Mandy Wootton and Lynn Cook, who visited Highgate that same day, said that the cemetery had prompted conversations about end-of-life decisions - whether they wanted to be buried or cremated, and how they wanted to be remembered. As maintenance was neglected, weeds, vines and self-seeding trees took over.
The gothic beauty of the overgrown cemetery is seemingly a far cry from what its designers intended.įounded in 1839 on a site with a sweeping view of the city, Highgate Cemetery was one of Victorian London’s “Magnificent Seven” commercial graveyards, the first to be built on the outskirts of town to help ease the burden on overcrowded churchyards.īut the once carefully manicured tract fell into disrepair shortly after World War II, when its owners went bankrupt.
On a bright morning in early February, daffodils were just beginning to poke through the soil between the rows of teetering gravestones, and dappled light peeked through the trees that sprouted up here during decades of neglect. “I think very few people have been able to go through the pandemic and not think about their own mortality.” “A phenomenal number of people have died throughout the course of the pandemic, in this country and, obviously, around the world,” he said.
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