Monument to George Edwards Hering

Highgate (Western) Cemetery, Swains Lane, Camden, Greater London, N6 6PJ

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Sandstone headstone with relief carving, c.1879. Read the official list entry to find out more.

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1403272
Date first listed:: 22-Dec-2011
List Entry Name:: Monument to George Edwards Hering
Statutory Address:: Highgate (Western) Cemetery, Swains Lane, Camden, Greater London, N6 6PJ

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Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1403272
Date first listed:: 22-Dec-2011
List Entry Name:: Monument to George Edwards Hering
Location Description:: To west of Oval Path
Statutory Address 1:: Highgate (Western) Cemetery, Swains Lane, Camden, Greater London, N6 6PJ

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:: Highgate (Western) Cemetery, Swains Lane, Camden, Greater London, N6 6PJ

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County:: Greater London Authority
District:: Camden (London Borough)
Parish:: Non Civil Parish
National Grid Reference:: TQ2839786975

Summary

Sandstone headstone with relief carving, c.1879

Reasons for Designation

The monument to George Hering is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Artistic interest: bears high-quality relief sculpture including a portrait of the deceased; * Historic interest: commemorates a noted mid-C19 landscape painter; * Setting: it is located within the Grade I registered Highgate Cemetery and has group value with other listed tombs and structures nearby.

History

George Edwards Hering (1805-79) was born in London, the son of a German bookbinder of aristocratic origins. He studied art at the Akademie in Munich and afterwards spent several years travelling and painting in Italy, Austria and eastern Europe. He returned London in the 1840s and rose to prominence as a painter of (mainly European) landscapes, exhibiting frequently at the Royal Academy and the British Institution; Prince Albert was among those who bought his work. His wife Catherine, née Bromley, was also an artist, and their adopted daughter Jeanie became a popular writer of novels, short stories and children's books.

Highgate Cemetery was the third of London's 'magnificent seven' burial grounds, a ring of suburban cemeteries established in the 1830s and 1840s to relieve pressure on overcrowded urban churchyards. It was the creation of the London Cemetery Company, a joint-stock company founded by the architect and engineer Stephen Geary and formally instituted by Act of Parliament in 1836. A seventeen-acre site on Highgate Hill was laid out as a picturesque garden cemetery with a network of serpentine drives, culminating in a monumental catacomb complex at the top of the hill. Geary himself supplied the initial plans, with assistance from the architect JB Bunning and from the landscape gardener David Ramsay. The cemetery, opened in 1839 and extended to the east of Swain's Lane in 1854, enjoyed great popularity and prestige during the second half of the C19 (famous occupants include George Eliot, Christina Rossetti and Karl Marx), but lack of money and maintenance led to a severe decline during the C20. Since 1975 it has been run on a charitable basis by the present Friends group.

Details

The headstone has a shaped top with a circular recess containing a profile bust of George Hering carved in high relief. The leaded inscription identifies Hering as a landscape painter, and also commemorates his wife Catherine. At the foot of the monument is a bas-relief carving of an artist's palette and brushes.

Sources

Books and journals
Stevens Curl, J, Death and Architecture, (2002), pp.224-7
Other
Cemetery Order Books, held by the Friends of Highgate Cemetery.,
L. H. Cust, rev. Kenneth Bendiner, entry on Hering in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004).,

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.