Kensal Green: Historic Cemetery Arboretum With £12 Tours

Kensal Green Cemetery sits on Harrow Road, London W10 4RA, and entry is free. It was consecrated in January 1833, making it the oldest of London's Magnificent Seven, and it spreads across 72 acres between Harrow Road and the Grand Union Canal. Since the clocks went back, the West Gate opposite Hazel Road opens 9am to 5pm Monday to Saturday and 10am to 5pm on Sunday, with bank holidays 10am to 1.30pm.

The idea came from a barrister, George Frederick Carden, who visited Père-Lachaise in Paris in 1821 and wanted something like it for London. He founded the General Cemetery Company in 1830, the enabling Act of Parliament had its final reading in July 1832 in the middle of a cholera epidemic, and the Bishop of London consecrated the first 48 acres in January 1833. The first funeral followed a week later.

Carden himself was pushed out of the company by boardroom rows, but the cemetery survived financial crises, changing fashions and wartime bombing. The General Cemetery Company, which still runs it, has its offices inside the monumental Main Gate. That continuity is part of the appeal: this is a working cemetery with a crematorium, not a museum, and the grounds are still tended as a garden.

Kensal Green has more than 150 buildings and monuments on the National Heritage List for England. The Anglican Chapel at the centre is listed Grade I and the Dissenters' Chapel by the canal is Grade II*. The Neo-Classical buildings were designed by John Griffith of Finsbury, who won the contract even though the Gothic designs of Henry Edward Kendall had won the original architectural competition.

Walk the main avenues and the variety is the point. There are solid classical family mausolea for the Birkbecks and the Pauls, the Gothic extravagance of Captain Charles Spencer Ricketts, a Mughal-style monument to Daboda Dewajee, the miniature art gallery on William Mulready's tomb, an 'Old Armchair' for the composer Henry Russell and a broken-down circus horse for the equestrian Alfred Cooke. Mature trees shade almost all of them.

From the funeral of the Duke of Sussex in 1843 to that of his nephew the Duke of Cambridge in 1904, this was the most fashionable cemetery in England. In autumn the mature trees along the avenues turn and drop leaves across the tombs, and the canal side of the site, where the paths are quieter, is the best place to see how the Victorian landscape and the self-sown woodland have grown together.

The regulars are a mixed crowd. Grave owners still come with flowers, local walkers use the long avenues as a quiet route between Kensal Green and Ladbroke Grove, and amateur historians move slowly from monument to monument with the Friends' guide in hand. The unwritten rule is to keep to the paths and give way to any funeral cortege on the main drive, since this is still a working cemetery with its own crematorium.

The Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery run the guided tours, and from November to February they run on the first and third Sunday of each month. Tours start at 2pm on the steps of the Anglican Chapel, which is at least a ten-minute walk from either gate. They cost £12 per person, or £10 for students, over-65s and English Heritage members, and they are free for members of the Friends.

Booking is essential, because if nobody books, the tour may not run; you can pay on the day as long as you have told the Friends you are coming. Groups are kept to about twenty, and tours last around two hours, usually ending at the Dissenters' Chapel. The catacombs under the Anglican Chapel are closed for safety reasons, but tours visit the smaller catacombs under the Dissenters' Chapel when available, sometimes with tea and biscuits.

There are two gates in daily use on Harrow Road. The Top Gate, just west of Kensal Green Underground station, takes cars and pedestrians and also leads to the independent Roman Catholic cemetery of St Mary. The Main Gate, to the east near the junction with Ladbroke Grove, is pedestrian-only and closes earlier, at 4.30pm. The Ladbroke Grove door by the Dissenters' Chapel opens only for Friends' events.

Bus 18 stops for both the Top and Main Gates, and the 52 and 316 drop you at Kilburn Lane for the Main Gate. Kensal Green station, on the Bakerloo line and the Overground, is the easiest approach by rail. The cemetery closes without notice if strong winds of 45 to 55mph or more are forecast, which matters in November storms, when falling branches are a real risk.

Do not come for the catacombs under the Anglican Chapel, as they are not open to visitors. Come for the monuments and the scale, and come on a tour Sunday if you can, because the paths are long and unsigned and the guides, many of them professional lecturers, make sense of what you are looking at. On a non-tour Sunday, download the Friends' concise guide to find the famous graves yourself.

Leave enough time to get out: the Main Gate locks at 4.30pm and the West Gate at 5pm, and the Main Gate is a long walk from the far end of the site. If winds close the cemetery, walk the Grand Union Canal towpath east towards Little Venice instead, which follows the cemetery's southern boundary and gives you water, narrowboats and a view of the wall.

Address: Kensal Green Cemetery, Harrow Road, London W10 4RA. West Gate hours in winter: Monday to Saturday 9am to 5pm, Sunday 10am to 5pm, bank holidays 10am to 1.30pm. Entry is free. Tour enquiries go to tours@kensalgreen.co.uk, and tours run in all weathers.

Wear walking shoes, as the tours keep to the safest paths but the ground is uneven. Ask Karpo in the Karpo APP to plan a Sunday that starts with the 2pm tour, ends at the Dissenters' Chapel by the canal, and continues along the towpath to Little Venice for an early dinner.