Highgate and Hampstead, a leafy land of legends. (part three)

Back in Hampstead with Tony Brown and John Lodge.

28th March 2023 

Between walks the three of us, John Lodge, Tony Brown and myself often search for information and further ideas for our walks. I found a website about self-guided literary tours of London created by a group of tour guides who are passionate about getting people interested in London. A tour of literary Hampstead was among the researched walks on offer. I e-mailed a link to the website to John and Tony. They liked it and so we decided to continue our exploration of Hampstead and Highgate by following the  tour. 

John and Tony crossing a road in Highgate.

On Tuesday 28th March we met at our usual rendezvous spot, at 10am under the clock at Waterloo. To get to Golders Green station, the start of the literary walk, it was a simple matter of getting on the Northern Line to Edgeware Road. Golders Green is thirteen stops from Waterloo. A long, leisurely ride. 

The web page, "Literary London Self Guided Tour-Hampstead," provided us with a map of Hampstead together with a list of the authors with short biographies, house addresses and a description of the route. This literary tour began outside of  Golders Green Station.

I have never been to Golder Green before. When we got out at the tube staion it was raining. John and Tony had both brought umbrellas. We found a cafe across the road from the station entrance and sat there talking about how we were going to procede. We decided the rain would not stop us. The café was run by a Greek family. A friendly matriarch  chatted to us about the pictures covering the walls of the café. They depicted the places in  Greece the she and her family came from. 

As we sat drinking our coffee we could see across the road,almost next to the station, the large imposing white stucco Golders Green Hippodrome Theatre that this part of Golders Green is famous for. It is a grade II listed building. It was built in 1913 by the architect Bertie Crewe. It was used for many things over the years. It was often where plays and shows were first performed before they reached the West End Theatres. Laurence Olivier and Marlene Dietrich both performed there. Later, Rock groups such the The Kinks,Queen,Jethro Tull and AC/DC performed there too and  the list goes on. The Jam performed an exclusive  concert  for their fans in The Hippodrome, which was filmed and later became a TV special. The BBC took it over for many years. The John Peel show was broadcast from here. The BBC Concert Orchestra performed here. Some episodes of Monty Python were recorded at the Hippodrome too. It later became the El Shaddai International Christian centre.  Since 2017 it is The Centre for Islamic Enlightening, a place that is described,  "for Shia enlightenment." Its use for religious purposes has been contentious with the local community which is cosmopolitan but some aspects of different religions obviously clash.

The Hippodrome,Golders Green.

The rain lessened to a damp drizzle and so we decided to start our walk. We turned right, from the cafe, up the North End Road. We wanted to find number 145. Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was born here. He lived in Hampstead on and off throughout his life. I read Brideshead Revisited a few years ago just to find out what sort of a writer Waugh was. It was a terrific book. Before reading it I had an image of it being about posh people and as such superficial. It was about posh people, but it certainly wasn’t superficial.Posh people are analysed and the drama comes often from who they are, how they are and why they are. A great novel. The house he was born and brought up in looked very ordinary and middle class. 

Eveline Waugh lived here.

The tour I had printed off informed us to continue along North End Road to Hampstead Way on our left. On the route there was a lot of traffic, going downhill towards Golders Green. It looked wooded and leafy ahead. We turned down Hampstead Way and came across a cluster of  modernist houses set back within their own leafy landscapes and also there were some older Victorian and Georgian houses . From the North End Road we had turned into an idyllic setting. The road lead down hill and turned sharply right. A rambling old building loomed over us to our right . This is called the Old Wyldes.It was the home of  John Linnell, an artist and a close friend  of William Blake(1757-1827) the artist and poet. Blake, although he lived his whole life in SOHO and Lambeth often visited his friends here at the Old Wyldes and spent weekends with them. Linnell encouraged Blake to become an artist. John, Tony and I walked into the woods behind the Old Wyldes and I wondered if Blake was inspired to write some of his visionary poetry here seeing angels and devils and mythological beasts in the world around him? It is always interesting to walk in the footsteps and space of somebody as amazing as William Blake and wonder how they saw the world you yourself are walking through as they themselves did.  

The Old Wyldes where William Blake often stayed .

The map that was provided with the walk  showed us paths through this wood which should clearly lead us to The Spaniards Inn  where we intended to have a pub lunch. We lost our bearings, it goes without saying. A lady walking her dog was crossing our path and I asked the direction to The Spaniards Inn. She smiled and pointed us the way. We were thankful. On reaching the main road  the inn was ahead of us. The traffic was frequent and we had to time our crossing of the road. There was no pedestrian crossing point. 

And so we entered the famous Spaniards Inn. A small door from the garden area lead us into the timbered interior. No sense of Dr Van Helsing or Mrs Bardell having ever been there. An information sign told us that Keats had sat in the garden here and wrote Ode to a Nightingale but then I have also read that he could have written it in the garden of his cottage , also in Hampstead. A house to visit later.

Here is the first verse of that poem.

“ My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

    My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

    One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

    But being too happy in thine happiness,—

        That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

                In some melodious plot

    Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

        Singest of summer in full-throated ease.”

I am not sure what this says about the beer on tap at the Spaniards Inn, in 1819.

Jack Straws Castle, is a large oblong building clad in white weatherboarding and is castellated across its top. The present day building was only built in1964. Its name refers to Jack Straw who lead the Peasants revolt in 1381. It has many literary connections but more recently it is mentioned in Harold Pinters play, ,”No Mans Land.”

The three of us walked on and came across Katherine Mansfield’s house at 17 East Heath Road followed by Daphne de Mauriers house at 14 Cannon Place.The de Maurier family appeared to have a number of houses in this part of Hampstead. We turned downhill into Willow Road  with parkland on our left and came across a modernist terrace of three houses. They are owned and looked after by the National Trust nowadays. An architect named Erno Goldfinger designed this terrace and lived with his family in the larger centre one. To build this terrace Goldfinger demolished two ancient cottages. Local people including Ian Fleming, the writer of the James Bond novels, unsuccessfully complained about the demolition. Fleming got his revenge on Goldfinger later. Goldfinger, incidently, was the architect who built the famous Trellick Tower block of flats north of Nottinghill. 

Erno Goldfinger's terrace.

So, eventually we came to Keats’s cottage at number 10 Keats Road. The road has been renamed in more recent times to denote its famous occupant.  The cottage originally was two houses. You can work out the smaller part of to the left of the main cottage. It was in the smaller extension that Keats stayed.Keats lived for a couple of years from December 1818 with his friend Charles Brown. The adjacent house was lived in by a widow who had a daughter called Fanny Brawne. Keats fell in love with Fanny Brawne and wrote love letters to her from his journey to Rome where he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25.He and Fanny had become engaged to be married.

Keat's cottage in Hampstead. 

Eventually , on this particular days walk we finished  in Admirals Walk.  The house John Galsworthy lived in is next to a taller and larger building with a flag staff and balcony atop its structure called Admirals House. This  is where P L Travers ,who wrote Mary Poppins lived. Admirals House, if you have seen the film of Mary Poppins, or read the book, features as the home of the Banks family and from the roof of which the retired admiral fires off his cannon to mark time.

The day was getting on so we walked back downhill towards Hampstead High Street and Hampstead Station. We had a look into the extensive Waterstones bookshop they have on the high street. We also found a coffee shop  and sat down to rest our legs and chat at the end of our day. Tony felt cynical about the number of blue plaques we came across.They were everywhere in Hampstead.  There were of course the world famous ones but there were so many of people , scientists and mathematicians, for instance, that we had never heard of. They are obviously famous within a different sphere of society. One house we passed was that of the American, Lee Millar, the model and famous World war II war photographer. She had been friends with Picasso and famously posed in the nude sitting in Hitlers bath tub in Berlin after Berlin had been taken by the allies.

21st April 2023

Literary Houses continued and more cemeteries.

A Georgian house in Hampstead.

John was on a trip to Sardinia with Marilana, visiting Marilana’s family. Clive was staying with Marilyn and I, over  here from  Canada. He now lives with Barbara in a log cabin on a forty-five-acre plot of forest near the Algonquin Provincial Park with a multitude of small lakes and forests nearby. 

Tony and myself offered to take Clive on our final walk around the literary homes of Hampstead, to complete the walk ,'Free Tours,' had published on their website. Clive travelled  into London with me on the train from Motspur Park and we met Tony under the clock, our usual rendezvous spot, in Waterloo Station.

Tony, was our  maths and science teacher at St Edwards School, Cheswardine in the 1960s. Clive and Tony had not seen each other for nearly sixty years. Smiles, hugs and handshakes began todays walk.

 

Clive and myself in a café in Highgate High Street.

We travelled on the Northern Line to Hampstead Station and emerged onto Hampstead High Street for one more time.

Hampstead is similar in look to many other outer London suburban towns. Georgian and Victorian architecture , similar branded shops such as Waterstones and Pret a Mange coffee shops but Hampstead is special too. Artisan bakers, greengrocers, restaurants, cafes, unique pubs and local breweries, almost effortlessly populate The High Street. Other places struggle to copy. When you walk the streets of Hampstead you just know that it is a place for the wealthy and the successful creatives. A Lamborghini drove past us. A Ferrari glided past, its throaty voice grumbling. 

Admirals House where P L Travers, the writer of Mary Poppins lived.

To restart our literary tour  we walked up Holly Bush Hill from Highgate Underground Station taking the raised pavement, high above the road level. Hampstead most certainly has its steep hills which inform the muscles in your legs in no time. Walking up Holly Bush Hill a wrought iron handrail on our right hand was postioned for those who need its assistance. We walked up at a slow even pace.  The raised pavement is a sign of the areas past and present wealth. Raised pavements were constructed first in the Georgian period so that fine ladies didn’t get their long dresses dirtied in the mud and sludge of the unmettled road surfaces. Only well off towns and villages could afford a raised pavement. 

Clive outsdie the house which is on the site of Edward Elgar's home. (The Dream of Gerontius.)

Once we had gone uphill we walked down hill past Mount Vernon past high brickwalled gardens, that burst with trees and shrubs guarding the fronts of private houses. Who lives in them now?  Nowadays the great and the good of the 21st century reside behind those elegant facades. We could stand and guess but is that worthwhile? Clive, Tony and I  moved on towards Admirals Walk and Admirals house where P L Travers once lived so that we started this days walk at the very location we finished our last walk.

We walked onwards up Windmill Hill. Probably a windmill once stood here. I am sure it did in bygone days. It is an ideal location for a windmill , high on a windy hill. We passed the poet Joanna Baillies house on Windmill Hill. Then we continued downwards. The road merged with Frognal Rise and we kept on until we reached Mount Vernon. At number 7 Mount Vernon. Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde once lived. The three of us all read Stevenson’s books as children and have seen the films made from his stories. It was quite a thrill to stand outside of where he once lived. 

We walked on to Holly Walk and then came to a small cemetery on our left across the road from St John’s Church in  Church Row.A larger cemetery encircled the church itself. A sign to the smaller cemetery listed names of some  famous people buried in it and showed the location of various graves. We wandered around the gravestones trying to find some of the people listed. We were not too successful.We found some interesting graves all the same. We walked across the road and went into the church. Two gentlemen were talking   at the front of the church near the altar. I stopped to ask them about the location of Peter Cook’s grave who we had failed to find in the smaller cemetery across the road. They didn’t know. I had better luck asking about H.G.Wells house at number 7. They directed us to it. We found number 7 Church Row. Wells, unusually for the time, divorced his first wife,a cousin, Mary Wells in 1894 after three years of marriage. Wells was a notorious womaniser and had many affairs.H G Wells and his second wife, Amy Catherine Robbin, known as Jane,  lived in Church Row from 1909 to 1912.He had two sons with, Jane, George Phillip and Frank Richard. Apparently, his family didn’t like seeing a constant stream of funerals passing the front of their house on the way to the church. They moved out in 1912. 

Having failed to find the grave of Peter Cook comedian, satirist, playwright and screenwriter we discovered that he had also lived at number 17 Church Row. He along with Dudley More were part of our youth. I know Clive and certainly myself would have loved so much to find the rave of Peter Cook. But, we saw his house. I researched Peter Cook’s grave later and discovered that he had been cremated but a small memorial was to be found hidden away at the back of St John’s Church. We had fglanced at the back of the church while we were there. I remember thinking at the time that there appeared nothing to see in the cramped space  and none of us considered looking there more closely.

Clive and Tony outside of Robert Louis Stevenson's house.

In the same street at number 26 Church Row, Lord Alfred Douglas, the infamous lover of Oscar Wilde once lived.

None of these houses had blue plaques commemorating their famous occupants and if hadn’t been for the guide we had printed off we certainly wouldn’t have known about them.

We missed some famous houses unfortunately.  Aldous Huxley lived at 16 Bracknell Gardens. Sigmund Feud lived at 20 Maresfield Gardens. T S Elliot lived for a while at Fairhurst Compayne Gardens.

We walked west towards The Finchley Road and found an old Victorian pub called The North Star. We went in and ordered fish and chips. We drank pints of Neck Oil which is brewed by Beavertown brewery in Enfield, a north London Borough. We have found Neck Oil for sale in pubs all over London. It is a fruity IPA called a session ale, meaning it is low in alcoholic strength.Neck Oil is 4.5% alcohol. A couple of pints is acceptable.  It's usually  served in a glass covered in small, colourful, cartoon skulls. A marketing ploy by the Beavertown Brewery. Session ales are  refreshing, and one pint leads to another and sometimes another. We had two pints each on the day.

We sat in the cool of the pubs Victorian splendour, drank our pints and ate our fish and chips. The three of us walked to Finchley Road Tube Station and got the underground back to Waterloo Station.

 After our four visits to Hampstead we felt we were beginning to know the area. Hampstead is well worth a visit.

A link to the site promoting the literary tour of Hampstead.

info@freetoursbyfoot.com

Highgate and Hampstead, a leafy land of legends. (part two)

 

John and I in Highgate.

24th February 2023. 

John and I returned to Highgate for a second time and got out at Highgate Tube and walked down the High Street which was becoming familiar territory to us both. We soon found Waterlow Park again and walked through its gardens arriving at the gates to Highgate Cemetery on Swains Lane that cuts the two parts of the cemetery into the older West Cemetery and the newer East Cemetery.    We negotiated the graves of the East Cemetery by ourselves. We bought tickets  to join the tour of the West Cemetery later.

Highgate Cemetery was opened in 1839. It was one of the seven cemeteries that were built on the outskirts of London to accommodate the growing number of London's dead. Since Christopher Wren had built his city churches after the Great Fire of London, London churchyards had been the places for London’s dead to be buried. From the late Georgian period into the early Victorian period London’s population was rising fast and the city churchyards could no longer accommodate those who wished to be buried there. ”The Magnificent Seven,” as the new cemeteries were termed, were planned to deal with the exponential increase. Highgate Cemetery alone has an estimated 170, 000 burials. The day John and I were there there was a funeral and burial taking place.

 The cemetery is the last resting place of many famous people and it is easy to get star struck.  Immediately you walk into the cemetery you discover the graves of the literary greats, historians, scientists, actors, artists, publishers and more darkly, past members of the criminal world. 

Bruce Reynolds (1931-2013), the mastermind of The Great Train Robbery (1963)

We walked by ourselves around the newer East Cemetery. Just on our left as we entered we saw, positioned on a slight rise of ground, a small grey granite headstone hollowed out to make a niche for a life size bronze bust of a very serious looking man. It looked life like. It may have been taken from a death mask.  Across the top of the granite stone was written the name, Bruce Reynolds. He was the mastermind of The Great Train Robbery that took place in 1963. I remember it, as an eleven-year-old, in the newspapers and seeing live reports on the BBC on the  black and white television we had at home. The bust of Bruce Reynolds reminded me of the marble busts of Roman senators and emperors Marilyn, and I saw in the Archaeological Museum of Naples a few years ago. It had a sense of somebody serious and all powerful. Looking at the face of Bruce Reynold's bust was a little disconcerting. What is the mind of a criminal?

George Eliot (1819-1880)

We wandered on and found the granite obelisk that marks the grave of George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). I have recently read Middlemarch by George Eliot that was first published in 1871.A tale, told from different points of view, concerning marriage, position in life, money and the lack of it and personal development. In many ways it is a novel of realism and portrays the strengths but more often the weaknesses of the many characters. A modernist novel. It can be pedantic at times in describing characters and preaching a moral viewpoint. George Eliot was a genius. She has been an influence on novelists ever since and is one of the great novelists in World Literature.  Other admirers had planted  flowers at the base of the obelisk marking her grave. She is squeazed in among other headstones.  I am sure these others are worth spending time with but, George Eliot took all our attention in this huddled part of the cemetery. I don’t think we looked at any of the other inscriptions on  headstones around her. John and I were definitely  star struck.

John next to Karl Marx ( 1818-1883).

Just beyond the grave of George Eliot, to our right on the opposite side of the path, was the unmissable giant bronze bust of Karl Marx set on a marble plinth. This has become the most famous of all Highgate’s tombs. Maybe it’s the most famous tomb in the world? I suppose the pyramids of Egypt are up there.

These are the words incised on the marble base. They ring  throughout twentieth century history., 

“ Workers of The World Unite.” Karl Marx.

” The Philosophers of the world have only interpreted the world in various ways.The point is to change it.’”

Somebody had  left a copy of ,The Communist Manifesto, and there were many bouquets of flowers covering the base of the plinth.

Marx and his family were  moved to this location in 1954. He, his wife and other members of his family were originally buried in a very ordinary grave with a small headstone about a hundred yards from the present tomb site. John and I tried to find the original grave. We had a map of the cemetery  given to us at the entrance. At first the map appeared simple and easy to fiollow. John and  I stood on a path that we thought was marked on the map.After a while of looking and looking and trying to find points we could recognise we decided that, unfortunately,  the map was not detailed enough. We located another path that was shown to try and get our bearings.We thought we had found the location of the original grave using the marked path and the site of the 1954 tomb we could see before us a little way off in the distance. We got confused and our location didn’t help at all. You have to realise that Highgate Cemetery is set within woodland. Many trees bar your vision and although it was still winter and there were no leaves on the trees the woodland is dense. So finally we didn’t find the original grave and it has left a feeling of failure. We must have been  close. One day, one or both of us will go back and we will find the original grave of Karl Marx. 

Eric Hobsbawn.

We walked on and I saw the grave clearly named of Eric Hobsabwn. He was an academic and a historian.A British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and capitalism.  I remember reading one of his books when I did a history unit for my Open University degree in the 1980s.  I was thrilled to see his grave. John had never heard of him. 

I do not find cemeteries sad paces at all.I like to read the names and inscriptions on grave stones. Cemeteries are an affirmation of life and living as well as of death.  They remember people who lead lives that added something to the world we are in. 

Patrick Caulfield. "Step down this way."

Then we came across a grave that made me laugh. This particular grave stone  was that of Patrick Caulfield (1936-2005) a pop artist. It is a smooth piece of black granite.It is shaped as a series of neatly cut steps proceding from the top left to the bottom right. Each step has a single letter of the alphabet incised into it perforating the solid stone. Four steps that read from top left to bottom right, D E A D. There is something visceral, giving you a jolt, in that decisive word. It couldn’t be more precise and exact. A whole philosophy in one word.

So we walked around the East Cemetery. Here are a few more we came across. Robert Keating, another artist. Paul Foot, writer and revolutionary. Alan Sillitoe, author. Who of a certain age hasn’t been affected by Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner? Novels about post war working class life. They probably did as much as anything else to influence politics and life in this country in the1960s. Nearby we passed the grave of Corin Redgrave the actor and film star. We also saw the graves of Anna Mahler, sculptor. Bert Jansch, Scottish folk musician and member of Pentangle, Alan Howard, Shakespearean actor and Jeremy Beadle, the popular TV presenter. The resting place of Jim Stanford Horn has a grave stone in the form of a penguin novel  with two of the iconic penguins side by side at the bottom of the design. He was an avid reader. Those who love reading themselevs find this grave a touching tribute. We had only visited the east cemetery, so far. A lot more to come. Where was George Michael buried? He is definitely here but we didn't find him unfortunately.

Jim Stanford Horn (1976-2010)

The time for our guided walk of the older Western Cemetery was approaching. Like any good park or place of entertainment there are toilets near the entrance to the cemetery. We were enlivened for the next part of our cemetery exploration.

We crossed the road to the entrance to the older west part of the cemetery. We walked through the archway of an impressive Victorian gothic gatehouse into a courtyard where many horse drawn hearses over the centuries must have stood. The entrance provides space for a full turning circle for a horse drawn carriage. It is surrounded by a brick built arcade. I presume mourners could have stood under the arches of the arcade out of the rain and snow and wind if the weather was serving up those particular delights on the day. 

The entrance to the Western Cemetery.

A series of steeps steps lead from this entrance area into the environs of the cemetery. A ,”stairway to heaven.” (A little something for you Led Zeppelin fans.) Coffins are carried up these steps and along the paths  to the site of internment or burial.

The lady leading the tour discussed many of the symbolic elements of the graves. Many  are surmounted by stone funery urns with carved drapery slipping from the top of the urn symbolically releasing the soul of the occupant to heaven. Some have Greek pillars broken in half. They have not been vandalised, they symbolise lives cut short.There are many mausoleums of the great and good in  this part. Generals, admirals and the family crypts of  wealthy families. A massive hound lies at the foot of the grave of his master, Thomas Sayer , the greatest pugilist of the mid 19th century.He was a bare knuckle fighter. He only lost one bout in his career. In 1857 he famously defeated, Willam Perry,  the ,”Tipton Slasher.” He retired in 1860. George Wombwell was a menagerist in the late Georgian and early Victorian period. He travelled the country with a wild animal show. His tomb is surmounted by a life size  carving of his favourite lion, Nero. 

George Wombwell ( 1777-1850) Nero keeping him faithful company.

Whilst our guide stopped  by one of the largest mausoleums in the cemetery and informed us about the overall history of the cemetery and told us about this particular mausoleum partly buried in the ground and extensive enough to accommodate a whole family for generations, I nearly fell over a small gravestone positioned just behind us. I nudged John and whispered,”Look who we are standing next to.” A small granite stone,  severed at a sharp angle across the top like a broken slash was the grave of Alexander Litvinenko. I must admit I felt a slight chill go down my spine. The savagery of Vladimir Putin extends to Highgate Cemetery it seems.

Alexander Litvinenko (1962-2006)

Our guide lead us along a sloping pathway up through the wooded cemetery until we came to a large stone entrance flanked by pillars reminscent of an Egyptian temple. This was the entrance to the Egyptian Avenue.

The entrance to the Egyptian Avenue, leading to a rotunda sunken beneath the surface of the ground.

 A tunnel leading from this entrance passed between the bronze doors to crypts ranged on both sides. It opened out into a rotunda area that appeared sunken into the ground. The central drum was the location of more crypts. A circular pathway circled the central drum with further crypts lining the outer wall. One of these had the title ,"columbarium," above an 18th century door. Columbarium at first seems to refer to doves. Within a cemetery it is where funerary urns are displayed. We could not see inside. The bronze door was shut and a security gate was locked in front of it. The cemetery  has been vandalised on a number of occasions. After exploring this sunken world of the dead we ascended steps to ground level.

One part of the cemetery is not open to the public but our guide had the keys to the padlock which gave us entry to an extensive crypt. A long dark corridor,  lighted in places from small skylights, stretched in front of us. The sides of this corridor were lined, floor to ceiling with shelves of coffins . We could read the brass name plaques on many of them. It was here, on one of these shelves, that Charles and Catherine  Dicken’s  daughter Dora was placed  until her grave was ready within the cemetery. Dickens hated the crypt. It is a gloomy and macabre place.

A long tunnel of shelving for coffins. It was here Dicken's daughter Dora was laid before burial. Dickens hated this place

To finish this bit about Highgate Cemetery, after walking past the graves of Beryl Bainbridge and  Elizabeth Siddell as you do, we came across what some people term, the most beautiful grave in the world.  

The grave of Mary Nichols.

That is subjective of course but the grave to Mary Nichols, 

“The darling wife of Arthur Nichols and fondly loved mother of their only son, Harold,” 

must  be up there. Her  grave is  carved in stone as a bed of softly undulating  fabric depicting the softest feather bed you can imagine with a beautiful angel , wings tucked behind, lying on her side on 

top of it. You look and wonder.

There are so many more famous and infamous graves in Highgate. 

Highgate Cemtery was virtually abandoned in the in the mid 20th century. Some of the impressive mauseleums built and owned by wealthy familys had been  abandoned. Later members of familes had no wish to be buried in Highgate. Some family lines had died out. and so many sites were left to moulder and decay. Wild animals and especially birds got inside some of the mauseleums and quicked their dereliction. The cemetery is now owned by a charitable trust, the Friends of Highgate Cemetery which was set up in 1975. The trust acquired the freehold of both the east and west cemeterys by  1981.A book aout the cemtery , "Highgate Cemetery: Victoian Valhala," by John Gay was published in 1984. 

We completed our second visit to Highgate and Hampstead by walking from the cemetery, uphill, back to Hampstead High Street and found The Angel pub. We wanted to go in here particularly because of the blue plaque on the wall outside. 

Graham Chapman,

”A very naughty boy,” 

8th January1944 to 4th October 1989 

…Member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, 

 drank here often and copiously.

I mean, who could possibly walk past  without going in? I walked up to the bar.

"I hope you don't mind me asking? How much is a pint of beer?"

"£7.50, sir." 

Graham Chapman drank here. 

John and I, remembering the eye watering price of beer in The Flask from our previous visit, decided that just this once that price was acceptable. It was still a little eye watering  We had pints of ,’Neck Oil.” John had fish and chips and I had scampi and chips, to go with our beers. We found a window seat looking out on to the high street. It is quite small inside the pub. 

Blimey, Graham Chapman actually frequented this pub. WOW!!!!!! A real thrill for both John and me.

We then got on the tube at Highgate Tube station and made our way to Waterloo and then our respective trains home.