Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park
the east end's wild green graveyard
A Magnificent Seven cemetery in the East End that nature has reclaimed, free, now a woodland nature reserve where Victorian graves vanish under trees, brambles and birdsong.
Free to visit · Mile End · Mile End · E3 4PX
Opening: Always open
The last and most easterly of the Magnificent Seven, this was the burial ground for the crowded, often poor East End, and around a third of a million people were laid to rest here before it closed to burials in 1966. Nature has since taken over completely, and it is now a free local nature reserve.
Walking in, you barely register it as a cemetery at first. It is proper woodland, dense with trees, brambles and wildflowers, with the leaning headstones and broken monuments half-swallowed by greenery. Birds, bats and butterflies thrive in this accidental wilderness in the heart of the East End.
Volunteers from the Friends keep the paths open and run events, and it doubles as a community green space and an outdoor classroom. A free, atmospheric and slightly wild escape that tells the story of working London better than any grand monument could.
Getting there: A couple of minutes from Mile End station, with entrances off Southern Grove and Hamlets Way.
Best time to go: Spring for the bluebells and wildflowers, or autumn for the woodland turning. A weekday for near solitude.
Insider tip: Come in spring for the bluebells, which carpet parts of the woodland, and let yourself wander off the main paths where the graves disappear most completely into the trees. It is as much a nature reserve as a cemetery now.
Official site: https://www.fothcp.org
Free things to do in London · London Free Guide