Bedford Park and Highgate Cemetery

July 2024

Bedford Park

Bedford Park in Chiswick began in 1875 under the direction of Jonathan Carr. It has many large houses in the British Queen Anne Revival style by Norman Shaw and other leading Victorian-era architects, including Edward William Godwin, Edward John May, Henry Wilson, and Maurice Bingham Adams. Its architecture is characterized by red brick with an eclectic mixture of features, such as tile-hung walls, gables in varying shapes, balconies, bay windows, terracotta and rubbed brick decorations, pediments, elaborate chimneys, and balustrades painted white.

Irish lawyer-turned-painter John Butler Yeats’s 1879 decision to move his family to Bedford Park in 187o. He was looking for a more aesthetically pleasing way of life.

By moving to a suburb designed by Jonathan Carr, he was happily ensconced in a community of Carr’s gallery owners, painters, writers, publishers, actors, set designers, and social and political thinkers. This community’s ethos was liberal, progressive, multi-cultural, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, pro-women’s rights and gender equality, somewhat vegetarian, and committed to exploring a wider spirituality.

Highgate Cemetery

I have explored Highgate Cemetery before, but we were treated to a quick private tour while visiting with the VSA, and these are a few new things I saw.

Highgate is suffering from years of neglect and is in the midst of a decades-long project to bring it back to its glory.  Above is a slate door that was smashed in many years ago, with a slate piece added to show the before and after.  The slate would have been patined when it was originally installed, something that was removed in a very bad 1990s restoration project.

As pieces fall from the building, they are placed back on to show what would have been there, as there is no money to restore them to their original state.