A Day With The Dead

I was reading in one of the local area magazines that there are many things to do in the city for under 10 pounds. One of the suggestions was to visit one of the "magnificent seven" cemeteries. In the 1830's, there was overcrowding issues because people were only being buried in local churchyards. As the city population increased, there was a need for more places to bury people. Parliament passed a law allowing private cemeteries to be built, of which 7 were constructed on the outskirts of London. Unfortunately, since they were private, they also had issues with neglect.

My roommate and I decided to visit Highgate, since it has many famous people buried in it. We waited in line for a guided tour which my roommate had heard was fantastic. As we started our tour, it was surprising to see how neglected the place was.

This particular cemetery has over 190,000 people buried in it and is divided into two different cemeteries (east and west). A local non-profit bought the cemetery (so weird you can buy a cemetery) in the 1980's and has been trying to restore it. We spent our walking tour in the east cemetery which has had very little work done to it. Below, a tree completely takes over a tombstone.

While the cemetery is not that old, it looks much older then it is because of the London pollution. Many of the markers no longer have any writing because the acid rain has eroded everything away.

The worse thing about the tour was our tour guide. We apparently did not get the good one! We had an American woman who did not tell us much and did not point out any famous people to us. It was rather disappointing.

After spending 5 pounds for the pretty bad tour, we decided to go to the west cemetery (had to pay another 3 pounds) to see if we could find any famous people. Of course, it you wanted to find any of the famous people, you had to buy a guide. At this point my roommate and I were totally disappointed in the money we spent and decided we were too cheap to buy the guide. So we asked some people where to go.

The cemetery has such famous people as Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhikers's Guide to the Galaxy) and Karl Marx. Probably one of the more surprising things to see was the grave of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian spy guy who was poisoned in London recently. The cemetery is still in use which was surprising since it is so in need of repair and help.

As my roommate is German, we both wanted to find Karl Marx. Thus, we found him (as he was not hard to miss).

While the tour sucked, at least the weather was nice!