Highgate Cemetery to reveal connections to empire and colonialism of its dead

Ian Dungavell, chief executive of Friends Of Highgate Cemetery, next to Karl Marx’s grave – JEFF GILBERT

Highgate Cemetery will reveal the connections to empire and colonialism of its illustrious dead in a new drive for inclusivity and diversity.

The popular tourist attraction and cemetery in North London is the final resting place of around 170,000 people, many of them famous.

Highgate is planning research into which graves are occupied by figures with links to the “legacy of empire”, and to establish tours of the cemetery’s colonial links.

Plans for the 37-acre site form part of the Unlocking Highgate project backed by a £100,000 National Lottery Heritage Fund grant.

The announcement of the project comes against a backdrop of “decolonising” in the museum and heritage sector, in which institutions address their own links to empire.

Ian Dungavell, chief executive of the cemetery, told the Telegraph that “lots of people are interested in the complex legacy of empire now”, and the cemetery needs to “embrace the complexity of the past”.

Diverse backgrounds

The project will also aim to tell the stories of the dead from more diverse backgrounds.

Mr Dungavell said: “Overall, we’re looking at how to ensure that the diversity of those who are buried at Highgate Cemetery is reflected in the stories which are told about it, and that those stories are told in a way which reflects a variety of perspectives rather than a single incomplete narrative.”

The cemetery is the final resting place of many illustrious Britons, including George Michael, George Eliot, Douglas Adams, Michael Faraday, and the German philosopher Karl Marx, whose tomb dominates the eastern half of the site.

Also interred at the site are less well-known figures with connections to empire, including soldier Anthony Home, who earned a Victoria Cross for his service during the Indian Mutiny, colonial businessman and founder of HSBC Douglas Lapraik, the premier of New South Wales Sir Charles Cowper, and 19th-century secretary of war Viscount Cardwell.

Mr Dungavell also pointed to the grave of lion-baiter and menagerie operator George Wombwell, whose supply of exotic animals would have depended on European colonial connections in Africa and South America and would have raised questions around colonialism and links to empire.

Lottery funding will be used to support a new Head of Programmes and a Learning Officer design to consult the local community in north London and devise ways to make Highgate an “inclusive” attraction.

Highgate has found that “a lack of accessible interpretation prevents us from connecting with new communities”, and its grant-funded project will aim to solve this problem by “re-focusing stories, embedding accessibility training and inviting diverse experts to curate special tours”.

Mr Dungavell also suggested that one focus could be Claudia Jones, a socialist campaigner from Trinidad who was instrumental in founding what became the Notting Hill carnival.

Alongside the work to identify potential connection to empire on the site, and to highlight these stories, Highgate will also look to introduce LGBT-focussed tours of the cemetery following further consultation with relevant local groups.

George Michael may be an obvious focus for future tours, but the site is also the final resting place of Radclyffe Hall, whose scandalous 1928 novel, The Well of Loneliness, was about lesbianism.

Future work at Highgate will include conserving monuments, clearing trees plagued by ash dieback, and, ironically, making room for new £25,000 graves near Marx’s tomb, on ground which is particularly coveted by communists.

The former leaders in the Iraqi and South African communist parties are buried near the final resting place of the German philosopher, whose left-wing mystique could help maintain the cemetery’s income stream.

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