Latest news with #HighgateCemetery
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Highgate cemetery families confront bosses in row over new building
Dozens of grave owners confronted Highgate cemetery's bosses and their architects this week in a growing row over a maintenance and toilet block in a part of the graveyard where almost 200 people were recently buried. The cemetery called Tuesday's private meeting in an attempt to placate objectors by setting out adjustments to a new building that is part of an £18m redevelopment of the graveyard. But the meeting descended into heckles, chants, a walkout, legal threats, demands for compensation and accusations that cemetery was putting the needs of tourists above mourners. A recording of the meeting, heard by the Guardian, revealed unanimous and often furious opposition to what grave owners have called 'the bunker'. The controversial block is due to be located on the mound, an area of the cemetery of about 170 recent graves including those of the sociologist Prof Stuart Hall, the artist Gustav Metzger, and the critic Tom Lubbock. Among those objecting were the actor Bertie Carvel, whose mother, Pat, was buried on the mound in 2019. He told the meeting it was 'crazy' to locate the 'brutalist' building in part of the cemetery 'most frequented by active mourners'. Pleading with the cemetery's managers, he said: 'I'm sure it is not deliberately insensitive but given the strength of feeling please, please, please will you stop. Go away and rethink.' His fellow actor Pam Miles demanded that the cemetery pay for the cost of exhuming the remains of her actor husband, Tim Pigott-Smith, if the scheme goes ahead. 'It leaves us no option but to exhume. In the circumstances it would be fair to expect you to repay us for these expensive graves.' Staff from Hopkins Architects, who designed the scheme, were repeatedly heckled and shouted down as they argued the building could not be placed in any other part of the 14.5-hectare (36-acre) graveyard. A lawyer, who afterwards asked not to be named, said he and others were planning to sue the cemetery for breach of contract. The man, who owns a double plot where his partner his buried, told the meeting: 'What we bought was a site with open views and you are changing that. You need to think about whether there are potential legal ramifications from people like me if you carry on with this.' Separately, a letter to the cemetery's trustees signed by more than 30 grave owners, claimed the charity had breached consumer rights of those who had recently bought plots by failing to inform them of the plan to redevelop the cemetery. It also threatened to report the trust to the Charity Commission over consultation failures and reputational damage to the cemetery. And it warned they were prepared to allege mismanagement to the National Heritage Lottery Fund, at a time when the cemetery is seeking £18m of funding for the redevelopment. At the meeting architects defended the building. One denied it was brutalist, saying: 'That's just not correct. There's more poetry to it than that.' One of the objectors shouted: 'Bollocks.' Undeterred, the architects outlined proposed changes to the block including removing an accessible toilet and reducing the height and width of the building. At this point Natalie Chambers, whose parents are both buried on the mound, left the meeting in protest. As she left she said: 'I'm appalled. You don't listen to us one bit. My father was in the Warsaw ghetto. And you are so disgusting I don't even want to come to the cemetery any more.' There followed a chant from the room of: 'We don't want the building.' A screenwriter, Anna Seifert-Speck, whose husband was buried on the mound in 2019, said: 'We are asking you to reconsider bulldozing over our complaints. Lowering the thing a little bit isn't going to work, it's not want we want.' Another grave owner said: 'It's a graveyard for us. It's not a tourist site.' A barrister said the mound area was the 'worst possible' location for the building. 'There is a concentration of nothing but contemporary graves there. That's why you have so many people in this room. My young daughter lies there. 'You must see that the notion of having toilets right next to the graves of loved ones causes pain and anguish. The solution is simple: don't build on the mound.' Speaking after the meeting, Carvel said: 'Mourning in a cemetery ranks higher than visiting a place of historic interest. The force of those arguments must have rung loud to anyone with an ounce of humanity. But we are also dealing with a corporate decision-making process and I remain somewhere between anxious and cynical about the extent to which that organisation will look itself in the mirror and admit it was wrong.' The architects and trustees agreed to reflect on the feedback and report back to the grave owners in the coming weeks. Elizabeth Fuller, the chair of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust, acknowledged failures in the way recent grave owners had been consulted about the plans and pledged 'better communication in the future'. At the start of the meeting she said: 'As required by the planning process, and by [the] reality [of the site], we have had to balance the benefits and harms of all constituent elements. We will commit to amending our plans wherever possible.'
The Guardian
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Families oppose ‘horrific' plan for Highgate cemetery toilet block
Families who have relatives buried in Highgate cemetery have threatened to exhume the remains of their loved ones over plans to build a toilet block on the burial ground as part of an £18m redevelopment of the UK's most visited graveyard. Among those opposed to the plans are the family of the actor Tim Pigott-Smith, who described the project, which also includes the building of a new gardener's hut, as 'horrific'. Other bereaved family members, including the widow of the sociologist Stuart Hall, have expressed outrage at what they say is an insensitive scheme. Tom Pigott-Smith, a violinist, said the toilet block would be two metres from his father's grave and would ruin the tranquility of an area of the cemetery known as the mound. 'We have applied for a licence to exhume, as have other families,' he told the Guardian. The owner of another grave, who did not wish to be named, said she was also prepared to pay the £3,000 cost to exhume her husband, and would demand reimbursement from the cemetery. Anna Seifert-Speck is also considering exhuming the remains of her husband, Simon Speck, a sociologist who died in 2019. 'I am thinking of exhuming him. I'm planning to be buried there myself and I'm not prepared to be put behind a wall. It is over my dead body, in both senses of the term.' Pigott-Smith's widow, the actor Pamela Miles, said the building would be a 'horrific' intrusion to a 'wonderfully tranquil place'. She said that before Pigott-Smith died in 2017, they had loved going to the cemetery after doing charity readings on the site. 'I bought a double grave on the mound when my husband died, intending when I died to join him there,' Miles said in a planning objection to Camden council. She added: 'Grief is a very powerful emotion and needs peace and quiet in beautiful surroundings. This building is a disgrace and an insult to caring loved ones.' She also accused the cemetery's owners of being 'grossly underhand' in failing to consult grave owners about the plans. Catherine Hall, an emerita professor of history at University College London, said she was not considering exhuming her husband's remains but was 'very distressed' by the planned building. 'It's awful and it's so close to Stuart. It must be altered. I don't see how Camden can pass it with such strong opposition.' She added: 'The building would impinge in deeply troubling ways on the vistas, the peace and the tranquillity that are so important to our capacity to visit Stuart's grave and mourn his passing.' Others objecting to the building say it would spoil the views looking south from Karl Marx's tomb. Sara Wood, the widow of the architect Nicholas Wood, who died in 2021, described the building as an 'urbanised box' with 'prison-like windows'. In her objection to the plans, she wrote: 'The path from the Karl Marx tomb will have an intrusive garage-like shed poking up, and his actual burial place will lose its quiet, isolated, historic charm.' The owners of the site, the Friends of Highgate Cemetery (FHC), have promised to look again at the details of the proposed building but they claim that no alternative site is available. Hall said: 'They say they've looked at everything, but have they? I'm disturbed and upset by the insensitivity of the trustees to the feelings and expectations to those of us who are grave holders.' Ian Dungavell, the chief executive of FHC, said: 'We have apologised for the upset that the proposals have caused.' He said revised plans for the gardener's building, including changing the entrance to a lower level and preventing public access to the toilet, would be discussed with grave owners at a meeting on 3 June. But he defended the location of the building: 'We wish could put it somewhere else, but despite extensive looking we haven't been able to come up with another location.' He added: 'There are other buildings in the cemetery that are very close to graves. These are facilities for the gardening team who look after the entire 36-acre site.' Dungavell conceded that grave owners should have been consulted earlier in the planning process, and blamed the delay on the cemetery's database. But he said those who objected still had an opportunity to influence the plans.
Times
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Times
Highgate Cemetery — London's place to be seen dead in
Even the most ardent communists have selfish needs. An indication of the priorities of those who take the Northern line to Archway and walk 20 minutes uphill to visit Highgate Cemetery can be seen in the order of information on a sign at the entrance. 'Toilets, right. Marx, straight on.' They put Karl Marx in the far-left corner, naturally, of the eastern side of the 36-acre cemetery, his remains moved by the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1954 from the modest grave on a side path where they were interred in 1883, to a more prominent spot under a vast bronze bust upon a marble plinth. Nothing's too good for the champion of the workers. He now rests for eternity opposite the grave of
