Highgate Cemetery is one of the great Victorian burial grounds of the world, a place of extraordinary atmosphere, Gothic architecture, overgrown pathways, and the graves of some of history's most remarkable people.
Notable graves in the East Cemetery:
Karl Marx (1818-1883): The bronze bust monument, installed in 1956 on the instructions of the Communist Party of Great Britain, is the most visited grave in London's cemeteries. Marx's original grave was a modest headstone; the current monument was created by sculptor Laurence Bradshaw. Inscribed below the bust is the final thesis from his Theses on Feuerbach: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it."
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880): The author of Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss is buried in the East Cemetery, having been excluded from Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner on account of her irregular religious views and her unmarried partnership with George Henry Lewes. The grave is simple; the inscription is from one of her poems.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001): The author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has the most visited grave in the East Cemetery after Marx. Fans leave pens (a reference to the towel joke; the actual tradition emerged organically), flowers, and, regularly, a printed copy of "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish." The grave is a straightforward granite headstone and entirely undramatic by Highgate's standards, which is its own kind of statement.
Malcolm McLaren (1946-2010): The Sex Pistols manager and cultural provocateur is buried in the East Cemetery. His grave is visible from the main path; regular visitors leave small tributes.
West Cemetery (Guided Tour Only)
The West Cemetery, the original 1839 section, is the architectural peak of the Victorian Gothic cemetery movement. It is accessible only on guided tours, which run daily at scheduled times. This restriction exists for conservation reasons: the West Cemetery's structures, many of them listed buildings, are fragile in ways that require managed visitor numbers.
The tour lasts approximately one hour. The guide covers the cemetery's history (it was one of the Magnificent Seven Victorian cemeteries created in response to the crisis of London's overcrowded parish churchyards), the architecture (Egyptian Avenue, the Circle of Lebanon, individual mausoleums of extraordinary ambition), and the social history of Victorian death practices and commemoration.
Key features of the West Cemetery:
Egyptian Avenue: A processional route flanked by obelisks, sphinxes, and lotus capitals, leading to the Circle of Lebanon. The Egyptian Revival style was fashionable in the 1840s and reflected the public fascination with Egyptology following the Napoleonic campaigns. The effect, walking between the sphinxes toward the Lebanese cedar tree at the circle's centre, is theatrical in a way that no other Victorian space in London reproduces.
The Circle of Lebanon: A circular arrangement of family vaults built around an ancient Lebanese cedar tree. The tree predates the cemetery; the Victorian architects incorporated it as an axis mundi around which the vaults are arranged. The tree is still alive; the roots have grown into the surrounding structures over 185 years. The combination of ancient tree, Victorian brick vaults, and the general atmosphere of Highgate's managed wildness makes this the single most distinctive space in any London cemetery.
The Terrace Catacombs: Subterranean vaults with individual burial chambers for multiple family members. Many are sealed; others have been opened for restoration work, revealing intact Victorian burial chambers with lead-lined coffins and personal effects.
Robert Lang, a Victorian architecture historian, has been leading private tours of Highgate for 12 years. "The Circle of Lebanon is the reason I keep coming back," he said. "Every time I see it, especially in autumn when the light is low and the tree is halfway through dropping its leaves, I understand something new about what the Victorians thought death meant. They built this place to be beautiful. Not consoling in a religious sense, beautiful in an artistic sense. That's an unusual ambition for a graveyard and they pulled it off."
The Victorian Cemetery Movement
Highgate is one of the Magnificent Seven, the seven large Victorian cemeteries built around London between 1832 and 1841 to address the crisis of urban burial. The others are Kensal Green, West Norwood, Abney Park, Nunhead, Brompton, and Tower Hamlets. Together they represent the most ambitious episode of funerary architecture in British history and a significant cultural statement about the Victorian relationship to mortality.
The crisis that produced them was practical: London's parish churchyards were overflowing, creating genuine public health risks. The response, large, landscaped, privately managed cemeteries on the city's then-edges, combined sanitary reform with a new aesthetic vision of death as a passage to a picturesque landscape rather than a return to overcrowded earth.
Highgate's developer, the London Cemetery Company, positioned it as the premium option: elevated ground (the views from the upper sections of the West Cemetery were selling points), architectural investment that no other cemetery in the group matched, and an association with the respectable middle class that was the company's target market.
The cemetery was commercially successful through the Victorian period and then gradually declined through the twentieth century, reaching a state of near-dereliction by the 1970s. The Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust was formed in 1975 and has managed the restoration and ongoing maintenance since then.
Practical Information
Entry and Tours
East Cemetery (self-guided):
- Adults: £5
- Children (8-16): £2
- Under 8s: free
- Photography permit: £2 (separate charge; worth paying for the quality of the light in the East Cemetery)
West Cemetery (guided tours only):
- Adults: £15
- Children: £8
- Tours run at scheduled times; booking essential at highgatecemetery.org
- Group tours can be arranged by advance booking
Opening times: The cemetery's opening hours vary seasonally and are closed on certain days for maintenance. Always check highgatecemetery.org before visiting.
Getting There
By Tube: Archway station (Northern line) is a 10-minute walk. Exit the station, walk up Highgate Hill, turn right on Swain's Lane (the road between the East and West Cemeteries) to reach the gates.
By Bus: Route 143 stops at the cemetery; routes 210 and 271 serve Highgate Hill.
On foot from Hampstead Heath: From Parliament Hill, a 20-minute walk northeast through the Heath passes through the ancient woodland of the Heath Extension before reaching the cemetery's gates on Swain's Lane.
Etiquette
Highgate Cemetery is an active burial site, new interments take place regularly, as do family visits to existing graves. The cemetery requests that visitors maintain quiet, do not climb on monuments, and treat the space with the respect its character and its continuing function as a burial ground warrant.
Photography is welcomed (with the paid permit in the East Cemetery); flash photography is discouraged for the impact on photographic conditions for other visitors. The most photographed graves, Marx, Adams, have a constant minor traffic of visitors; pausing briefly to allow others their moment before setting up a photograph is appreciated.
Combining with North London
Hampstead Walk: The 20-minute walk from Highgate Cemetery across the Heath to Parliament Hill and on to Hampstead Village is one of the best urban walks in London. Start at the cemetery, exit through the gates on Swain's Lane, and follow the Heath Extension path southwest.
Highgate Village: Above the cemetery, Highgate Village has an independent high street (Pond Square and Highgate High Street) with bookshops, cafes, and the Flask pub (a Highgate institution since the 18th century). The village character is distinct from Hampstead, slightly quieter, with a longer residential history and fewer destination restaurants.
Waterlow Park: Adjacent to the cemetery's north entrance, Waterlow Park is a Victorian public park on the slope below Highgate that contains Lauderdale House (now an arts centre) and one of the better ornamental ponds in North London. Free; open daily.
Highgate Cemetery's combination of architectural ambition, natural reclamation, and the sheer concentration of cultural history in its graves makes it unlike any other London attraction. The West Cemetery tour, in particular, is one of the experiences in London that most justifies the word "extraordinary", a Victorian vision of death and beauty that has been absorbed by the ecology it was planted in, over 185 years, into something that was never designed but has become its own singular thing.
