One of the bonuses of gardening at Highgate Cemeteries is that the lovely volunteer lady, Kim, arranges a lot of excellent exchange visits for us volunteers to go to other interesting houses, gardens and cemeteries around London. And a couple of weeks ago we were posted off to Strawberry Hill House, Horace Walpole’s 18th century …
Highgate cemeteries
Unearthing graves
The current policy in Highgate Cemeteries is to do battle with the ivy and brambles which ran riot over the cemetery during its many years of neglect and reveal its graves. I must admit to a certain degree of ambivalence over this. I understand the desire to actually see the graves of the star studded …
Highgate Cemeteries and the catacomb
The West Cemetery is looking especially beautiful at the moment, the headstones struggling to hold their own amongst the wild garlic, the three cornered leeks and the newly unfurling ferns. And it is in the West Cemetery that we were working today, back on the trail of lost graves. Lost because although each grave is …
Bracken and ferns in Highgate cemeteries
Did you know that although they look almost identical brackens and ferns are very different plants? In my ignorance, I didn’t, until I showed up for last week’s gardening session at Highgate cemeteries. This is a fern, all of its leafy stems shooting up, fountain-like, from a central bole. While ferns do spread they are …
Digging up the heath – and the cemeteries!
One of my ambitions when I moved up to Highgate was to sign myself up to work on the heath with the volunteer gardeners and bramble hackers/sapling puller-outers, Heath Hands. But no sooner had I moved in than lockdown happened and all volunteer recruitment came to a grinding halt. So I had to make do …
Highgate cemeteries
Up till the middle of the 19th century, if you died in London you were buried in the parish graveyard or, if you were sufficiently rich or important, actually under the floor or in the walls of the parish church. Not only was this insanitary but, between 1800 and 1850 the population of London grew …