Magnificent 7 … London cemeteries

A cemetery may seem like an odd place to visit for pleasure, but when they are as beautiful as London’s Magnificent Seven, it’s hard to stay away. Inspired by Paris’s iconic Père Lachaise cemetery and motivated by the rising population and subsequent overcrowding in parish churchyards, in 1832, Parliament passed a law allowing large cemeteries to be built in the city’s outskirts. Today, London’s sprawling edges have pulled the cemeteries firmly within its borders, and there’s no better place to take a spooky autumn walk or spend a peaceful afternoon

Kensal Green Cemetery, the first of the Magnificent 7

The largest and oldest of the seven, Kensal Green was first opened in 1832. Though still in use today, the sprawling grounds are dominated by crumbling mausoleums, pensive angels covered in ivy, and grand monuments tilting precariously to the side after decades spent in London’s shifting soil. There are 250,000 people laid to rest here in either burial, cremations, graves or catacombs, of which over 1500 are notable personalities, so if you’re searching for the resting place of any notable or noble name from the Victorian age onwards, you’re likely to find them; author William Makepeace Thackeray, engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and playwright Harold Pinter are all interred here. W H Smith (1792-1865) is buried beneath a stone book

West Norwood Cemetery (1837)

West Norwood Cemetery is 40 acres. It is where G A Walker had the bodies exhumed from the old Enon Chapel which he took possession of in 1847 and interred here at his own expense. There had been a huge pile of bones and decomposing corpses that people could see outside the chapel and around 6000 came to see the grisly sight before four cartloads of remains were taken and interred in one pit. It is the world’s first-ever Gothic style cemetery, built on a hill so the town below could see it and be reminded of man’s mortality, and the dead were a little nearer heaven. Stephen Geary and David Ramsay created a picturesque park reminiscent of Pere Lachaise in Paris. The winding paths instead of steps allowed good access to the graves whilst making it look spacious. It was also believed that raised ground would help prevent the spread of disease. This grand cemetery with its 42,000 graves has many notable figures including Baron Julius de Reuter, founder of the Reuters news agency; sugar magnate Sir Henry Tate, founder of the Tate Gallery, Mrs Beeton the famous Victorian cookery writer and Sir Hiram S Maxim the prolific inventor responsible for the machine gun. Soon after it opened it became the most fashionable cemetery in South London and known as the ‘Millionaires Cemetery’ because of the elaborate quality of its mausolea and monuments. There is a small enclave purchased by London’s Greek community with their own chapel

Highgate Cemetery (1839)

Highgate Cemetery is the most spectacular of the seven, descending a steep hillside from Highgate Village. John Betjeman called it the ‘Victorian Valhalla’. Local residents, who initially complained, then applied to purchase keys so they could walk in the beautiful gardens, and it soon became a tourist attraction. It is still an enterprising business as you still have to pay to get in. The main feature is the Egyptian Avenue inspired by artefacts in the British Museum. This street of the dead was created by excavating 12 feet into the steepest part of the hill and creating 16 family vaults. Two acres of land were for dissenters and rights of burial were granted for either a limited period or in perpetuity. The view over London is superb, the highest point of the cemetery being 375 feet above sea level

You’re free to roam around the East Cemetery, whereas the West Cemetery can only be seen via guided tour. As well as the grave of Karl Marx, you can see other famous graves, including singer George Michael, electro-magnetism scientist Michael Faraday, poet Christina Rossetti and author George Eliot

Following a period of decline from the mid-twentieth century, in 1975 conservation was carried out and English Heritage has listed it as a Grade 1 Park. To buy a plot today you have to be aged over 80 or terminally ill, or you can just go on a guided tour

Abney Park, Stoke Newington (1840)

This is a cemetery for the adventurous sort who likes to step off the beaten path – quite literally. Despite the grand Egyptian revival entrance and the Gothic chapel in the centre, Abney Park feels truly wild in parts and is a charmingly atmospheric place for a walk. It was founded in 1840 as a non-denominational resting place and became London’s foremost burial ground for Dissenters, or those who practised their religion outside of the established church. It maintains an air of rebellion even now, with tiny winding routes leading to dead ends, haphazardly-placed monuments, and graves so weathered that the names are illegible.Notable among the 200,000 laid to rest here are William Booth, who founded the Salvation Army with his wife Catherine who strongly believed that women should be allowed to preach; Joanna Vassa, daughter of Britain’s first Black activist Olaudah Equiano alias Gustavas Vassa; Betsi Cadwaladr, who has been called ‘the forgotten Florence Nightingale’ for the nursing she did during the Crimea and Frank Bostock a great Victorian traveller who survived lion and tiger attacks. He gained the reputation of big-cat tamer extraordinaire and is believed to have discovered that lions are afraid of chairs

Brompton Cemetery (1840)

As you might expect from a graveyard owned by the Crown and in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Brompton Cemetery is beautifully maintained, with wide even paths and manicured wildflower meadows. It was opened in 1840 and, unusually for London’s graveyards, was built on a flat surface rather than a hill, which serves to make it the most visitor-friendly of the seven. You’re more likely to see a toddler on a tricycle here than a ghost. Well-behaved dogs are allowed on leads, as are bikes, and there’s a pretty corner area with tree trunks and benches that’s perfect for sunny picnics. There’s even a coffee shop within the walls, the North Lodge Café; peruse their selection of pastries.

Brompton is a Grade I listed cemetery that’s the resting place of over 200,000 people and has over 35,000 gravestones and monuments including those of Emmeline Pankhurst, passionate campaigner for the rights of women; John Snow, who was voted the greatest physician of all time by British doctors; Sir Henry Cole, inventor of the Christmas card among other things and Princess Victoria Gouramma, an exiled Indian princess adopted by Queen Victoria. The Gothic splendour of the cemetery has been used by film-makers who use the elaborate Victorian gravestones and buildings for backdrops in period dramas and other films such as Golden Eye, Johnny English, The Wings of the Dove, Afraid of the Dark and Stormbreaker

Nunhead Cemetery (1840)

In London, a quiet corner is hard to come by. It’s rare to find somewhere that feels like you’ve left the city behind entirely, but that’s exactly what Nunhead Cemetery offers.The least known of the 7, its name refers to the Nun’s Head Tavern, ‘favourite resort of smoke-dried London artisans’. 200 feet above sea level it has spectacular views over London. It’s far from the grandest example in this list, but there’s something uniquely charming about the wildness of it; walking through dappled woodland trails, weathered headstones glimpsed through thick foliage, you get the sense that nature is truly reclaiming this land. Even on a sunny Saturday afternoon, it’s rare to pass another person, so if you’re in search of some solitude here’s where you’ll find it. Prominent interees include Sir Frederick Abel, the co-inventor of cordite, Bobby Abel (no relation), England test cricketer and William Brough, writer and playwright

Tower Hamlets Cemetery (1841)

Unlike the other cemeteries of the Magnificent Seven, Tower Hamlets was set up to be used as a burial ground for London’s working classes, sailors who drowned at sea as the Docklands was so local, Dr Barnardo children who were at the nearby Royal London Hospital as well as some local businessmen. Most of the cemetery has its corpses in unmarked graves, 60% of burials in its first two years were in communal graves and it was the most used cemetery in the East End. Prominent interees include Dr. Rees Ralph Llewellyn, the surgeon who performed the autopsies on the victims of Jack the Ripper, Clara Grant, an educator and social reformer, and Charles Jamroch, a Victorian animal collectorTower Hamlets may not have the well-preserved monuments of its relatively tidy sisters, but something is bewitching about the woodlands and wildflowers that have taken over this ground. This East End cemetery was repeatedly bombed during London’s blitz, with both the Dissenter’s Chapel and the Anglican Chapel so badly damaged that they were later demolished, and many of the graves are now almost hidden in the undergrowth. But despite the somewhat ramshackle nature of the space and the fact that it’s no longer a working cemetery, it’s still worth a visit. It’s been designated a Local Nature Reserve, and volunteer group Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park have transformed it into an urban green space to serve the local community, with inclusions such as large-scale sculptures scattered throughout, a Plants and People trail to mark the honeysuckle and sweet violet that flourish between the graves, a self-guided sound walk done via smartphone, and an outdoor classroom area for the use of local schools.

Please note that, except for Tower Hamlets, all of the cemeteries are still open for burials, so please be respectful of mourners during your visit.