Doubled in size

Highgate Cemetery was a great success. The London Cemetery Company felt so encouraged as to acquire a further 19 acres of land on the opposite side of Swain’s Lane in 1854, in addition to the 17 acres of the original cemetery. It was connected to the West side by a tunnel under the road, as required by the founding Act of Parliament. At the same time the Anglican chapel was virtually doubled in size.

All this was by the architectural practice of Frederick Wehnert (1801-71) and John Ashdown (d. 1878) (in partnership only from 1852-57) who are perhaps best known today for laying out Llandudno for Lord Mostyn from 1854, where they also designed many buildings.

Early in 1854 they were also busy laying out the new cemetery for the Lambeth burial board at Tooting, where they designed perhaps two particularly ungainly mortuary chapels. An article in The Builder magazine told how at Lambeth the architects had been careful to provide the most ‘economical appropriation of the ground for interment; the plots being calculated for a regular number of graves, and the intermediate paths so arranged as to be available for graves when the rest of the ground is full’. Just the thing for Highgate’s East extension, where the emphasis was no longer on picturesque landscape but on profit. Geary and Ramsay had done their job in establishing the reputation of the cemetery as a beautiful spot and now it was a matter of cramming in as many graves as possible.

For this reason no doubt the West side, or ‘Old Ground’ as it became known, remained the more prestigious location. In the 1880s the London Cemetery Company purchased additional land on that side and advertised to counter the apparently widespread misapprehension that it was full.