Thanks to everyone who attended my talk ‘Gothic Angels of Death’ at Highgate Cemetery this October for the London Month of the Dead. As ever Stephen Coates was a brilliant host and tour guide, enabling me to see Highgate at dusk (including spotting a fox reclining on one of the monuments).
I really enjoyed talking about the Gothic aspects of the Victorian cemetery and the ways in which we can interpret cemetery angels in relation to notions of family, femininity and memorialisation between the 1850s and the 1930s. Hearing more from the international audience and the tour guides about cultural differences in memorialisation, guardian angels and angels in film was hugely beneficial, and I now have more questions to follow up about changes in cemetery architecture and aesthetics in the twentieth century.
At the moment I’m struggling to find a way to link my slides to this page, as the file is too big. Hopefully I can create a longer post with more images and a resources list. In the meantime you can email me on e.liggins@mmu.ac.uk if you’d like me to WeTransfer them across to you. I’m also happy to answer any questions via email too.
If you’d like to support our project on Gothic and Heritage, please take 5-10 minutes to fill out the short survey here: Thanks so much for contributing to research into this area.
