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Karl Marx’s tomb |
Cemetery ‘victim of its own success’
Highgate sees visitor numbers surge
FOR many years a trudge up Swains Lane to Highgate Cemetery has been on the must-do list for groups of Chinese tourists, who wanted to visit Karl Marx’s grave – but not for many others.
Now the burgeoning reputation of the cemetery as one of the finest surviving examples of Victorian burial grounds means it is on the itinerary of thousands of people visiting London.
And the huge boost in visitor numbers – they have gone up each year, and in 2008 saw a massive 80 per cent rise – means custodians the Friends of Highgate Cemetery are now considering ways they can cap the amount of people who make their way through the wrought iron gates to find the final resting places of eminent Victorians, including author George Eliot and inventor Michael Faraday.
And the visitors are not just recession-hit Londoners discovering delights on their doorstep. Friends chairwoman Jean Pateman herself spoke to people who had come to see the cemetery from 79 different nations last year .
Mrs Pateman told the New Journal that as well as the wear and tear on paths, the cemetery was still in use as a burial ground and this had to be respected. The cemetery has around 40 funerals a year.
Mrs Pateman said: “This is a gentle place and we really have to be careful about how we look after it. It becomes increasingly important that people have some peace and quiet. It is a question of balance. We have to consider the significance of the fact that this is a burial ground. Mourners need a place of dignity. We just cannot have people queuing up the road to get in.”
The western cemetery – which is older than the eastern section – is only accessible to the public via one of the guided tours, conducted by trained volunteers. But this is not a viable option for the whole cemetery says Mrs Pateman.
“We want to look at how to show visitors safely through the eastern cemetery but guided tours are not an option as it would put an extra strain on our teams of volunteers.”
But how the cemetery deals with its success has yet to be worked out.
Mrs Pateman said: “We have no final plan as to how we can do this.”
English Heritage’s cemetery expert Roger Bowdler said the Friends were victims of their own success.
He said: “It is privately owned and privately run so it is really up to them what they do in terms of access.
“The Friends are very sensitive and they are quite stern patrollers of paths. They do not want lots of people trampling through the undergrowth to find graves.”
Mr Bowdler says he has a simple answer to the problem of crowds: go elsewhere to see prime examples of Victorian burial grounds.
He said: “Not every one should be going to Highgate anyway. They should head to Kensal Green cemetery instead – in many ways it is a much better cemetery.
“It has the graves of people like Brunel, Trollope, Thackeray.
“It has superior tombs, lovely landscapes with views of the gasworks on the canal, it has much better buildings and great trees.” |
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