Highgate Cemetery

The London Cemetery Company, founded in 1836 by the architect and civil engineer Stephen Geary, laid the ground out and opened it in 1839 as the Cemetery of St James; the Bishop of London consecrated it in May 1839 (NHLE 1000810). The original site was 17.5 acres, about 7.3 hectares, and took in part of the grounds of Ashurst Manor, once owned by Sir William Ashurst, Lord Mayor of London in 1693. It doubled in size in 1854 with the East Cemetery extension across Swain's Lane, connected to the west side by a passage under the lane so that coffins could be carried from the chapel to the graves. By 1888 there were more than 25,000 graves, with an average of four bodies each. The Egyptian Avenue of about 1838–39, probably by J B Bunning, is an avenue of catacombs cut into the hillside and built in false perspective to appear longer than it is; the outer ring of the Lebanon Circle is by Thomas Porter, about 1870. Both are Grade I listed, NHLE 1271935. The Terrace Catacombs of 1838–39 are Grade II listed, NHLE 1378923. Individual monuments carry their own entries, among them the Grade II Julius Beer mausoleum, NHLE 1378887, and the Grade II tombs of Michael Faraday, NHLE 1378950, of Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddall, NHLE 1378931, and of the Dickens family, NHLE 1378894. The Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust states that it receives virtually no government funding and that 'it costs at least £1.4 million a year to keep the Cemetery open'.