Would YOU live in a graveyard home? Residents say cemetery lodges have charm and character

Most of us like to get to know our neighbors when they move into a new house. But for Charlotte Goldthorpe, it was a slightly different story.

The fashion teacher bought her cemetery house in 2019. “When I tell people I live in a cemetery, they always ask if it’s haunted.

“Well, no, it’s not,” she says as she walks her dog at Sowerby Bridge Cemetery, in West Yorkshire. “The neighbors are quiet—well, I wouldn’t want them to be noisy.”

Charlotte has lived in the two-bedroom stone house since she bought it for £250,000. It was built in 1851 as a home for laborers tending the graves.

“I love it,” she says. “I wasn’t even selling my old house, but I was just looking through Rightmove and I saw this place and thought it was a beautiful building. It was cheap and it has outdoor space.’

Charlotte was told that funerals were a rarity.

“Then it was three in the first week. It’s an eye opener. I had never been to a real funeral, and now I’ve been to a lot.

I’m not prying, but after the funeral I’m going to pay my own respects to the new people who’ve joined the cemetery — it’s like we’re all living together.”

Many of Britain’s cemeteries were built in the Victorian era, when there was mass migration to cities for work, and birth rates soared.

Lodges were built for keepers but are now rarely used for that purpose and many are still being sold. They make for solid, attractive homes – it’s just how you feel when you’re surrounded by graves.

Charlotte says her Gothic-style house is like a “backward Tardis.” It looks large on the outside, but it is compact on the inside. She installed a wood-burning stove to make it cosy, but it’s the environment she loves most.

“Every time you see someone new and there are the graves of people who lived in the house,” she says. “One lived here in the early 1900s and died on Bonfire Night.”

But it’s a surprisingly happy location, she says. ‘It’s wonderful, because people come to walk their dogs and there’s a lady who takes care of her grandmother’s grave. It’s a nice community and no, nothing goes wrong at night.’

While most houses in cemeteries are former lodges, some more recently built houses have a view of the cemetery from their kitchens.

London’s famed Highgate Cemetery – the resting place of the likes of Karl Marx, Lucian Freud, George Eliot and Russian polonium poisoning victim Alexander Litvinenko (in a lead-lined coffin) – has a striking country house up for sale for £7 million featuring Knight Frank .

The owner, keeping a low profile, says: ‘The cemetery, in our corner, looks like a Victorian garden, like something out of a novel. When the birds are loudest on a summer morning, it’s like waking up in a forest somewhere much more tropical than London.’

The four-bedroom, four-bathroom home has a movie theater and walls of glass that overlook the tombs, creating an extraordinary contrast to the surroundings.

Another unusual feature is the lodge to Alderley Edge Cemetery in Cheshire, which forms a mock Tudor arch above the entrance. Built in 1906, it was used as office space until David Kaushal, a doctor, bought it at auction earlier this year for £273,000.

He is currently renovating it. ‘You can’t get your hands on anything in Alderley Edge, real estate is worth gold here,’ he says. “When I told my friends they were thrilled – sorry for the pun – because it’s like having your own peaceful park.”

And there is a responsibility to keep it peaceful, he says. “You have to be considerate of the people who mourn and pay their respects. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it’s creepy and cool and exciting.”

Kate Lay, director of Landwood Property Auctions, who sold the house, agrees: ‘Living in a graveyard lodge isn’t for everyone, but they often offer exceptional value in desirable areas. The only downside is that your family may be too scared to visit.’