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Update: Original hosts server crashed, resulting in lost pictures. Old pictures from historical visit replaced 7th May 2017:
In June of 1970 I really was quite young. The group I hung out with were always looking for things to do, me included. One Sunday evening/Monday morning, we discussed a cemetery we’d read about locally, Nunhead Cemetary.
Apparently, it was deserted, overgrown and quite unkempt. Sounded like fun so after leaving the dance hall at 11pm, we went looking for it. First, we wound up at a cemetery in Brockley, which wasn’t overgrown or scary at all. Still, we went for a walkabout by moonlight there and said hello to the dead people.
Drove around, eventually found Nunhead Cemetary. It was locked up. We walked the perimeter, walked along a lonely walk bordering a reservoir the locals had named ‘The Jack’ cos everybody got mugged there. But by now it was at least 1am, the muggers had gone home.
Climbed the wall, found ourselves amongst overgrown undergrowth and broken tombstones. Very spooky. After struggling through almost jungle-like growth, brushing cobwebs from our eyes and ignoring the bats, we found ourselves at the centre of the cemetery, the Chapel. Which had a crypt.
Everything was locked, but we found a window at ground level, forced it open and dropped down into the crypt, all six of us. There were six of us males and one girl, Lynne, me mate Roy’s sister. She stayed outside.
What we saw there spooked us, in short, three of us crapped ourselves and wanted to go (I was one of those) and the other three thought it was a big jolly.
The crypt as I remember was either hexagonal or octagonal and each wall had spaces in it for coffins, kinda like a beehive. Other people had been there before us, coffins had been pulled out to the ground and opened and there were what looked like Satanic symbols spray painted on the walls. Most disturbingly, there were a couple of child coffins, emptied. You can see one of those in the photos above.
We only had two torches, but we saw bodies over a hundred years old, including a judge who’d been buried in a lead lined coffin. There wasn’t much left of his face but his clothes – all lace and velvet – were still pretty much intact. His coffin had been opened by previous visitors. We just looked. Somebody, one of us, stumbling around in the dark, put their foot through the chest of a corpse and asked for a torch to be shone at their feet to wonder what it was they’d trodden in.
That night, after we left, I slept with the light on. Oddly, I was working for local newspaper at the time and ran a story on the desecration of the cemetery. I’d like to think that story led to the crypt’s final restoration, but I don’t know.
Fast forward, and the place has now been taken over by Southwark Council and is undergoing a gradual restoration.
In the late seventies the chapel suffered an arson attack which destroyed much of the interior and the roof, but the photos below show that it’s still quite a striking building.
I hadn’t been able to visit the place for years but I drove past just over a week ago and noticed the pedestrian gate was open, so I went and visited. It really is quite a unique place. Very peaceful, very interesting and you’d never imagine you’re in almost central London, folks walking their dogs there.
A lot of the graveyard is overgrown, many gravestones overturned, crumbling and in need of restoration, but it’s getting there. It sure was weird going there again after all these years.
Below are photographs, the first lot on my first visit, where if you study you can make out corpses. Some are bad quality but I was, after all, rather nervous at the time
The rest of the photographs give a picture of how the cemetery is today.
Apparently, it was deserted, overgrown and quite unkempt. Sounded like fun so after leaving the dance hall at 11pm, we went looking for it. First, we wound up at a cemetery in Brockley, which wasn’t overgrown or scary at all. Still, we went for a walkabout by moonlight there and said hello to the dead people.
Drove around, eventually found Nunhead Cemetary. It was locked up. We walked the perimeter, walked along a lonely walk bordering a reservoir the locals had named ‘The Jack’ cos everybody got mugged there. But by now it was at least 1am, the muggers had gone home.
Climbed the wall, found ourselves amongst overgrown undergrowth and broken tombstones. Very spooky. After struggling through almost jungle-like growth, brushing cobwebs from our eyes and ignoring the bats, we found ourselves at the centre of the cemetery, the Chapel. Which had a crypt.
Everything was locked, but we found a window at ground level, forced it open and dropped down into the crypt, all six of us. There were six of us males and one girl, Lynne, me mate Roy’s sister. She stayed outside.
What we saw there spooked us, in short, three of us crapped ourselves and wanted to go (I was one of those) and the other three thought it was a big jolly.
The crypt as I remember was either hexagonal or octagonal and each wall had spaces in it for coffins, kinda like a beehive. Other people had been there before us, coffins had been pulled out to the ground and opened and there were what looked like Satanic symbols spray painted on the walls. Most disturbingly, there were a couple of child coffins, emptied. You can see one of those in the photos above.
We only had two torches, but we saw bodies over a hundred years old, including a judge who’d been buried in a lead lined coffin. There wasn’t much left of his face but his clothes – all lace and velvet – were still pretty much intact. His coffin had been opened by previous visitors. We just looked. Somebody, one of us, stumbling around in the dark, put their foot through the chest of a corpse and asked for a torch to be shone at their feet to wonder what it was they’d trodden in.
That night, after we left, I slept with the light on. Oddly, I was working for local newspaper at the time and ran a story on the desecration of the cemetery. I’d like to think that story led to the crypt’s final restoration, but I don’t know.
Fast forward, and the place has now been taken over by Southwark Council and is undergoing a gradual restoration.
In the late seventies the chapel suffered an arson attack which destroyed much of the interior and the roof, but the photos below show that it’s still quite a striking building.
I hadn’t been able to visit the place for years but I drove past just over a week ago and noticed the pedestrian gate was open, so I went and visited. It really is quite a unique place. Very peaceful, very interesting and you’d never imagine you’re in almost central London, folks walking their dogs there.
A lot of the graveyard is overgrown, many gravestones overturned, crumbling and in need of restoration, but it’s getting there. It sure was weird going there again after all these years.
Below are photographs, the first lot on my first visit, where if you study you can make out corpses. Some are bad quality but I was, after all, rather nervous at the time
The rest of the photographs give a picture of how the cemetery is today.
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