Nunhead Cemetery Open Day 2019

Can it really be twelve years since I first went to the Open Day at Nunhead Cemetery? It was my first outing with London Gothic, the occasion I met Lady Minster and the Young Lord Declan, Ms Kittywitch and Lady Wildwood, who have become such good friends. It poured with rain that day back in 2007, while Saturday's weather was rather better than the forecast. Still, I've been often enough to make taking new views of the monuments difficult, and I find myself wandering off the main paths and picking my way through the undergrowth, which you shouldn't really do. I discovered, among other things, a faceless stone dog poking its tongue out, and a weird drum-like tomb with six diminutive memorial stones round its base, part-swallowed in ivy and very hard to photograph. I'd never come across anything quite like it. 

The moods of the main avenues do change, of course, and there are always the other visitors to the cemetery to add some interest. The Goth lady out with her son in the snap below was actually finding it very hard to detach the yappy little dog from her skirt, while its owner, sat on a bench out of sight in this image, made unhelpful comments. 

I gatecrashed a tour of the chapel undercroft, a dank, dripping space full of disappointingly modern coffins ('Even the marine ply finds it tough standing up to the damp' commented the guide).

I think Nunhead remains my favourite of the circuit of cemetery open days around London, and not just for reasons of nostalgia. It has a more community feel than a couple of the others, for instance, and the cemetery itself combines picturesque wilderness with a degree of accessibility. I'm always surprised that so many people come. Mind you, that nice samosa stand whose produce I enjoyed in about 2012 has never come back ...