Just a warning if you are visiting Nunhead cemetery to make sure you leave plenty of time to leave the cemetery before the gates are locked, to avoid the rather nasty experience my family had there today. We were walking through the cemetery from the Limesford Road gate to the Linden Grove gate at around closing time - we knew we only had a few minutes, and the cemetery manager came by in his car and told us (and others who were also heading that way) that the Linden Grove gate was closed but unlocked, and we should just open it to leave. As we approached the gate - we were only a few feet from it - the residents of the Lodge came out, drove their car through the gate, and then got out of the car and padlocked the gate. We were near enough for me to say 'Are you locking us in?!' without having to raise my voice at all. They were fully aware we were there, and they could clearly see me pushing my daughter in her wheelchair, along with the people we were with and other visitors to the cemetery. They protested that they had been 'told not to' let people out. This was a very odd experience. Of course I understand that the residents of the Lodge shouldn't leave the gate unlocked when the cemetery is closed and no-one is around - but at closing time, when people are right there waiting to leave? That's pretty mean and vindictive. Made worse, we felt, by the fact that the individual concerned is our local councillor. I know that councillors are not always on duty, and have the right to a private life, but I would expect ANYONE going out through a gate and seeing people coming up behind them to let those people out too, just as a common courtesy! Somehow the fact it was a councillor, who should presumably have a small fleeting drop of public-spiritedness, made it an unusually depressing, small-minded encounter. I'm guessing it's annoying, if you are fortunate enough to live where they do, to have to deal with members of the public coming past your home and through what you see as 'your' gate - but some clarity seems to be needed between what the cemetery manager tells visitors they can do and what the residents of the Lodge see fit to impose.
