In this video, Jessica the Museum Guide (that’s me!) takes you on a comprehensive guided cemetery tour of the most famous graves in the West Side of Highgate Cemetery. We explore the history, symbolism, and architecture of this iconic place of rest and visit its most remarkable residents. Be sure to watch Part 2 (posting next week), all about the slightly more modern but still fascinating East Side of Highgate Cemetery.
Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe. Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts about these graves and tell me which one is your favourite and why.
As always, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this virtual cemetery tour, then please consider leaving me a tip at www.paypal.me/jessicatourguide or buy me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/JessicaGuide
On June 7 I am launching my Patreon! Check back soon to subscribe and get lots of extra museum tours and virtual museum content.
You can also become a member of my channel for all kinds of great perks, like shout-outs and early access – click the membership button below.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChMjmyngBO9u0H1MLRXecbA/join
Remember – I guide private museum, oddities, and graveyard tours in London. Get in touch at [email protected]
VIDEO SUMMARY
Starting with the history of Highgate, we meander and stroll through the quiet cemetery on a rainy May day when I had the place mostly to myself.
0:00 – Introduction to the Tour
1:40 – London’s Filthy Victorian Churchyards
7:04– James Selby and the Mears Family Memorial
11:28 – Mary Emden and Dr Frederick Akbar Mahomed
13:54– The Family Tomb of General Sir Loftus Otway
15:41 – Aleksander Litvenenko
18:38– Jane Arden and Jean Simmons
22:35 – Christina Rosetti and Lizzie Siddal
27:35 – Lucian Freud and George Michael
32:41 – Elizabeth Jackson – the first burial at Highgate
35:32– The Egyptian Avenue
39:15 – The Circle of Lebanon and Radclyffe Hall
44:52 – George Wombwell
47:35 – Elinor Goldschmied and the Dickens Family Plot
50:00 – The Catacombs and Robert Liston
51:40 – The Mausoleum of Julius Beer
54:07 – Mary Nichols – Angel on a Cloud
56:24 – John Atcheler’s Horse and Tom Sayers’ Dog
58:04 – Bees, the Glass House, and Michael Faraday
Like The Museum Guide on Facebook!
https://www.facebook.com/themuseumguide
You should really join the London Urban Oddities Facebook group to submit your favourite weird places in London. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2037408773114764
Hana Elvy creates my thumbnails – you can hire her to make your YouTube thumbnails here:
https://www.peopleperhour.com/hourlie/design-youtube-thumbnail/856969
source
My favourite place . Tyty . Xx
Yay, I had been waiting for this video!
thank you for being so respectful!
Very interesting, thanks!
Big Ben and The Liberty bell, both famous for cracking…lol
Fabulous, charming, respectful and really interesting. Insane how one can live in a place and know so little about it. You are a real gem, Jessica, thank you so much! 👍👍👍👍👍👍✨✨✨✨✨✨
It's very overcast here in my tiny spot int Ont. CAN., and this video was the perfect accompaniment! I completely agree with you that natural burial is the way to go. Unfortunately, there are only hybrid sites in Ontario at the moment, no true, not-part-of-a-regular-cemetery, natural burial sites. And the cost to be buried in a hybrid site is out of my reach! I absolutely loved this video and will be watching for the East Side, next week. Thanks, Jessica. Sharing! I forgot to add, I'm so glad that nature has been allowed to have the upper hand. Humans desperately need to re-think having every bit of their property and the land around them, manicured and sterile.
I am so happy I found your channel. ❤
Yeah! We get Jessica on Monday! ‘Entrance.’ Love it.
awe, that giant empty tomb of Mary, ….that actually makes me sad.
That dude was a double agent, you’d swear he was some sort of saint lol
The symbolism was fascinating, not something that had even occurred to me before. A very informative, respectful hour in your knowledgeable company that just flew by. Thank you, and I am looking forward to the East side next week.
This was fun. Thank you…ron
Thank you, very much enjoyed the tour.
There is no poison ivy in England (Unless it has escaped from the Botanical Garden recently)
Excellent video many thanks for making and posting
this is my first time with you and i thoroughly enjoyed it. you are an amazingly good guide. going looking for more of your listings. thank you for sharing this.
i am so here for the longer videos. give me all your content, hours of it pls
This is (so far) the favorite cemetery I've ever visited. I love telling people about it. Thank you for featuring it and sharing your fantastic knowledge about it! I'm sure to watch this video many times.
That round area, looks like where the fantastic beasts the crimes of grindelwald was filmed if I am not mistaken. Or the area was inspired by it
THANK YOU FOR THE WONDERFUL TOUR. YOU ARE
VERY KNOWLEGEABLE AND ENGAGING. I KNOW THE
OVERGROWTH ADDS A CERTAIN JE NE SAIS QUOI, BUT
I WISH THEY WOULD CUT BACK A LOT OF IT. IT WOULD
LOOK MORE TENDED AFTER AND SHOW A RESPECT
FOR THE GRAVES THAT ARE HIDDEN.
Basically you can buy a plot in someone else’s grave because the Friends Of Highgate have seen fit to CASH IN AGAIN by selling something that’s not rightfully theirs… AKA if your dead long enough they’ll sell your face and dedicate your final resting place (( DISGUSTING )) and your pathetic attempt to justify this action is SHAMEFUL
39:15 Germans also say „there is no bad weather, only bad clothing“ 😄
I totally love your videos, thanks so much for your great work 🩵🧡
Perfect evening video to relax and knit to 🙂 I love cemeteries — they're full of history and beauty and eeriness. I hope to visit this one someday.
P.S. I'm going to look up Peter Jackson, too. Have you read Jack London's The People of the Abyss? I highly recommend it!
This was wonderful. Thank you so much!
Goblin Market was the first poem we read in a college British Lit class I took in Highschool, before I knew I was lesbian. Still one of my favorite poems.
Cheek to cheek
breast to breast
locked together in one nest
Excellent! Im very much looking forward to next week 🩷
Were you scared to visit the Vampire grave 🪦 or not I hear he still walks there at night…most of it looks weedy and overgrown… they should clean it up if they can't afford it let the families do that..most of our cemeteries are cleaning up by the family or volunteers…. the Loftis burial needs to be cleaned again
Thank you for another great video! Excited for next week’s video as well. Appreciate you and all your hard work ✨
Thank you once again for an interesting tour 🙂When I was a teenager I lived very close to a very big cemetery, Botany cemetery in Sydney's eastern suburbs (NSW Oz). They had what we called 'little houses' with the photos of the dead inside on the outside walls. On holidays and weekends the families of the deceased would visit their families inside. The doors were opened, they dusted etc, said prayers and some sang, then they had picnics. They were mostly Italian families – we 'immigrant Brits, thought it was most odd but very interesting. We were even invited in sometimes but… I wish I had now! When there were bad storms the graves in the older part of the cemetery closest to the sea lost coffins and skeletal remains were flung about on the sand. Interesting! It was so large, I once rode a horse around it. I think that it has been renamed and tidied up a lot since then, it was over 50 years ago and I left Sydney long ago. I still love the old cemeteries though and visit any we come across in our travels. Thank you for doing these wonderful tours! 😁🦘🦘🦘
One of the most beautiful cemeteries I've ever seen. Thank you for sharing this with us!
Oh, I look forward to your videos. I especially love the cemeteries . Thank you ❤
It's a amazing place visited last year did a tour, thoroughly recommended, fabulous film thank you really enjoyed this ❤
This is such a beautiful cemetery. I look forward yo part 2. 🙂🇨🇦
I've somehow never been round Highgate. I really want to see it now.
The horse shoes ( 7.48) if placed the opposite way, ie open up, was once thought to be a a symbol of the horned one, but when placed o the opening is to the right, then resembles the letter C supposedly for Christ, but i have heard of the case of a captured WW2 German naval vessel that had the same style, as shown and the Naval captain said the captured senior ranks that their luck had run out too,
A nice mixture of the remembered and forgotten. And then there's the story of Lizzie Siddal…
Another fantastic video Jessica thank you so much. I've seen lots of tours of Highgate (still planning to go myself someday!) and this was one of the most interesting ones. Your passion for story telling and your ability to share the atmosphere shines, as opposed to just presenting the facts, which you also do wonderfully! Looking forward to part two and would definitely be interested in seeing you guide through the rest of the 'Magnificent Seven' ❤🪦❤
Natural burial is fine, especially if it is a boat burial. Also, Tibetan Sky burial has its appeal as well.
I thought Mary Nichols was one of Jack the Ripper’s victims?
Thank you for the tour! I visited the UK once, and while walking through one of the gardens/cemeteries in London, I couldn't help but notice that the line between life and dead blurred, and what was left was a bit of sadness that extraordinary people are not here for me to meet, but any morbid or fear feeling was gone. I am a Christian, and some might say “very religious,” so a healthy fear for the other world and its inhabitants is a familiar feeling among my people 😂 but that experience changed the way I see dead. Also, some of the extraordinary and ordinary lives of people were interesting. Some Christian writers have said that Puritans knew how to die, and I guess if you are surrounded by the dead and you prepare for it, your mind changes about it. I don't know. I appreciate your channel and all I get to learn through it. Thank you again.
I love that cemetery, such a gothic masterpiece 😍 I live in the NW of the UK and don't get down to London etc very often anymore, but I adore your videos. You take us on some ' out of the way' gems I wouldn't have ever seen on a visit to London; as well as the more uSual points of interest, and for that I thank you. So glad I found you, and I highly recommend your channel to everyone. Bravo to you, and I look forward to many more tours👍🥰
Thank you for your video. Forgive the slight correction. The Cross was never unusual in our Anglican cemeteries, the Crucifix with the Corpus of Christ upon it was far less common as it was considered too Roman Catholic. In the modern Church of England, however, you will now find many different churches with both.
Love your channel; your videos are very personal, informative, very well edited, super captivating and thoroughly enjoyable
Thank You 💕
The Circle of Lebanon was so cool…it feels like a City of the Dead
….when you were pointing out the inverted symbols for the land of the Dead, it reminded me of why my Parents insisted on a coffin, vault, grave was for religious reasons. They were Anabaptist, left Holland, during the protestant reformation, early 1800s, and came to America, and they believed in a bodily resurrection of the Dead; on the Great Day of the Lord. Idk, if Victorians, believed that; but it might be why the burial internments have nods towards the Dead