'I brought up my family in a London graveyard'

Living in a four bedroom detached house in London that comes with the job might be most people's dream. But living where 46-year-old Colin Burgess does might seem like more of a nightmare.

For the past 15 years he's been living in a house in Grove Park Cemetery with his wife, three (now-grown-up) children and a dog.

"It's a fantastic ice-breaker. People say, 'you live in a cemetery?' but we've never had a trick-or-treater," he said.

As head of bereavement services for Lewisham Council, he manages five cemeteries and a crematorium.

It's a job he takes very seriously, in fact you could say he lives for it.

By day, he works in nearby Hither Green Cemetery, and in the evening comes home to the lodge in Grove Park Cemetery.

His only other living neighbours are gravedigger Glen Webb and his wife Wendy, who live in the bungalow on the other side of the main path.

The houses come with the job and they are occupants, not tenants.

Lewisham is one of the only boroughs in London where cemetery staff still live on site.

Do their friends think where they live is a bit odd?

"Doesn't bother me," says Glen, "the neighbours are quiet."

Glen and Wendy were in private rented accommodation before they moved here three years ago.

"I found it spooky when I first came here," said Wendy, "but I'm used to it now. It's nice and peaceful."

Either Colin or Glen have to close the gates at night, and one of them usually stays on site for security reasons.

There are some downsides though when it comes to ordering a takeaway meal, even when the gates are not locked.

"When we say where we live the delivery driver will come to the gates but they won't walk up to the house," she said.

"For me where I live is really normal, I've been here pretty much since birth," says 18-year-old Poppy, who is on her way to a dance class.

"You don't come across people living in a cemetery very often. I always have to explain it to people - they think it's really weird, but they think it's really cool too."

Colin has worked hard to keep family life as normal as possible: the lodge comes with a large garden that the children could play in - bike riding and running around outside his house and garden were done elsewhere.

"People say 'you should ride a quad bike and ride it up these paths' but I would never do it, out of respect," he says.

He never walks his dog in the cemetery either.

With up to four funerals a day taking place right outside their door, it's been impossible to keep death away from family life.

"Poppy is going on to study health and social care," explains Colin. "She made a big thing on her application about growing up in a cemetery, witnessing death and grief and bereavement on a daily basis."

The cemetery used to be mainly made up of Church of England, Catholic and non-conformist graves, but there is a sizeable Muslim area these days too, as well as Buddhist.

Surprisingly, perhaps, Colin isn't religious, but is "open to anything" and believes religion of any type can help with grief and mourning.

"I've seen how religion has helped take the pain off a lot of families, so if it's doing that, then it's one of the best things," he said.

"They may not be following the religious tradition to the letter, but their own version of it is helping them at a time of loss."

Grove Park Cemetery is a haven for wildlife. Thousands of Lewisham's parakeets flock to the branches of the many trees before moving on to Hither Green Cemetery and back.

There are foxes, hedgehogs and even a badger which have been spotted there.

Grass has been allowed to grow long next to some of the older graves as part of a dedicated "no mow zone" and wildflower seeds have been spread to encourage pollinators and brighten the area up.

The same has been done in Hither Green Cemetery, which has been used as a film set, and was recently seen in David Attenborough's Wild London programme.

There was one question I was dying to know: had Colin ever experienced anything paranormal in the years he's been living there?

Only once, he said, when he was about to move into the bungalow that Glen now lives in.

"I'd fixed the windowsill, and I took a picture of it to send to my wife," he remembers.

"It caught my reflection. I didn't notice at the time, but in the photo behind me there was a boy in an old school costume standing behind me on stairs that weren't there."

Spooky.

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