Around London's Magnificent Seven

 West Norwood: a Gothic cemetery with a touch of the millionaire about it

Halfway through what is an exceptionally warm September day, it occurs to me that my attraction for cemetery parks is as much about their history as it is about my disappointment with London’s modern architecture.

As I cycle away from Nunhead Cemetery on Linden Grove, I think of Rowan Moore, The Observer’s architecture critic, and his opinion on many of the capital’s latest vertical additions. One of his more recent pieces dealt with 22 Bishopsgate, a monster of a building at 278 metres high, located a stone’s throw from Liverpool Street.

Moore asks two questions: the first one being, is there such a thing as too big when it comes to such buildings? And the second one is, is so much space needed at a time when remote working and the altered habits of the pandemic might conceivably reduce the demand for conventional office space?

I’m not interested in the second question. It is the first one that has troubled me for almost as long as I’ve been in Britain. 22 Bishopsgate comes only second to the 310-metre Shard in the race to be the tallest building in the UK. Throw in the Gherkin, the Grater and Nine Elms Vauxhall (in reality, the complex sits between Battersea and Vauxhall) and for the last fifteen, sixteen years, we have been looking up most of the time in central London.

The effect of this new trend is that the traditional, low-rise design I came to love so much when I first relocated here is finding less and less urban space. Most architects want to build up, not across. Or, if they build across, they still want to go up. Perhaps, that’s why I feel attracted not only to London’s Magnificent Seven, but also to its parks, green areas and (low rise) estates.

Another reason why I dislike the Shard, the Gherkin et al, is that they all smack of money. This is the new London of overseas investors, dark, fancy, empty flats at night (a lot of property is bought but not occupied) and poor doors (the segregation of inner-city upmarket apartment blocks). No, thank you very much, but that’s not for me. I’d rather hang out in the rundown area in and around Bethnal Green than bloody One Commercial Street.

The world’s first Gothic-style graveyard, specific-designed West Norwood sits on a hill. After a pleasant ride down Dulwich Common (great road infrastructure), I pull up just outside this “Millionaires’ Cemetery”. The reason for the moniker is the number of high-quality mausolea and memorials.

At first sight the formerly known South Metropolitan Cemetery has more in common with Nunhead than with both Tower Hamlets and Abney. Its paths are tidy, its landscaping manicured and its architectural gems clearly signposted. I wonder what autumn here will look like. It must be a festival of colour with so many trees (oak and lime amongst others) providing much-welcomed shade right now. Grade II-listed West Norwood boasts great biodiversity as well. Bats, woodpeckers and tawny owls have found a home here. In addition, a £4.6m awarded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund in 2019 will help restore historic monuments and secure the graveyard’s future for years to come.

Amongst the people buried here, some names are familiar: Baron Julias de Reuter, who went on to found the well-renowned Reuters agency and Sir Henry Tate, founder of the Tate Gallery.

With the sun just past its zenith, I saddle up again and head for the river, this time to cross it back northwards. The next stage of my bicycle journey will take me to two cemeteries in the same borough. Yet, the areas they sit in couldn’t be more different. This is the London many tourists don’t know about. The one where a door can lead the visitor through a hotel-style lobby, whilst another one will take them to a social housing development.

Around London’s Magnificent Seven

Nunhead: from hamlet to architectural gem

The first few days of the ninth month of the year are meant to usher in change. This change is of a slow nature and transition, though. It’s as if summer has trouble vacating its room and autumn is too lazy to move in. The unexpected weather situation plays out in people’s choice of clothes. Instead of long-sleeved tops and hoodies, we have vests, cropped tops and the odd bare-chested, beer-bellied bloke on display on the Regents Canal towpath.

I decide to take the longer route to Nunhead Cemetery; down the canal, Limehouse Basin-bound, instead of the faster and more direct one down Whitechapel and Mansell Street. I’m in no hurry and could do with a break from motorised traffic.

It’s logical that as a cyclist my eyes are fixed either on what’s ahead of me or on the ground. Factor in regular shoulder checks behind me and what this means in reality is that I miss a hell of a lot of what goes on above.

The end of summer signals migration for many birds. Whilst I’m still none the wiser when it comes to our winged friends (this was my homework from the first lockdown and I never got around to completing it), I’m aware that swallows are about to head south once more.

Still riding as carefully as I can, I scan the skies above me every now and then. There are no signs of swallows, or swifts (I often confuse the two). A V-shaped skein of geese passes me overheard, its quasi-military flypast formation a beauty to behold.

What I do notice is the long, white trail of a plane on the cloudless sky. A rare sight just a year ago, these other birds (of a metallic winged nature) are making a quick return to our airspace.

Over the walls of a school on the banks of the Regents Canal, I hear laughter. It’s the sort of laughter that makes me nostalgic for those eleven plus years I worked in primary schools. There’s no sweeter sound to make my heart sing than that of children playing during morning break or at lunchtime, making up their own games, giving a makeover to others or bringing back old ones.

I leave the off-road path and join the westbound traffic on the A1203. Again, I’m surprised by the amount of vehicles on the road. It’s not even noon yet, however it’s a horns-beeping and free-fumes-for-all motor festival here in east London.

Cycling over Tower Bridge and heading south of the river, I wonder (not for the first time) how Londoners feel about the Thames. I was born by the water. The sea was a few minutes away from my flat in Havana. And polluted though the water is, we love sitting by it, on the Malecón (seawall), declaring our love to it. Away from it, almost every single habanero I know feels nostalgic for the sea. But a river is not the sea. The vastness of the latter is limited by the banks of the former. At the same time, this city’s history is closely linked to water. The first settlements were based near the Thames. The current site of the City of London is the original Londonium, named so by the invading Romans who made their way along the river.

We must also take into account the sheer size of London. Would someone living in the sticks (say, Barnet or Bromley) feel the same way about the Thames as someone living in Greenwich or Westminster? Propinquity tightens bonds, in my opinion. A closeness that Wilfred Owen’s ghost feels himself in the poem “Shadwell Stair”, as he moves “along the wharves by the water-house/and through the cavernous slaughter-house”.

Built in 1840, like Abney and Brompton cemeteries, Nunhead was a small village surrounded by market gardens and open fields. Unlike five of the other “magnificent seven” (Highgate Cemetery sits on a hill), Nunhead rises to two hundred feet above sea level at its highest point. On a clear day, in the distance you can see the City of London and its (ugly, in my opinion) all-domineering, towering high-rises, St Paul’s Cathedral and even Alexandra Palace.

The silver lining for the graveyard, especially for its trees and wildlife, came in the 1960s and 70s. Unable to earn any revenue from the grounds, the United Cemetery Company left it to its own devices. Nature took over and the cemetery changed from lawn cemetery to meadow and woodland. Bird species include green woodpeckers, tawny owls and ring-necked parakeets. Amongst the trees, specimens include the horse chestnut, the gingko and the oak.

Nunhead has three Grade II-listed buildings: the two gate lodges and the Anglican Chapel. The latter was destroyed by an arson attack in 1976. Thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund the building was refurbished and made safe and accessible to the public in 2001. It is nowadays used for theatre and music performances.

As I unlock my bicycle outside Nunhead I hear fluttering overhead. I look up and I think I see a couple of swallows criss-crossing the air. But, then, again, they could also be swifts. You never know. And I’m none the wiser.