In death, as in life, it is expensive to have famous people as your neighbors.
There is hardly any space left at Highgate Cemetery, a Victorian graveyard in north London where Karl Marx, George Michael and George Eliot are buried, along with 170,000 other Londoners. The price of a grave to rest in esteemed peace? It starts at 25,000 British pounds, or $31,700.
That cost gained attention in British media this week, after the historic site notified the public it had begun a process of adding new gravesites.
Many pointed out the capitalist irony of such a high price tag, suggesting that the large fee for a plot near Karl Marx would make the so-called father of communism “turn in his grave.” Marx’s tomb is a major draw for the cemetery, and visitors pay 10 pounds, or about $12, to explore the grounds.
“Cemeteries are quite expensive places to maintain,” said Ian Dungavell, the chief executive of the charity that manages Highgate Cemetery, adding that dwindling space on the property contributed in part to the high cost of being buried there. “We’re still dealing with a very limited resource.”
(There was “no uplift,” he said, for being in Marx’s vicinity. “That’s just the price.”)
But the group’s seemingly capitalist approach is part of an existential problem that other cemeteries, in Britain and elsewhere, are also facing: How does a burial ground continue operating if it is running out of space?
‘We have a massive burial space problem.’
Cremations are popular in much of Britain, according to surveys from the Cremation Society that suggest more than 70 percent of the deceased have opted for that method in the past two decades. In comparison, about 59 percent of the deceased in the U.S. were cremated in 2022.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
