My post-Christmas leave is a couple of weeks past now. My only adventure beyond the immediate area was a trip to see the Dulwich Picture Gallery after which I called in at West Norwood Cemetery. West Norwood is one of the 'Magnificent Seven' 19th-century cemeteries which ring London, opened in 1836, and, though not as famous as Highgate or Abney Park (the latter the only one I have yet to visit), still shelters a variety of interesting monuments. You enter through a vast low-arched gate and first come across a strange mortuary chapel looking like a cross between a rocket and a tent with a figure of Our Saviour on the top, and beyond it a massive drum-like mausoleum apparently inspired by Roman forebears. There is a ramshackle area devoted to the transplanted burials of a City parish, and rows and rows of monuments lining the sweeping paths.
The earlier part of the day was awful, the rain so heavy that the world outside the windows of my train was barely visible at all, but by the time I was at West Norwood there was bright sunshine raking across the tombstones. However there wasn't much time to take snaps before that helpful sunlight disappeared behind St Luke's Church on the hilltop.
The great glory of the cemetery is the Greek Necropolis, an amazing area of monuments erected by London's Greek community and the most European section, perhaps, of any British burial ground - temples, chapels, carving and mosaic in great confused profusion.
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