Peromyscus: Californians abroad: Highgate Cemetery Part 1

Monday, February 24, 2025

Californians abroad: Highgate Cemetery Part 1

European vacation continued...

We spent the rest of the time in Paris at the Pompidou Center, touring the Surrealists exhibition. Paris is easy to get around – the Metro is wonderful – and the language presented no obstacle. (It helps that I can read French, full disclosure.) Most French people could tell we were English from about thirty yards away (especially amazing, since we haven’t lived in England for over a quarter of a century) and switched to speaking English. Evidently the era of French people pretending not to understand English is over. I wonder if leaving the Common Market/EU left them feeling more, rather than less, friendly?

We were soon back at Gare Du Nord for another round of sheep-dip-style passport lines and within hours back in London. So what did we do once we were back?

Why, go to Highgate Cemetery, of course.

Grave and marker among greenery. The marker is an angel with a broken wing on our right.

Highgate Cemetery. An angel with a broken wing

In all the years I lived in London, I never visited it. I’m rather sad about that now, as apparently it used to be a complete mess, a sort of Goth playground, after a bankruptcy in the 1960s which led to it being completely overgrown (and, I’ve heard, partially desecrated) by the 1980s, when the Friends of Highgate Cemetery took over the administration.

We paid said Friends a few quid each and went for a walk among the inhabitants.

Where Pere Lachaise was neat, well-tended and respected, Highgate is still higgledy-piggledy, cattywumpus and dripping with nonchalance. The guide pamphlet mentions that the Victorians thought nothing of trampling over graves to get to their loved one’s burial pitch and it seems the modern visitors do likewise. After a few attempts at following the paths, we did the same, navigating by headstones, walking over graves and tripping over tree roots from full-grown trees that have as little respect for the dead as any of the visitors. Where Pere Lachaise had rows of neat mausoleums engraved with “concession à perpétuité” (a plot granted to a family in perpetuity) on the back, Highgate has hillsides with tumbled, worn rocks that were once graves.

Don’t get me wrong – the Friends have done a great job clearing up much of the forest and putting things back together but there are sections that look much like a clint limestone pavement (and the grykes are just as treacherous).

We had a list of people that we wanted to visit, but for this post, here are a few general views showing the packing density of the resting places and the full-grown regrowth forest that lives among them.