by an angel.  Beer wanted to own the largest mausoleum situated in the best location at the top of the hill and even paid for the stairs of the Circle of Lebanon to be moved to accommodate this.  Julius Beer was also interred here along with his wife, son and brother.

The West side of Highgate boasts some notable names including Highgate designer Stephen Geary, actress Jean Simmons, painter Lucien Freud, Catherine Dickens (wife of Charles) and more recently actor Bob Hoskins and pop star George Michaels.  Unfortunately none of these graves were on the guided tour, which concentrated more on historical aspects of the cemetery.  As we walked around, the guide pointed out repeated motifs and symbols found on the tombs.  There were more Egyptian patterns including a Egyptian winged solar disk and many obelisks.  Upside torches refer to a life cut short, broken columns represent a break from earthly existence to transition to heavenly life, three stepped tombs reference Hope, Faith and Charity, upside-down urns let the spirit escape and wreathes indicating victory in death.  The symbol HIS is a monogram representing Jesus Christ but in some cases, the letters are overlaid in such a way that it looks like a dollar sign.

While our tour did not include visits to any famous current people, we were shown some very interesting tombs with great back-stories, mostly from people that have been dead for over a century.  James Selby (1844-1888) was a celebrated coachman renowned for his fast driving.  Shortly before his death, he won a £1000  bet that he could drive from London to Brighton and back in less than 8 hours.  Using 8 teams of horses, he achieved this feat, covering 108 miles in 7 hours and 50 minutes.  His tomb is decorated with a coachman’s horn and whip, and upside-down horseshoes on the posts.  George Wombell (1777-1850) was a famous menagerie exhibitor whose exotic animals included elephants, giraffes, a gorilla, monkeys, ostriches, a kangaroo, zebras and two lions, a tame one named Nero and a wild one named Wallace.  When Wombell’s elephant died at one county fair, he used it as a promotional opportunity, billing it as “The Only Dead Elephant at the Fair”, besting his rival who boasted of owning the only live elephant.  Atop Wombell’s tomb is a sculpture of Nero.  Thomas Sayers (1826-1865) was a bare-knuckle boxer who won all but one of his fights.  His final fight lasted forty rounds and over two hours, and the two opponents had to be separated before they killed one another.  That fight was declared a draw.  By the time Sayers died, his wife and son had left him so his faithful bullmastiff ironically named Lion was his closest mourner.  A stone sculpture of the dog guards Sayers’ tomb.  The mausoleum of Robert Goldhammer (-2014), former director Dunkin Donuts UK, features an ornate door decorated with pomegranates symbolizing death and resurrection.  It is the first new mausoleum to be built in Highgate for 90 years.

An ornate Neo-Gothic monument marks the tomb of the Mears family who ran the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, responsible for making such famous bells as Big Ben and the US Liberty Bell.  We were shown a tomb with a horse carving on top of the pillar and the guide asked us to guess the family occupation of the deceased.  The sculpture of a horse sits atop the grave of John Atcheler (?-1853), reputed to be the horse slaughter (or knacker) for Queen Victoria.  Adam Worth (1844-1902) was a German-American Jew and a career criminal who was said to be the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s criminal mastermind James Moriarty.  Worth was involved in bank robberies, a diamond heist, ran an illegal gambling joint, and stole a famous Thomas Gainsborough painting, amongst other crimes.  Upon his death, Worth was buried in a mass pauper’s grave in Highgate under the name Henry J. Raymond, a pseudonym he used in many of his scams and capers.   In 1997, the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation paid for a modest headstone for Worth, which included his alias and the phrase “The Napoleon of Crime”.  This is a turn of phrase that Arthur Conan Doyle used to describe Moriarty, and which Andrew Lloyd Webber borrowed to describe “Macavity the Mystery Cat” in his musical Cats.  The only recent grave that we visited was that of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko (1962-2006) who defected to the United Kingdom and was subsequently murdered when exposed to radioactive polonium-210, a rare and highly toxic substance, likely administered by his former secret service agency FSB.  There was a photo of Litvinenko leaning against his tombstone and some branches on the tree next to the grave were chopped off, symbolizing a life prematurely cut short.

At the northern end of Hampstead Heath is Kenwood House and Estate, which was first built in the 17th Century and had various owners before it was purchased in 1925 by Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Ivegah.  When he died 2 years later in 1927, the Earl bequeathed the house and property to the British people, including his art collection of Old Masters and British paintings.  Because of this bequest, admission to Kenwood House and its grounds is free to the public. The estate spans 50 acres and includes multiple landscaped gardens as well as works by noted sculptors such as Henry Moore.  Kenwood is a fine example of a country house with magnificent vistas and landscaping designed by Humphry Repton in the 1790s in a style that has come to be known as “English Landscape-Garden”.  Perhaps the most impressive part of the grounds are the gardens with the large concentration of vibrant and colourful giant flower bushes.

Through the centuries, each subsequent owner commissioned renovations, additions and redecorations to the home, resulting in an orangerie, an Ionic portico at the entrance, bedrooms in the attic, a grand staircase and great hall, library, drawing room, parlour, music room, elegant dining room and a service wing with kitchens.  On the second floor is a small museum room displaying a collection of shoe buckles, jewelry and portrait miniatures.  Several British movies have been filmed at the Kenwood Estate including Notting Hill starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, and Sense and Sensibility starring Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet and once again Hugh Grant.

The most elaborate room in the house is the Neoclassical library designed by Robert Adams between 1767-70 as part of the remodeling of the Mansion and affectionately known as “The Adams Room”.  Recently restored to its original glory, the library includes Corinthian columns, a curved ceiling with decorative inlays surrounding paintings, marble busts including one of Lord Mansfield (former owner of Kenwood), and shelves full of antique books with an old-fashioned rolling ladder to reach the upper shelves.  If you look carefully though, some of the “books” are actually just fake spines glued together to look like the real thing.  When asked about this, the docent indicated that many of Earl’s real books were burned in a fire in his previous lodgings

But most impressive of all was Ivegah’s collection of paintings including works by masters such as Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt Van Rijn, Anthony Van Dyck, Thomas Gainsborough J.M.W. Turner, Frans Hals, and Joshua Reynolds.  The most famous pieces were Rembrandt’s oil on canvas self portrait “Portrait of an Artist” (1665), painted later in life when he was impoverished and alone and Vermeer’s Guitar Player (1672) depicting a young girl, possibly his daughter in midst of playing her instrument.  Paintings hung on the opposite ends of the music room give interesting contrast to portrait styles of two major portrait artists of the 16th Century.  Thomas Gainsborough put his subjects in natural, realistic landscape settings, often depicting them with dogs that symbolize faithfulness and loyalty, as shown in his serene portrait of Lady Brisco in a white dress taking a walk in the countryside with a dog by her side (1776).  By contrast, Joshua Reynolds painted in the “Grand Style”, an idealized style derived from Classical art, portraying his subjects as Greek Gods and Goddesses in dramatic stances.  His painting of Lady Sophia Musters (1785) depicts her as Hebe, the Greek goddess of youth, standing on Mount Olympus with the wind rustling through her clothing and hair.