Hundreds of people flocked to a well loved community festival, Meet me at the Cemetery Gates, which returned for its fourth year last Saturday.

The festival, named after the famous song by The Smiths, took place in Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, to raise money for the Abney Park Trust.

Folksy local band, GoodNight Cherry opened the day which featured a diverse line up of musicians and DJs from the area.

Singer Kaz Foncette, 28 of Osborne Road, said: “The festival is a fantastic way to raise both money and awareness of one of the area’s hidden gems and help to conserve it for generations to come.

“Abney park has been a nondenominational cemetery and place of worship for well over a hundred years and also provides the whole community with an amazing chance to have green space and forest smack bang in the middle of the city.”

The festival was hosted by Adjust Nothing, a creative agency and radio show in Hackney.

Organiser Pete Bennett said: “The day was absolutely fantastic, the best ever. We raised several hundred pounds for the trust.”

He added: “I choose mainly local bands and try and show the diversity of local talent. We had some amazing bands playing. The audience reflects the demographic of the area, every culture and social group is represented.

This year was one of our most successful and we were lucky with the weather.”

Pete said the cemetery was important to preserve, not only to fund ongoing community projects, but also as the people buried there reflected modes of alternative thought in history.

He said: “The cemetery is full of nonconformist religious and political people - the Stoke Newington alternative thinking community were buried there - feminists, Salvationists– there are some very interesting people.”