A festival exploring the dead and supernatural has been raising money for London’s historic cemeteries while the city struggles for burial space.
London’s Month of the Dead is a series of events held in October ranging from talks in cemeteries to bat skeleton mounting workshops.
Twenty per cent of ticket sales went towards the preservation of London’s Magnificent Seven Victorian Cemeteries.
Irina Porter, a trustee of the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery, said: “Preserving the historical landscape is very beneficial for the living, as well as for looking after the dead.”
The event comes after a March audit by the Greater London Authority showed London has a severe lack of burial space, with 17 London boroughs set to run out of burial space by 2040.
Porter said the shortage is not as serious a problem as it might seem, citing the rise in cremations.
Suart Dunn, Professor of Spatial Humanities at King’s College London, said that London has faced similar problems in the past, with the Magnificent Seven built to cope with overcrowding after rapid population growth in the 18th and 19th centuries.
He said: “This was a major crisis of public health in the last 200 years of London, and it is catching up with us again now.”
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