I know a place . . . Abney Park Cemetery

One of London’s Magnificent Seven Victorian garden cemeteries, this 13-hectare memorial park and nature reserve in Stoke Newington could provide a pictorial definition of the phrase ‘‘hauntingly beautiful’’.

Originally a resting place for dissenters, Abney Park is now home to the oldest surviving non-denominational church in Europe.

Pick your way along overgrown pathways bordered by crumbling gravestones to the central clearing, where the derelict gothic revival chapel, gutted by fire in the 1970s, adds to the park’s eerie allure.

Home to some 2500 plant varieties, the park is a perfect place for a picnic, quiet stroll or to imagine you’re a character in a gothic novel, horror movie or Tim Burton film.

Fans of the late Amy Winehouse may recognise the cemetery from scenes in her Back to Black video.