The Lost Girls of Highgate Cemetery
A moving and thought-provoking devised new play
At the Chapel at Highgate Cemetery
17, 18 & 19 September 2025
Ten “fallen women”, the youngest only fourteen years old, lay nameless and forgotten in an unmarked grave in Highgate Cemetery’s West side for over a century. That is, until relatively recently.
Drawing on research, contemporaneous accounts and imagination, we tell the stories of these “Lost Girls”. What was daily life like in “The House of Mercy”, Highgate’s strict penitentiary for fallen women? Christina Rossetti served as a volunteer at the House: could these girls’ stories have been the inspiration for some of her poetry? Were they prostitutes, sinners and hopeless cases, or were they ordinary girls, with teenage hopes and dreams, before hardship befell them? What led them to an ignominious end in a largely forgotten plot of the cemetery? This play reveals compelling lives, tragically cut short by poverty and illness. The girls may be lost to time, but they will now be honoured and not forgotten.
Tickets (including a glass of wine) available from the Highgate Cemetery Website. Click the 'Find Out More' button.
Cast
Christina Rossetti - Mary Groom
Girl 1/ Anna/ Frances - Aliyah Mandell*
Girl 2/ Rosetta/ Caroline - Jessica Curtis*
Girl 3/ Emily - Violet Rab*
Girl 4/ Maud/ Harriet- Rachel Sondhelm*
Girl 5/ Emma - Emily Berry*
Mr. Oliver/ Stepfather - Edward Smith
Sister Katherine/ Stepmother/ Agnes - Clare Harding
Mary Howitt /Ada - Lynn Fidler
and
Tour guide - Richard Kuhn* - Guest Starring as himself
(*First time performer with TintS)
Last Updated: 23 September 2025