A hilltop Georgian high street beside a wooded Victorian cemetery of catacombs and avenues.
What Highgate looks like
The High Street runs along the old Great North Road at the top of the hill, lined with two and three storey Georgian terraces in brick with stone dressings and shopfronts at ground level. opens off it, a small paved square closed in by the same brick fronts. , a row of townhouses on the square's north side, dates from 1683.
's red brick Victorian buildings front North Road, next to the Chapel of St Michael. stands nearby on South Grove, built on the highest ground of any church in London, its spire of Bath stone topped with a cross of Portland stone.
The cemetery, split by Swain's Lane into the West and East sides, dates from 1839. The Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon, on the West side, cut catacombs and vaults into the hillside under old trees. stands on the East side, a single large monument set among the headstones.
A 1930s modernist apartment block stands on North Hill, a plain break from the brick terraces below it. runs down the eastern slope of the village, next to the cemetery.
Shot in Highgate
, on Swain's Lane, has drawn several productions to its catacombs and avenues. Taste the Blood of Dracula used the West Cemetery for its 1970 finale, and the series SS-GB filmed a wartime funeral procession along its paths in 2017. Its two sides work differently on screen, the overgrown West Cemetery for gothic set pieces and the more open East Cemetery for a single named grave.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, 2018
Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon
The Crimes of Grindelwald used the Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon as the film's own burial ground. The columns cut into the hillside lead down into a sunken ring of vaults under a cedar tree.
Hampstead, 2017
Karl Marx's tomb
Hampstead brings its two leads together at Karl Marx's tomb in the East Cemetery. The bronze bust sits on a granite plinth under trees, with headstones on the slope behind it.
What Highgate can double for
Marlborough High Street in Marlborough, Wiltshire
Marlborough's High Street keeps the same two and three storey brick terraces as Highgate's own High Street, with sash windows and shopfronts at ground level from the same period. Both run as a single continuous parade rather than a scattered row. Marlborough's High Street is far wider than Highgate's, so a tight frame along the shopfronts holds the match better than a wide one. Its colonnaded pavement on one side would need to stay out of shot. Try searching Georgian high street shopfronts now.
Undercliffe Cemetery sits on a steep hillside the same way as Highgate's West Cemetery, with grand mausoleums and obelisks among mature trees on its terraced slope. Its outlook over the city below is a wider view than Highgate's own close, overgrown paths. The gritstone of Undercliffe's monuments is darker than Highgate's stone and brick vaults, so close shots of individual tombs would need dressing to match. Its paths are more open than the narrow, tree-covered avenues at Highgate. Try searching steep Victorian hillside cemetery now.
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