London Month of the Dead festival is celebrating the Music Hall stars buried in Stoke Newington’s Abney Park Cemetery with a guided tour this weekend.
Tour guide Susan Doe will be sharing an insight into performers and artists from the Victorian era. These include the singer George Leybourne, actor Albert Chevalier, comedian Edmund Payne, and cross-dressing performer Nelly Power.
“The big cemeteries in London were underused, underappreciated, and underfunded. We realised that people wanted to do events around death, and so the festival came out of those two things.”
Stephen Coates
The annual festival, which started in 2014, has changed the cultural landscape for cemeteries like Abney Park according to co-founder Stephen Coates. He says, “ten years ago, there was a sense with a lot of people that you should only really go to a cemetery for a funeral or putting flowers on a grave.
“The big cemeteries in London were underused, underappreciated, and underfunded. We realised that people wanted to do events around death, and so the festival came out of those two things.”
Abney Park Cemetery, built in 1840, is one of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ cemeteries hosting events as part of the festival. This year’s theme focuses on the Music Hall era, which was prominent from the 1830s until the first World War.
Music Halls in Stoke Newington during the 1800s included The Alexandra on Stoke Newington Road and The Mildmay Club in Newington Green, but these performers often played at larger venues nearby.
Doe said: “The main Music Hall venues locally were Hackney Empire and Hoxton Hall. Those two still exist as does Wilton’s in Aldgate. There were lots of theatres in Shoreditch which has always been an entertainment hub because it borders the City of London, which for a long time banned such things.”
The London Month of the Dead festival has hosted events across the city throughout October. Coates is “really excited” to use the renovated chapel at Abney Park cemetery once it has finished for theatrical productions and talks in future editions of the festival.
Buy tickets to Susan Doe’s guided tour on the 28th October from 11am – 2pm as part of London’s Month of the Dead festival here. You can also find out more information about the lives of the Music Hall stars buried in Abney Park in their recent documentary.
