The Northern Colonnade

The Northern Colonnade is a cemetery colonnade and catacombs built between 1832 and 1833 by John Griffith, who was the Surveyor to the General Cemetery Company. Constructed from Portland stone with rendered brick walls and a York stone floor, the single-storey colonnade features 26 bays supported by unfluted baseless Doric columns. The three endmost bays at each end project and are flanked by square piers. A low parapet remains in part, with some anthemion finials still in place. The rear wall once held numerous marble memorial tablets and relief sculptures, although most have been lost due to vandalism. The catacombs beneath are no longer accessible and are partly blocked with rubble. This colonnade is one of the earliest structures in the cemetery, originally designed to house memorials for those interred in the catacombs below, which were the first of their kind in the country and had a capacity for about 2,000 coffins.