One of the Magnificent Seven

Tweet

Yesterday was a trip to North London to visit Highgate, one of the 'Magnificent Seven' cemeteries built during the reign of Queen Victoria. Highgate is noted not just for the grave of Karl Marx or the architecture the Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon, but as the final resting place of artists, authors and notable people since it opened. London's rapidly growing population and the parish churchyards became over full resulted in a number of scandals. Families paid for a burial and almost as soon as the service was over the body would be removed and could well end up in the Thames, the coffin then resold or used as firewood and the space was sold again to repeat the money making process. The new cemeteries were built on what was edge of expanding London, but are now well inside the city and resplendent with the symbology of Victorian burial, which I have been exploring, online. The photo show a broken column with a wreath around it. This represent a life cut short and the wreath is the circle of life and death with no beginning or end.