Circle of Lebanon

Another from the archives of long ago:
When I was living in the North London dump of Finsbury Park, one of my dump-mates wanted to go exploring Highgate Cemetery, and find the sunken mausoleum that featured on one of Ringo Starr's album covers. I found out that tours were possible, but only at certain times of the day when the light was not suitably morbid for crypt shots, and besides, photography was not allowed anyway. So we hopped on a bus and made our way to the cemetery shortly before sunset one day. We discovered that the cemetery is guarded by vicious doberman pinchers - or so the sign proclaimed - and completely surrounded by a wall that easily rivals those in Sandton, unusual for London, apart from the prisons. Actually, it wasn't completely surrounded - bordering the cemetery to the south was a row of apartment buildings, separated from the cemetery by a measly four foot chicken wire fence, and a wide thicket of brambles. The fence was no problem, the brambles more so, but we pushed our way through, and suddenly realised that we were walking over ancient graves, or at least graves around 150 years old, since the cemetery was only opened in 1839. Some of them had been opened, the huge stones covering them pushed to the side and covered in brambles. Eventually we found ourselves on an overgrown path of sorts, that led past many interesting monuments to people long deceased, and one grave covered from top to bottom in still-fresh arum lilies. Eventually we found the sunken mausoleum my friend had come to see - a large sunken circular passage with doors leading to individual crypts on either side, with a large tree growing in the central island. Despite being there at dusk, the place had such a sense of calm that the only thing that chilled us was the sound of the dobermans barking. We decided that we didn't feel like having to explain why we were there after lights out and managed to to find our way safely back through the thicket...


The Circle of Lebanon (captured on Agfa Scala - a divine black and white slide film - scanned as a 32bit RGB image and processed using HDR techniques that I can't seem to replicate - all experimental, but rather effective in the end!)