Park of the week

15. East Finchley Cemetery

This week I’m writing about a different sort of place. First, it’s the exception to Jack’s rule that we can only go to a park once. Second, it isn’t a park. East Finchley Cemetery (which Jack calls “the fishpond”) is part of our Shabbat afternoon ritual. Every week since the start of lockdown, we have visited it to feed the goldfish in the pond. It means we must have been there over fifty times, even once when the pond was frozen and the food we dropped in sat on top of the ice (I hoped it might still be there when the ice melted).

It’s a beautiful and uncrowded place to walk, with Gothic-style chapels and gate lodges and decorative Edwardian mausoleums, a number of which are listed buildings. Some of the graves date from the mid-nineteenth century and a few of the names on the memorials have given me ideas for characters in stories. Some famous burials include conductor Leopold Stokowski, cartoonist Heath Robinson (see also post number 5 – Pinner Memorial Park), PC Keith Blakelock (murdered in the Tottenham riot) and music hall singer Harry Champion (“Boiled Beef and Carrots”, “I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am“, “Any Old Iron”). There is a plot of military graves from the first and second World Wars.

Despite being close to the benighted North Circular Road there’s no traffic noise. There is a lot of open space, woodland, trees and shrubbery and grassland with naturalised bulbs. It has won a Green Flag Award and was voted cemetery of the year in 2007.  It’s a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation and we’ve seen muntjac deer, a range of woodland birds and, once, a group of people riding penny farthing bikes. 

Here’s a map showing where the fishpond is (the red arrow). 

We drive the long way round, but the quickest is to go down central avenue then right into south avenue and follow a sign to the “LP section” (whatever that stands for). There is a gap in the hedge leading to a grass area with memorial trees planted and the pond is to the right, at the top of a terraced garden of memorial rose bushes.

The main entrance of the cemetery is on East End Road and this is the best one to use if you’re driving. There is also an entrance next to Christ’s College, but for some reason there are barriers across the paths that means you can only see a small part of the cemetery if you’re driving, and not the part where the pond is. There’s no problem with parking once you’re inside. It’s a ten-minute walk from East Finchley station and the 143 bus stops outside.

Judith Field

East Finchley Cemetery, 122 East End Road, London N2 0RZ