Designers of Highgate Cemetery

THE ARCHTECT

Stephen Geary (1797-1854) had an entrepreneurial streak which attracted him to the bold new schemes so popular in the early nineteenth century. Apart from Highgate Cemetery, the most prominent of these was the much-derided monument to George IV which gave its name to King’s Cross – a police station with a lumpy statue on top.  Paid for by public subscription, it had become a beer shop before being demolished by public demand in 1845. His Royal Panarmonion scheme (1829), a pretentiously-named entertainment complex, ended with his bankruptcy. He was surveyor to several railway companies.  He also registered a variety of patents to do with things such as paving streets, fire escapes and improving the distribution of water. He entered the 1831 architectural competition for Kensal Green, but was unsuccessful.

Geary claimed to have been the ‘projector’ of the West London and Westminster Cemetery Company, responsible for laying out Brompton Cemetery, and was appointed architect in July 1837. David Ramsay was appointed ‘landscape gardener and contractor’ in November. The next year, despite Geary having already prepared designs, the directors decided to hold a competition instead. Geary resigned and sued for compensation.  He was also architect to the Brighton Cemetery Company and the Gravesend and Milton Cemetery Company.

THE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT

David Ramsay  (1795-1852) was an ambitious landscape gardener, nurseryman and contractor, who ran the Stanhope Nursery, Old Brompton. He described himself as a ‘New Ground Workman’, ‘garden architect’ and ‘landscape engineer’ and he promised ‘Gardens, plantations, pleasure-grounds &c. designed and planted on the most approved principles, derived from extensive practice. All kinds of works as above executed in every part of the kingdom.’ He also took on grounds maintenance contracts, such as for the Vestry of St George’s, Hanover Square, and the Office of Woods and Forests. In 1835 he gained the contract for maintaining the grounds and digging graves for the General Cemetery Company at Kensal Green, but the arrangement was not a success and was terminated in 1836.

His nursery stock was extensive, running to over one million plants: 400,000 roses in 500 varieties, hardy deciduous trees, shrubs and evergreens, as well as 20,000 ‘of the choicest sorts of fruit trees’. Loudon was a great admirer, describing Ramsay as ‘an enlightened, liberal, and generous-minded man… He is forming a species of representative system, to embrace only those trees, shrubs and plants which will serve as ornaments to gardens and pleasure-grounds.’

He joined the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1832. In the early 1840s he was contracted to make the carriage roads at East Cowes Botanic Garden, adjacent to the Osborne estate, Isle of Wight, but soon took over the management of the gardens entirely, including the layout and planting, creating an enormous ha-ha, terrace walks and trenching, and bringing several ship-loads of trees and shrubs from his London nursery. The site has now been built over.