At a glance
• Camden Council has approved an £18 million, 25-year regeneration of Highgate Cemetery
• The Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust dropped a controversial plan for a maintenance and toilet block after strong opposition from grave owners and public figures
• The wider revamp will include landscaping, a café and education centre and conservation of listed structures
One of London’s historic cemeteries is set for an £18 million regeneration following an intense row with grave owners over plans for a controversial new maintenance building.
On Monday Camden Council approved plans to overhaul Highgate Cemetery as part of a 25-year “revitalisation” project to combat the effects of climate change and general decay, restore existing structures and construct new buildings.
One of capital’s “Magnificent Seven” cemeteries, the overgrown oasis near Hampstead Heath has long served as a tourist attraction for those visiting the final resting places of famous figures like Karl Marx and George Michael.
But Highgate became a verbal battleground earlier this year when the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust (FHCT) proposed to put in a new toilet block and gardener’s facilities on a mound near several burial places, sparking furious backlash from grave owners.
Families of the deceased, including actor Bertie Carvel and the widow of sociologist Prof Stuart Hall, were staunchly opposed to the building, which had been likened to a “bunker”.
Many voiced discomfort that toilets would be buried next to the graves of their loved ones, and complained that the cemetery’s bosses were not listening to them and prioritising tourists instead.
Dozens of objectors, including Jeremy Corbyn, wrote to the trust urging them to rethink the proposals. Pam Miles, the widow of actor Tim Pigott-Smith, warned she would exhume the remains of her husband buried there and demand the cemetery pay the costs.
In August, the cemetery bosses axed the controversial block from the redevelopment.
In a letter to grave owners, Ian Dungavell, the Chief Executive of FHCT, said the trust had “listened carefully to the views of grave owners” and removed the gardener’s buildings from its current application.
The FHCT had already admitted to failures during its consultations over the plans, which led to tense meetings between grave owners and managers and architects. But at Monday’s meeting, objectors raised their suspicions that the axing of the building did not rule out future plans to bring in something similar.
Grave owner Amir Sanei, an architect, had earlier written to trustees about concerns that the decision to drop the most controversial part of the proposals was a merely a “ploy” to secure funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. In 2024 the project was awarded £105,000 from the fund.
The objectors asked Camden’s Planning Committee to state they would not consider any applications for gardening facilities on the mound in the future, but the panel declined. Cabinet Member for Planning and Sustainable Camden, Cllr Adam Harrison, said it was “not in our gift” to do so.
The revamp plans include extensive landscaping works across the Grade I-listed cemetery, a new café and education centre, the refurbishment of the existing chapel and the creation of new habitats for wildlife. In the meantime, Highgate’s gardener’s facilities – currently based out of two deteriorating shipping containers – are set to be replaced by similar structures.
The project also aims to conserve the Grade I-listed Egyptian Avenue and Grade II-listed Terrace Catacombs, restoring access to views of London and reopening the grand West Carriage Drive.
Trees deemed dangerous or diseased will be removed from the cemetery in a bid to restore biodiversity.
Highgate opened in 1839. Its 53,000 plots include many celebrated individuals, leading to it being dubbed the “celebrity cemetery”.
Interred there are the painter Lucian Freud, novelist George Eliot, scientist Michael Faraday, and Russian dissident and spy Alexander Litvinenko.
