Draped urns, extinguished flames, decapitated angels, and the downing of the sun on the first truly glorious weekend of the year. Victorians attempted to curate, collate, and categorise everything they found on God's green Earth so it's no surprise they tried to do so with death. But death is the great impenetrable, the utterly unknowable. The idea of not being and the idea of not even knowing that you no longer are strikes fear into even the steeliest of hearts. I'm a coward so it scares the shit out of me.
But, to face the reaper with equanimity is the boldest thing any human can do. In Irvin D. Yalom's Creatues of a Day a terminally ill lady is roused from her self-pity when she finds reason in her impermanence. To show her children, and those who come after, how to die well. It's not a singular example of humans showing humanity when the curtain falls. Cemeteries are all around us and, often, in the lyrics of Morrissey, in the myths of vampires, and in the writing of Gothic novels we're led to believe they are grim, sad, or frightening places.
They are anything but. What could be more altruistic than caring for a dead person, a person that can give nothing back? They show humanity at its finest. Calm, reflective, emotional, and artistic. It's no wonder we slow our steps on entering these spaces. In fact, that in itself is a reflection of our innate respect for those that passed before us. Those that made the world we live in.
It also shows our innate knowledge that we too shall return to the dust from whence we were born. The more history goes on, the more dead people there are. Many forgotten for eternity. Some remembered in books and statues. The Victorians had trouble saying goodbye and when London, then the largest city on the planet, expanded to a degree that there was no space left to bury the dead a radical plan was hatched.
It was my intent, and pleasure, to lead a merry (quite literally in some cases, by close of play) band of minstrels around the seven cemeteries created by this 'radical plan':- The Magnificent Seven. I'd filed it in my London by Foot cabinet as it fell very much into that group's orbit. We've had walks on Art Deco architecture, Brutalism, music, Nicholas Hawksmoor, and the river Lea but this cemetery scheme will involve three walks. We'll be north of the river soon but on Saturday we were covering the hilly south London graveyards.
So, on a dreaded sunny day we met by the cemetery gates (train station really and what kind of prick dreads a sunny day?) and headed immediately to Otter in West Norwood for brunch. At least Pam, Sue, Stuart (two LbF newbies but two old friends) and myself did. Shep, Tina, Neil (Williams, not Bacchus), and Colin joined us after we'd eaten. I took a chai latte and a goat's cheese, mushroom, and pesto toastie. Much conversation was directed towards the news that I had never eaten a mushroom toastie before. Life is short, as we soon found out, so it was time to try something new.
Otter was a great little cafe but we'd not come out to chew the fat and juggle the Java so we headed towards West Norwood Cemetery. Ever the eager guide, however, I had something to show my guests before we even got there.
On Knight's Hill, opposite a promising looking new picture house, proudly stands St Luke's church. One of four Waterloo churches that was built, in 1822, after the Napoleonic Wars (St Matthew's in Brixton is another), the architect, Francis Octavius Bedford spent 3% of the church's entire budget (£357) on the clock.
It made a tasty aperitif but we were now ready for our first course. Entering the cemetery I took a seat in its Rose Garden, whacked on some Elmer Bernstein, and spoke briefly about the Magnificent Seven graveyards.
Both Christopher Wren and John Vanbrugh, more than a century earlier, had warned against the dangerously overcrowded graveyards of London. In the first fifty years of the nineteenth century the population of London had more than doubled from 1,000,000 to 2,300,000 and bodies were being defiled by sewer rats from rivers like the Effra, the Fleet, the Tyburn, and the Westbourne.
Decay was causing epidemics. Parliament, under the Whig Charles Grey (2nd Earl Grey, the one the tea is named after) passed a bill in 1832 which saw the Magnificent Seven built in what then were the outskirts of London. Of course London is about four times bigger now so they're not as suburban as they once were.
Kensal Green in 1832 was the first up and running and West Norwood followed in 1836. All of them were inspired by Paris's Pere Lachaise (the final resting place of Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, and Modigliani). There are sixty-nine Grade II (or Grade II*) sites in West Norwood alone and, uniquely, it is host to a dedicated Greek necropolis. Just look for the building that looks like a scaled down Parthenon!
Lambeth Council have recognised West Norwood cemetery as a site of nature conservation value but it wasn't twitchers and bug hunters the large walls and railings that surround it were built to deter. They're to keep bodysnatchers away. Until 1817 the consecrated grounds were, oddly, overseen by the Diocese of Winchester. After that, equally confusingly, Rochester took over and finally Southwark took control. Even though West Norwood is actually in Lambeth!
It was the first UK cemetery designed in the new Gothic style but the Nazis did some work on it when The Dissenter's Chapel was damaged by a V1 flying bomb. The Norwood notables laid to rest here include Mrs Isabella Beeton (1836-1865), the author of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management who died following childbirth aged just 29, Hiram Maxim (1840-1916), the Maine born inventor of the automatic machine gun, and Henry Tate (1819-1899), the sugar merchant from Lancashire who went on to establish a very famous art gallery.
Helping them to push up the daisies you can find the graves of William Tite (1798-1873), the architect responsible for London's Royal Exchange, Arthur Anderson - the co-founder of P&O, CW Alcock (founder of test cricket and the FA Cup), and Maria Zambaco, a Pre-Raphaelite model of Greek descent who was painted by Edward Burne-Jones.
Others mark the resting places of presumably wealthy and eminent Victorians who history has pretty much forgotten (money may buy you the biggest tomb in the graveyard but it doesn't ensure you go down in history, not unless you're so rich you can essentially buy the US presidency - and even then you won't be remembered kindly).
Sir Henry Doulton's terracotta mausoleum is one of the highlights of West Norwood. We arrived at it to find what we assumed was a groundsman tidying up around it and mowing the lawn with an antiquated mower. Colin chatted briefly with him and we discovered he was an ancestor of the celebrated pottery manufacturer and was, in fact, only tending this one plot.
Elsewhere obelisks, angels, Greek inscriptions, and one huge dark monolith that looked like something from 2001:A Space Odyssey mixed effortlessly with beautiful spring cherry blossoms and flowers of all colours. Most, I was told, were tulips. Slightly embarrassing that I did not know that.
On exit of the cemetery we passed along a few suburban roads. The Rosendale pub looked inviting and the houses, and cars (Neil and Colin spotted a Bristol, it would not be their last bit of petrolhead behaviour for the day), looked expensive. We reached the South Circular, cut under a railway bridge, and turned into Belair Park.
Belair Park features the only remaining overground stretch of the Effra (mostly dried up) and a small lake with moorhens and Canada geese as well as a large, ornate, white mansion that looked like it belonged on a wedding cake.
We took Lovers Walk (or Grove Walk if you're not into the whole love thing) into Dulwich Village, checking out some great retro fonts, some astonishing houses (it's said Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman lived in one and Margaret Thatcher in another), and the oldest public art gallery in England. All interesting but the main draw was, of course, the pub.
The Crown & Greyhound (or The Dog to locals) is not cheap - but it is huge and has plentiful outdoor seating out front and a large garden to the rear. Where we rested our bums and made a totally predictable 'two pint mistake'. The Doom Bar went down ok. The company got better too as Kathy arrived to join us. There were now nine of us.
Following our well earned brace of pints we continued back through Dulwich Village into Dulwich Park. Sunbathers, pedalos, ice cream vans, and more people than I've seen there for years. It's a lovely spot and one I've made good use of over the last couple of decades. Laid out, as are many parks in the area, by Colonel JJ Sexby ("a light touch for a military man" my standard quip - it finally got a laugh) who doesn't even has his own Wikipedia page. A few years ago a large Barbara Hepworth sculpture was stolen from the park.
We came out of the park on to Fireman's Alley (and with Stuart, we had a fireman with us) and that took us up on to Lordship Lane, past the road Bon Scott died on, past the old stone house (now refurbished), and past my friend Michelle's rather beautiful old house too.
We saw the sight of another WWII tragedy and continued to the top of the hill where Sue and Stuart left us for board games, a Smiths tribute band, and more booze in Greenwich. We stopped to look at a totem pole outside the Horniman Museum (a room of which has been curated by my friend Misa, her and Dan even got married in the glass house annex back in 2012). Carved in 1985 by a Tlingit Alaskan called Nathan Jackson it's more than seventy years newer than the 1912 bandstand we made our way to for views of the London skyline and to discuss the Brutalist Dawson Heights. A building I used to think marred the view but now I have come to love.
It was so warm nobody wanted to go in the museum so we passed through the gardens and carried on along suburban roads (at one point one hundred metres from my front door, truly home turf) and cut into Brenchley Gardens. A place I regularly eat my lunch. I also urinate there at night after long bus journeys but, and this needs stating, not in the same place I eat my lunch.
Brenchley Gardens overlooks the London skyline too and in the foreground there is a large spacious green area that nobody seems to be allowed in. It's some kind of reservoir but it's bizarre how such a piece of real estate can still exist in a relatively central London location. Shep bought a samosa and we all piled into another pub - and another former wedding venue for me.
Our friends Paul and Fernanda got married in The Ivy House about a decade back. It was a great night and it's still a great pub. London's first community run pub puts on yoga and toddler groups before it opens, it hosts gigs and quizzes, and it's got a fading McGuinness Flint poster on the wall. I sat outside catching some rays and sipping on a Five Points Pale as Neil & Colin went off looking at cars.
We followed a hilly snicket (where I used to jog) that bought us out, via a highly satisfying 47 painted on the outside wall of a house, to the gates of Nunhead Cemetery. Parakeets flew by. Parakeets and Yeats are on your side.
Consecrated in 1840, Nunhead's first burial was Charles Abbott, a 101 year old grocer from Ipswich. Woodpeckers and tawny owls mix it up with parakeets and a host of different trees. I'd learnt much about the place when visiting on various Nunhead Cemetery Open Days but I'd not been when it was so quiet. It's truly an atmospheric place full of lopsided or cracked tombstones, many illegible, some vandalised, and some completely lost to nature. Some even had large trees growing out of them.
Large black crows rested on memorials as if imagined by Edgar Allan Poe and in places the trees parted for a full view of St Paul's Cathedral. There's not really that many Nunhead notables but they include Sir Frederick Abel (1827-1902), the inventor of Cordite, the singer Cicely Nott (1832-1900), and typefounder Vincent Figgins (1766-1844) whose grave is one of the most ostentatious in the boneyard.
It's a place to walk, a place to ponder, a place to think, and a place to reflect. There's an obelisk to mark the Scottish Political Martyrs, some Commonwealth war graves from New Zealand, Canada, and Australia, and a monument to the nine Sea Scouts who drowned off the Isle of Sheppey, the Leysdown Tragedy, in 1912. Top of the list is twelve year old William Beckham whose relation David would go on to find a fairly decent level of fame playing football.
This is the setting, obviously, for Charlotte Mew's In Nunhead Cemetery poem and Maurice Riordan's The January Birds. Spooks and London's Burning have been filmed here and the 1994 sci-fi novel The Woman Between The Worlds (author:the excellently monikered F Gwyplaine MacIntyre) saw a female alien interred here. We had a good look round and pondered what would happen if we got locked in. Pecked to death by crows I suspect.
It was like a proper summer's day now and the sun was burning some of our paler walkers. Kathy headed home, the rest of us continued on to Peckham Rye and the adjoining Peckham Rye Park. We checked out the American Garden, the Japanese Garden, and the Sexby Garden and I related that, in 1760, William Blake had visions of angels here. Or, in Blake's words, he'd seen "a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars".
Muriel Spark's 1950 novel The Ballad of Peckham Rye also has supernatural themes. Our needs were of a much more humdrum nature so we crossed the pathetic Peck river and made haste to The Herne Tavern beer garden where things got quite jolly. Pam used an empty pint glass as a rudimentary amplifier to blast out Steel Pulse's Ku Klux Klan and we argued hard, as ever, about music. At one point Alice Cooper was summarily dismissed by Colin as "a boring old cunt". I laugh even typing it.
Refreshed we headed to the Dulwich Tandoori in East Dulwich. Banglas appeared (and soon disappeard), I struggled with a tasty but large paneer shashlik, and the establishment gave us free shots when we left. I, for some reason, opted for brandy which soon came back up. To wash the little bit of sick from my mouth I poured some Coke in the brandy and necked it before some of us repaired to the East Dulwich Tavern for lasties. At midnight there was just me and Colin left but, hey, it was now his birthday. He'd joined me in the fifty club. So I bought him another pint. Be rude not to.
I wasn't particularly proud as I stumbled home, somewhat unevenly. But I was proud of arranging a fun and interesting day, I was proud of having such great friends (I even nicked their photos for this piece - thanks all), and I was proud of being part of a human race that, despite all its problems, makes so much effort to care for others. Be they alive or dead.
Next time we'll be heading from Imperial Wharf to Kilburn taking in the burial grounds of Brompton and Kensal Green. You should join us.
Nice one (as ever) Dave!
ReplyDeletep.s. That was me (Colin!)
ReplyDeleteOr 'Unknown' as you will now be known. Alice Cooper has worse nom-de-plumes
ReplyDelete