I love cemeteries. They are little islands of tranquility, full of history and solemn contemplation. These peaceful pockets of nature, lonely amongst the bustle of the surrounding area, are often overlooked by residents and visitors alike: but can provide a great space for quiet retreat. For me, nowhere sums all this up better than the Magnificent Seven; the great Victorian cemeteries dotted around London. Of these, Highgate is the most well known, and Nunhead perhaps the least; but even so, Nunhead is definitely my favourite. It is the second largest of the Seven, with almost 270,000 people buried here, mainly over the course of 100 years. Their memorials range from spectacular Gothic monuments, to simple headstones marking public burials in shared plots.
But what makes Nunhead truly special is the utterly wild feel to it. After being abandoned in the mid 20th century, it became overgrown and truly reclaimed by nature. The great lawns gradually reverted to meadow, which in turn gave way to wild woodland, and with it a poignant feel to this vast burial ground, reclaimed by nature to form a peaceful oasis of wild melancholy in the depths of South London. A walk in there may not take long, and yet you will find that you can lose yourself amongst the rustling trees, the creeping ivy and crumbling stones.
BEFORE YOU GO
Time: 90 minutes
Terrain: Footpaths of varying sizes. You’ll be fine in trainers, even in the wilder sections
Rest points: Nunhead High Street is 5 minutes walk away and has a great selection of pubs, cafés and other foodie gems
How to get there: 5 minute walk from Nunhead train station, which is a 15 minute train journey from Victoria. You can also get the train from St Pancras or London Bridge. Some free car parking outside the main entrance at Linden Grove.
Directions: The main paths are marked on Google maps, although you can see a bit more info on the location of various hotspots here.
Notes: Open seven days a week, reasonable daylight hours (check in advance for times throughout the year). Admission is free.
Like the rest of the Magnificent Seven, Nunhead Cemetery was built in the mid 1800s to solve the urgent problem of inner London’s overflowing graveyards. They were running out of room: people were being dug up by accident, and it was contributing to disease. To some of those in the middle class, the most pressing issue was the thought of being buried near a poor person. And so, as is often the way, the people with money waited until it affected them to do anything about it, and then handed the job over to a private company to sort out. The London Cemetery Company opened Nunhead Cemetery in 1840.
Through the course of time that Nunhead was used for burials, it fell into increasing decline: suffering from vandalism, grave robbing and even bombs during the Second World War. By the middle of the 20th century the cemetery was nearly full, and so was abandoned: closed during the 1970s and not re-opened until 2001, by which time it had rewilded and become the spectacularly spooky place it is today.
Today, the wide and formal walkways around the cemetery are criss-crossed by a series of smaller paths that take you into the heart of the sombre woodland burial ground. Part of the cemetery is designated as a nature reserve: among its residents are woodpeckers, owls, warblers, jays and many types of butterfly. In amongst those trees, you will find a peace rarely found within 20 minutes from central London.
BONUS - In the western corner of the cemetery (turn right from the main entrance and follow the path around) you will find a spot (marked with a viewpoint on the map) where through the trees, St Paul’s Cathedral is clearly visible. An impressive vista: and a reminder that here you are actually 200 metres above sea level! Past St Paul’s, you can see Alexandra Palace on the left.
The big building visible from the main Linden Grove entrance is the Anglican chapel. Built in 1843, it is impressive at first look: but only as you draw nearer to the high Gothic architecture of the chapel will you realise it’s a ruin. Much of the covered entrance stands in one piece, belying the crumbling buildings behind. A fire sadly destroyed the majority of the building in 1976: the grand front section is mostly what remains. Even so, you can still see many of the fine details, including the fact that the entrance was designed so carriages could pull up and dispatch both coffins and mourners under cover to prevent them getting wet during bad weather.
An unknown number of the bodies laid to rest in Nunhead Cemetery were previously buried in the City of London. They came from the churchyard of St Christopher le Stocks, which stood on the site now occupied by the Bank of England's Garden Court. The first wave of bodies was moved in 1867 during development of Bank. This was followed by a further redevelopment in 1933, which led to more corpses being rediscovered and relocated to Nunhead. I can only imagine what that experience must have been like, both in 1867 and 1933: from the first grisly shock of disturbing those corpses, to their slow journey across the river and eventually returned to rest in the cemetery, still well kept and yet to return to nature’s own rhythm.
Even if nature has well and truly reclaimed this place, there is still plenty of vivid history to discover. The Victorians’ reverence for death is evident here: especially in some of the more majestic monuments that line the main walkways. From lavish gravestones, to eloquent poems, they really went all in when they died; sometimes literally; as huge sums of money would be spent to erect the most expensive memorial possible, to preserve their status even in eternity. This practice continued until the 1900s, when the fad started to die away and people considered spending their money on other things (like in the realm of the living).
You can glean this history, and a sense of what the people buried here were like, from their memorials. Not just from their names and the inscriptions on the headstones: but also from the style of the memorial. Did you know that a broken pillar often means that someone’s life had been tragically cut short? Or that a sword means the person was likely in the military, a book means they were likely learned, or any other tool may give a clue as to their profession. And if you come across anything especially macabre like a skull and bones, then you have found a memento mori: a reminder to the living viewer that one day, the same fate awaits them. This is not a bad reason to visit a cemetery: after all, thinking about your eventual death is a really good way to appreciate your life after all!
My favourite bit: the complete peace and quiet in amongst the smaller leaf-strewn paths, and the feeling that the remains of humanity are contributing to the regeneration of this wild place.
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