We are just now back from a trip to England, and the last thing I saw is the first thing on my mind to write about. We visited Nunhead Cemetery, one of the Magnificent Seven Victorian-era cemeteries on the outskirts of London.

For the Victorians, death was an everyday occurrence, a part of life interwoven with the rest. Loved ones of every age died slowly or suddenly, with terrible frequency.  Emotional bonds were constantly being torn apart by death, lives churned again and again.  I find it difficult to think how they survived being crushed over and over and over.

Nunhead Cemetery opened in 1840 and was owned and operated by the London Cemetery Company, which did very good business during Victorian times. Then, as wages increased, cremation became legal, and people’s attitudes about death shifted (WWI especially seemed to turn people off from the idea of glorifying death), the company struggled and finally went bankrupt in the late 1960s.

In the 1980s The Friends of Nunhead Cemetery formed and gained rights to the grounds and began restorations and reopened the cemetery to the public.

It’s an extraordinary place. The original plan had been to create a park-like setting, where families could come and gather, have picnics, socialize. The idea, said our guide, was to “celebrate death.” After all, it was an inevitable part of life.

Memorials were elaborately decorative and romantic, with lots of fanciful shapes and designs. Certain symbols were common: The downturned torch meaning life snuffed out, the broken column meaning life broken off. I loved the two hands clasped, which meant that although one spouse had died the other promised to rejoin them in eternity. I also liked the snake making a ring, tail in mouth, symbolizing the circle of life.

The place is wildly overgrown and is aptly described in one guidebook as “a woods with graves in it.”  You can walk off the gravel paths and into the trees, and graves are everywhere. Yet I found it very peaceful and lovely, not creepy at all. It felt right to me, all those tombs being reclaimed by Nature.

I wonder though if that’s what the Victorians had in mind. It surprised me, actually, how quickly the place had gone to ruin. Tombstones lay everywhere, toppled and cracked, the lettering worn illegible. Statues lacked limbs, monuments had chunks missing. The 1800′s…100-plus years ago…not so very long ago, really.

• How do you feel about cemeteries?
• What do you think about our modern-day perspectives on death, vs. those of other time periods?

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    Last reviewed: 1 Sep 2010