Highgate Cemetery and Tower Bridge

(22/01/09)

I've been having the odd cultural weekend lately, lapping up some of the sights around London. A couple of weeks ago some of us took off to check out Highgate Cemetery.

It was a pretty cold weekend, the pond in the park on the way was frozen over:

To get in to the western part of Highgate Cemetery, you have to go on a guided tour, past the double chapel:

and in to the court yard:

and then off ya go, in to the trees!

The Victorians really celebrated death, making some fantastic grave sites:

The whole area was left to totally overgrow in the 1970's:

And they're slowly chopping back the undergrowth to reveal all sorts:

Here's the entrance to the Egyptian styled section:

The ring of graves:

You can just see the ring of graves in the satellite photo, near the north end of the cemetery:

Bridge, all cheery that I've taken her to another cemetery:

This rather huge monument was set up by some rich dude for a little girl who died:

Here's what it looks like inside, with an angel holding her:

Back to more wandering around through the trees:

The guy who died here was a famous boxer in London and when his dog died they added a statue of him on top:

I wild guess that the person who died here liked horses:

A grave showing an Angel lying down which is apparently rather rare:

More overgrown graves:

On Sunday, we took off to Tower Bridge, which is near city hall:

Wandering across Tower Bridge to get to the entrance where you get to go up inside:

The view over the Tower of London at the top:

Down the Thames towards Canary Wharf in the distance (centre left):

The other side towards HMS Belfast, with the city on the right and St Paul's poking up just off centre:

I checked out Tower Bridge with Bridge (tee, hee) Andrew and James:

Here's James helping Andrew see inside the old boiler:

The steam engine used to power the lifting of the bridge:

And one last twilight pic:

By Tony Baker: email