Having some spare time to kill recently, I thought there could be nothing more pleasant than spending a few hours walking around one of London’s premier graveyards, Brompton.
WORDS: CHRIS O’NEILL
Brompton Cemetery is not at all the dull sort of place where people like you or me will get buried. For a start, the graves there are about a hundred years old – a time when folk took religion quite seriously. So although a lot of the gravestones carry pretty standard death-quotes like ‘The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh”, there are also some seriously morbid epitaphs that remind you how scared people used to be of God; that he used to be wrathful and vengeful and send people to the fiery pit of hell for all eternity before Priests became worried that no one was coming to Church and decided that God would probably forgive us all for our un-christian, decadent lifestyles. He probably won’t though, and we’ll all be furious with Priests for spreading misinformation when we’re0 doomed to Hell.
Jesus, Mercy Mary, Help
A Sinner Saved by Grace
Jesu: Mercy
Sleep on Beloved. Sleep. And Take Thy Rest
Though people these days tend to make out that “when I die I don’t want people to be upset, I want people to have fun”, I don’t think the Victorians felt the same. Looking at their gravestones, I think they wanted you to wail and cry for weeks, wearing only black until the day you die, devoting your life to maintaining a fresh supply of flowers at their grave. But times change, and despite walking through 16.5 hectares of dead bodies, the Cemetery didn’t feel eerie. The most frightening thing was how tame the wildlife are. I thought this guy was going to climb up my leg (the groups of crackheads weren’t great either).
A friend of mine had told me to that Brompton Cemetery is a notorious spot for Cottaging – which I doubt most of the dead Victorians are too thrilled about. I didn’t see any explicit behaviour, but if that’s the case it’s certainly not the glamorous kind of hang-out where you might stumble into George Michael. The ‘talent’ on display was mostly on the wrong end of middle-age, and desperate for action, no matter how grim being buggered over a dead body might be. Besides, they seemed too busy leering at me to hook up with one another. I thought I was pretty smart papping this guy below as an example. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure he knew what was up (look at his eyes).
I did find a stash of gay lifestyle magazines, so maybe they’re not Cottaging at all; just hanging out comparing tans, recommending new bars to visit, listening to David Guetta CDs…
