Highgate Cemetery seeks millionaire: morbid sense of humour a must. Within the hallowed walls of the “Victorian Valhalla”, Neo-Gothic graveyard to literary and political figures from George Eliot to Alexander Litvinenko since 1839, lies a resting place of a different sort: a new house of glass and concrete, for sale for £5.95 million.

A sense of humour, or at least irony, is necessary when one contemplates what the cemetery's most famous long-term tenant, Karl Marx, who was buried there in 1883, would have made of his new neighbour. After all, his most famous work, the Communist Manifesto, states as its aim “the abolition of bourgeois property”, and demands that “the middle-class owner of property... must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible”.

A different Highgate grave has significance, however, for Richard Elliott, a chartered surveyor from Somerset and owner of the cemetery house: that of his great-great grandfather, John Gordon. “He was a bridge builder in Scotland and I spent about a year trying to find his grave as an 18-year-old,” explains Elliott. “I gave up and I had almost forgotten about it. Then I came here.”

“Here” is the four-bedroom glass house just within the walls of the cemetery, unrecognisable from the one Elliott bought in 1998 for £520,000. Then it was a two-storey 1970s building in blue aluminium; it clearly needed substantial restoration and Elliott decided to rebuild it completely. In 2000, he obtained consent to clear vegetation surrounding the immediate graves. “I asked for permission to put a bench in and when I decided on the perfect spot, near a granite grave with a plinth, it turned out to be that of my great-great grandfather.”

In 2002,Elliott commissioned a new design from Eldridge Smerin, the architects of The Lawns, Highgate's modern architectural crowning glory,and the first residential design to be shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, RIBA's annual design competition.

Elliott's new house is set over four floors with balconies, a sliding glass skylight and glazed elevations. From the street it is a seamless façade of granite, glass and black steel; inside it is a mass of concrete and light. Reluctantly, he is offering it for sale, via Knight Frank, to repay a development loan.

Modernist architecture, once beloved of 20th-century Marxists, appears to be all the rage in the borough of Camden. Highgate may seem a chocolate-box village, but, says the architect Nick Eldridge, “Camden council is particularly receptive to contemporary design proposals within the conservation area. They will support a contemporary approach in preference to a more traditional scheme which many would consider a pastiche.”

Pioneering architecture is not new in Highgate, where the average three-bed is £634,500, compared with the national average of £196,700, according to mouseprice.com. On North Road is the radical Highpoint development built by Lubetkin in 1935: its seven-storey cruciform towers are Art Deco at its best. The agent Anscombe & Ringland is selling a Rennie Mackintosh-inspired flat on North Grove for £2 million; elsewhere Knight Frank has a six-bedroom 1930s lateral property for £3.35million.

Angela Cruse, of Anscombe & Ringland, says that “People are exploiting the few remaining 1950s-built properties and developing them into more architecturally inspired buildings.”

It is this, Nick Eldridge says, that constitutes the spirit of Highgate: “The discovery of good examples of architecture from different periods, often partially concealed behind trees or walls, is what makes this a special place.” But another local spirit might be turning in his grave.

knightfrank.co.uk, 020-7431 8686

eldridgesmerin.com, 020-7228 2824

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