Dead Good Place To Visit...

On Sunday I took two of my blog readers on a trip to Highgate Cemetery to thank them for their readership.

Now, for those who know nothing of Highgate Cemetery, you should take a look here. It really is a fascinating and enchanting place.

We arrived late in the afternoon and managed to convince the old lady locking the gates that they should lay on one last tour just for the three of us of the West Cemetery (this part of the cemetery is actually only open to those willing to part with £7 each for a guided tour). I had myself been on this tour just a few years ago but was very happy to do it again whilst taking a couple of friends along - it remains one of the best tourist things to do in London for my money.

So our guide began our wonderful personal tour. He was an enthusiastic fellow in his early 40s who works merely as a volunteer for the Friends of Highgate that now run the cemetery- and he clearly relished the opportunity to show us more than taking a large group of infirm and incontinent oldies would normally allow him to do.

It's not really a cemetery you visit just to see famous people's grave markers though - there are actually few very famous people*- most laid to rest here were just the wealthy of the Victorian age rather than the uniquely famous - although obviously there were many who were certainly 'famous in their own time' even if history has not been so kind as to remember them.

There are some great stories attached to some of the graves in this respect - such as that of bare-knuckle fighter Thomas Sayers, about whom our enthusiastic guide waxed lyrical over for quite an extended period, treating us to a near blow-by-blow account of his 42 round fight with the American champion John Heenan which took place (illegally) in a field near Farnborough in 1860. Plucky old Sayers fought much of the match with a broken arm and was still probably favourite to win were the bout not broken up by police.

Then there is the grave of the eccentric Managerist George Wombwell, who took a punt on purchasing a couple of boa constrictors that turned up at London Docks and soon made his money back showing them off in all the pubs and alehouses of London. George then built up an amazing menagerie of wild and wonderful animals that he toured around the country with - animals like elephants, lions, kangaroos, rhinos, giraffes - the like of which most people in early-19th Century Britain could surely have only ever dreamed of seeing. Upon Wombwell's grave is a marvellous marble carving of his docile lion - Nero.

We also saw a grave of a poor girl who "Died of the effects of fire after her dress accidentally caught alight ten days previously". Fantastic Mrs Ox-to-be wondered aloud why no one had helped the poor girl put the fire out as she wondered around with her frock ablaze for 10 days.

We were also taken 'off the beaten track' - something our guide was not meant to do for health and safety reasons he told us (It's PC gone mad - Back off Brussels!!!), where we were shown an unmarked pauper's grave.

This was no ordinary pauper though (had it been I may have been annoyed that the guide had risked our health and safety to show us); he was actually a survivor of the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879. He'd been taken from Isandlwana to the hospital at Rorke's drift, having had his legs crushed in an accident the day before the Zulu massacred the British forces at Isandlwana. The fellow might have thought he'd got lucky until 5,000 Zulu's showed up at Rorke's Drift and attacked the 139 British soldiers stationed there too. He did survive however only to return home and end up in a pauper's grave after all that. Poor bugger.

Highgate is also still a working graveyard today - if you have the money to take your place alongside the great and the good of yesteryear.

The grave of Alexander Litvinenko is also in the Western Cemetery - an eerie photograph of the poisoned ex-Spy atop his path-side grave, adorned with glowing, growling & mutated flowers.

We also found out that George Michael's mother is buried here - although our guide also told us he wasn't meant to tell us that. Presumably to stop Andrew Ridgeley desecrating it.

All in all then, a cracking afternoon out and well worth a visit. Next time you are in North London with time on your hands - I heartily recommend a stroll around Highgate Cemetery.

Just avoid the public toilets near the entrance - in case George is visiting his Mum.









*With the notable exception of Karl Marx of course - but his grave is in the less-atmospheric East Cemetery, which does not require a guided tour to visit.