"I'm a very private person," Richard Elliott says, "but I've just built a glass house." A group of tourists being led past the floor-to-ceiling windows of his living room stop, point and take photographs. You can sense their surprise as, taking a tour of historic Highgate cemetery, they come upon the sight of this contemporary glass building rising from between the graves.

The house is one of only three here, built on land released in the 60s when the cemetery's finances were precarious. Open the ground-floor terrace doors, and you can reach out and touch gravestones. Urns, obelisks and headstones are everywhere in the clearing that surrounds the house on two sides.

Elliott, a photographer, chartered surveyor and developer, had been looking for an unusual site to work on for some time. When he viewed the plot, complete with a 70s building in blue aluminium, Elliott was certain he'd found what he was looking for. His surveyor advised against buying such a steep bit of land; his mother thought he was bonkers. But the first time she visited the site, she understood completely. "She said, 'It's not a cemetery, it's an enchanted forest,'" Elliott says. "That's exactly the feeling you get here. At three in the morning it's no less enchanted than at three in the afternoon." Though he lives here alone, the one thing the house never feels, he says, is eerie.

Elliott bought the land in 1998, and 10 years of planning and building were a gruelling test of determination. For seven years he lived in the disintegrating old house, with drips in the roof, ivy creeping through the walls and tombs towering above his bedroom. The house next door restricted the height to which Elliott could build, so he bought it and redeveloped that, too, before work could start on the main project. It allowed him to add an extra floor to the original, giving him a four-storey, four-bedroom house.

Floor-to-ceiling windows in the lounge give panoramic views. Photograph: Beth Evans/Beth Evans

The house is uncompromisingly modern and unashamedly masculine in feel. The kitchen, situated on the top floor, has a glass roof that retracts to reveal open sky and treetops. The basement holds a music and cinema room, plus a room dedicated to the complex machinery needed to run the lighting, heating and automated blinds. And yet, standing in the cemetery, it appears surprisingly at home. The sharp angles cut against the soft foliage around it, but the glass reflects tree trunks and leaves, giving it a fluid, almost ethereal, feel.

Elliott was aware the house would come under close scrutiny from the local community. His use of what are often thought of as industrial materials was, in fact, calculated to be sympathetic to the surroundings. Granite, in common with many of the graves, clads the blank street-side face of the house and is used on much of the floor. The concrete that is the backbone of the house tones with the weathered stone pillars and statues outside. The walls were formed by pouring concrete into moulds made of wooden boards, and the knots and grains are still visible on the interior walls, giving the look of panelling. This softening effect is all the decoration needed - the view is the real attraction. Each floor is wrapped with terraces; everything focuses your attention outwards.

Elliott had not even visited the cemetery before buying the plot, but he has since become fascinated with the history around him. He talks about weekends spent clearing the wild foliage that initially crowded against the house, when a walk to Pizza Express in Highgate village felt like a huge culture shock. "This place has nothing to do with the 21st century," he smiles.

When he describes the effort required to bring the house to completion - the times when the house next door was in danger of falling into the hole dug for the basement - all the while continuing with other developments, it's hard to believe his assertion that he never felt daunted. "It took on its own life," he says. "All I did was set something in motion that then seemed to run itself."

Part of Elliott's confidence came from an extraordinary coincidence. His great-great-great-grandfather - an engineer responsible for a number of Scottish bridges - loomed large in the family history, so much so that Elliott had researched the places he'd lived and searched Scotland for his grave. During the build, when clearing undergrowth in the cemetery, he was discussing where he'd put a bench, if he could, and singled out a plinth in front of a tomb. On clearing the shrubs and brambles from it, the rather grand grave of his relative, bearing his details and the name "Gordon" - Elliott's own middle name - was revealed. "I was stunned. I was immediately in tears. The odds against it happening ..."

Today the grave is clearly visible only 50 yards from the house. "When you're trying to build a house on one of London's steepest hills and everything starts to go wrong, as it did, it's nice to know he's there," Elliott says. "There was some sense that I was doing the right thing."