Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park

The lowdown

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.