Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of Highgate East Cemetery
June 2010

The Celebration of  the 150th Anniversary of the East Cemetery started on Sunday June 13th with a sold-out Promenade Concert. Following on from this, there was a four-week special season of guided evening tours held after closing hours when all other visitors will had left.

These evening tours provided a rare opportunity both to learn much more about the cemetery than is likely on a solo tour and also to appreciate the atmosphere in the very special light of the long summer evenings.

A Note on Highgate East Cemetery

Just fifteen years after the opening of Highgate Cemetery on 20 May 1839, the London Cemetery Company was doing such good business that it decided to buy land on the east side of Swain's Lane and create a new cemetery. Used at first for a large greenhouse and other purposes, it received its first recorded burial in June 1860. It is a larger space than what came to be known as the West Cemetery and it has greater biodiversity than its more overgrown, if also charming, neighbour.

The cemetery contains many of the finest examples of funerary architecture and sculpture - mausolea, monuments, obelisks and head stones. People of many faiths and none are buried here, including Anglicans, 'Dissenters', Roman Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims.  Similarly, political persuasions from the more philosophical Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer, from Tory grandees and philanthropists, a considerable cohort of Victorian Radicals, and twentieth century Socialists. There is also a strong concentration of men and women from the worlds of the arts and literature: George Eliot, Douglas Adams, Patrick Caulfield, Sir Sidney Nolan, Leslie Hutchinson, Shura Cherkassy, Sir Ralph Richardson, Sheila Gish and Max Wall, to name but a few.

In 1975 the Friends of Highgate Cemetery (FoHC) was formed and in 1981 FoHC acquired the freehold of the whole cemetery and conservation work by volunteers began in 1984. The East Cemetery has never received funds on a scale comparable to the West Cemetery.
We welcome ideas, feedback and donations. Please contact the 150^th Celebration Steering Group c/o Highgate Cemetery.