Category: Heritage
-
The Last Mourner
One thing fascinates me about grave-hunting. When did the last true mourner last visit this grave? This throws me back to an experience in my boyhood. It’s been oft reported that my fascination started as a result of my weekly pilgrimages to both my grandfathers graves. Besides complaining “why can’t I go off and explore?!”,…
-
The Laundress
Reconnecting with a formidable woman from my family tree In the middle of Fulham, not too far from Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea Football Club, is a building that sticks out. In comparison to the streets of terraced housing that surrounds it – it doesn’t seem to fit. Over the last century or so this…
-
Apply Some Pressure
A wonderful testing works on London’s South Bank The imposing art deco Tate Modern and its new-ish extension, coupled with the glass severity that is the Blue Fin Building, tower over a nearby testing facility whose custom-made machine is as enduring a memorial as his own gravestone. The entrance to the building is surmounted with…
-
Bones Beneath a Bishop’s Palace
A Victorian dog and his master A pleasant fifteen minute amble from Parsons Green station, Fulham Palace and its gardens is managed by a charitable trust. In continual possession of the Church of England since AD 704 (when Bishop Waldhere acquired the Manor of Fulham) it is a scheduled ancient monument – which gives it…
-
Death in the British Museum: Object in Focus
Being invited by our wonderful Cemetery Club master of ceremonies Sheldon K. Goodman to participate in Death in the British Museum this coming Saturday has given me a little push towards reevaluating what the massive museum collection in Bloomsbury means to me. It has encouraged me to consider the importance of furnereal objects and how…
-
Back 2 Skool
Life update time. On this blog (and its subsequent social media presence) I always endeavour to do justice to the deceased that I find so interesting. To share their life stories in a respectful, entertaining way and to make cemeteries less threatening as spaces of learning and wonder. The blog turned six years old in…
-
The Cedar’s Farewell
Today we mourn an icon. Trees hold a very special place in our hearts and you only have to look at how important the Bethnal Green Mulberry is and its value to the local community to see what imagery and emotion they conjure. Permission was given to remove this historic tree from its current site (being…
-
The Lost Village of the East End
Hard to imagine this part of the East End being a queer sanctuary and a once idyllic rural retreat… I recently gave a walking tour around old Bromley-By-Bow on behalf of my good friends at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park and the Women’s Environmentalist Network. It’s an area I’m vaguely familiar with, as my old local…
-
A Tombstone for a Long Neglected Grave
History is a peculiar thing. On Sunday 12th August 2018 over five hundred people gathered to see the unveiling of the exact location of the grave of William Blake. They were taking part in a ceremony which seems to happen every century – although not for the reason you’d expect. I’ve been doing cemetery blogs…
Cemetery Club 