Interesting gravestone, there must be a story behind it.
I took this in Jesmond cemetary in Newcaastle upon Tyne. I have asked around and tried searching the internet but so far have found no info. If anyone has more luck i would be very interested.
Interesting gravestone, there must be a story behind it.
I took this in Jesmond cemetary in Newcaastle upon Tyne. I have asked around and tried searching the internet but so far have found no info. If anyone has more luck i would be very interested.
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To repeat what I said earlier:
We also have a "Gravestones and Epitaphs" thread:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9679
We also have a "Gravestones and Epitaphs" thread:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9679
genex17
Ephemeral Spectre
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- Aug 26, 2010
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- 373
Hello all,interesting subject and one I want to join in on as my first post.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area in the city of Berkeley. I have been to Mission Dolores (founded 1776) in San Francisco,where there is a small graveyard. It's pleasant and there is nothing scary about it. Because San Francisco has limited space,they moved their cementaries to neighboring Colma,just south of the city in San Mateo county. If I could name one famous "resident" there,besides a departed friend,it would be Wyatt Earp,the famous western lawman,who lived 1848-1929.
Berkeley does not have a cemetery either. Oakland to the south has Mountain View. If you have ever heard of the Black Dahlia murder case,this is where Elizabeth Short is buried. In that case,I'd feel it would be improper to go there out of morbid curiosity.
Gene--
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area in the city of Berkeley. I have been to Mission Dolores (founded 1776) in San Francisco,where there is a small graveyard. It's pleasant and there is nothing scary about it. Because San Francisco has limited space,they moved their cementaries to neighboring Colma,just south of the city in San Mateo county. If I could name one famous "resident" there,besides a departed friend,it would be Wyatt Earp,the famous western lawman,who lived 1848-1929.
Berkeley does not have a cemetery either. Oakland to the south has Mountain View. If you have ever heard of the Black Dahlia murder case,this is where Elizabeth Short is buried. In that case,I'd feel it would be improper to go there out of morbid curiosity.
Gene--
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Not the first time this has been reported:
Badgers dig up human bones in graveyard
Badgers are causing havoc in an ancient churchyard by digging up the remains of people buried there for several hundred years.
By Nick Britten
Published: 6:55AM BST 13 Oct 2010
And locals have been warned they can do nothing about it because the animals are a protected species.
At least four graves have been disturbed so far; in one instance a child found a leg bone and took it home to his parents.
It is illegal to kill badgers or destroy a sett, and attempts by the local parish council to have the badgers moved have been blocked by Natural England.
Instead, Rev Simon Shouler has been forced to carry out regular patrols to pick up stray bones, store them and re-inter them all in a new grave.
Rev Shouler first noticed the problem at St Remigius Church in the village of Long Clawson, Leics, which dates back to the 12th Century, earlier this year when someone reported seeing a skull and a bone on top of the ground.
The churchyard took burials for 800 years before closing in the early 1900s because it was full.
Since the first discovery a child has discovered a leg bone and two other leg bones have now been dug up.
Rev Shouler said: “The parish council began seeking advice and someone from the local county badger group came around and told us about special gates that allow the badgers out but does not allow them back in.
“The idea was that they would be relocated to a nearby field.
“However, Natural England and English Heritage got involved and ruled that there might have been a medieval house on the adjacent field once, and so the land is protected.
“We cannot go near the sett, and English Nature will not grant us a license to relocate them so there is nothing we can do other than to let them remain in the churchyard, digging up the remains of people who have been buried for several hundred years.
“Because the setts are under or in the grave, we cannot even bury the bones in their rightful place. I have been told to carry out a monthly bone patrol, collect them all up and re-inter them in a new grave.”
He added: “It is ridiculous. If I decided to dig up a grave to build an extension for the church or something, there would be hell to pay, yet here we have people who are having their bones scattered at the whim of someone sitting in an office miles away.
“It lacks any common sense but sadly reflects the bureaucracy of modern life.
“And it can’t be healthy to touch these bones. Goodness knows what some of these people died of – there were things like Anthrax around and I know that can stay in the ground for a very long time.”
The field next to St Remigius Church is said to contain remains of the main residence of the Bozon family, Lords of the manor from 1304 to 1539.
The field and graveyard are part of a Scheduled Ancient Monument and whilst Natural England were initially happy to grant a licence, English Heritage advised that if moved the badgers could cause more damage to the protected site.
A spokesman said: “This is a complex issue where finding a solution to satisfy everyone is hard.
“We evaluate situations such as this on a case by case basis but we always aim to strike a balance between the welfare of wildlife and the preservation of human remains and scheduled ancient monuments.”
Under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, it is illegal to kill, injure or take a badger, or interfere with a sett. The maximum sentence is six months’ jail.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... eyard.html
Badgers dig up human bones in graveyard
Badgers are causing havoc in an ancient churchyard by digging up the remains of people buried there for several hundred years.
By Nick Britten
Published: 6:55AM BST 13 Oct 2010
And locals have been warned they can do nothing about it because the animals are a protected species.
At least four graves have been disturbed so far; in one instance a child found a leg bone and took it home to his parents.
It is illegal to kill badgers or destroy a sett, and attempts by the local parish council to have the badgers moved have been blocked by Natural England.
Instead, Rev Simon Shouler has been forced to carry out regular patrols to pick up stray bones, store them and re-inter them all in a new grave.
Rev Shouler first noticed the problem at St Remigius Church in the village of Long Clawson, Leics, which dates back to the 12th Century, earlier this year when someone reported seeing a skull and a bone on top of the ground.
The churchyard took burials for 800 years before closing in the early 1900s because it was full.
Since the first discovery a child has discovered a leg bone and two other leg bones have now been dug up.
Rev Shouler said: “The parish council began seeking advice and someone from the local county badger group came around and told us about special gates that allow the badgers out but does not allow them back in.
“The idea was that they would be relocated to a nearby field.
“However, Natural England and English Heritage got involved and ruled that there might have been a medieval house on the adjacent field once, and so the land is protected.
“We cannot go near the sett, and English Nature will not grant us a license to relocate them so there is nothing we can do other than to let them remain in the churchyard, digging up the remains of people who have been buried for several hundred years.
“Because the setts are under or in the grave, we cannot even bury the bones in their rightful place. I have been told to carry out a monthly bone patrol, collect them all up and re-inter them in a new grave.”
He added: “It is ridiculous. If I decided to dig up a grave to build an extension for the church or something, there would be hell to pay, yet here we have people who are having their bones scattered at the whim of someone sitting in an office miles away.
“It lacks any common sense but sadly reflects the bureaucracy of modern life.
“And it can’t be healthy to touch these bones. Goodness knows what some of these people died of – there were things like Anthrax around and I know that can stay in the ground for a very long time.”
The field next to St Remigius Church is said to contain remains of the main residence of the Bozon family, Lords of the manor from 1304 to 1539.
The field and graveyard are part of a Scheduled Ancient Monument and whilst Natural England were initially happy to grant a licence, English Heritage advised that if moved the badgers could cause more damage to the protected site.
A spokesman said: “This is a complex issue where finding a solution to satisfy everyone is hard.
“We evaluate situations such as this on a case by case basis but we always aim to strike a balance between the welfare of wildlife and the preservation of human remains and scheduled ancient monuments.”
Under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, it is illegal to kill, injure or take a badger, or interfere with a sett. The maximum sentence is six months’ jail.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... eyard.html
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My previous post told of wildlife and graveyards - but it's not always so disruptive:
Urban biodiversity beyond the grave
By Mark Kinver, Science and environment reporter, BBC News
"It was such a beautiful place, it was easy to capture on film," said film-maker Emma Cepek, explaining the lure of Manchester's Southern Cemetery as a location for a wildlife documentary.
Her film, Beyond the Grave, sets out to highlight the importance of cemeteries as vital habitats in urban areas.
"Whilst I was there, it was never a gloomy place. It was a place of life - there was a real sense of biodiversity," she explained.
The 40-hectare site, established in 1897, is listed on the national landscapes of special historic interest register.
Artist LS Lowry and football legend Sir Matt Busby are among the famous names to be have been laid to rest in the leafy surroundings.
Ms Cepek, a student on the University of Salford's MA course in wildlife documentary production, said: "It is a huge green space, and it is located just three miles from the centre of Manchester, which was one of the first industrialised cities.
"For Manchester, this more or less meant a wipe-out of all green spaces except for this one location."
Derek Richardson, principal ecologist for the Greater Manchester Ecology Unit, explained why the sites were deemed so important for biodiversity.
"As most cemeteries were laid out prior to the more industrial farming practices, they can be refuges for species that are not found in the wider countryside," he told BBC News.
"We have records in cemeteries near the city centre of foxes, badgers, deer, songbirds, as well as flora and invertebrates."
He added that the locations also provided shelter for species because they were not as intensively managed as other urban green spaces.
"They are not like agricultural land, or even gardens, where you have herbicide spraying or slug pellets being put down.
"So this means that the whole food chain is there, from invertebrates right up to the higher mammals - even close into the city centre."
He explained that mature or veteran trees, which were often originally planted as a feature of the cemetery - such as London's St Pancras Garden's "Hardy tree", an ash tree growing in the middle of a grouping of headstones which novelist Thomas Hardy planted as a young trainee architect, provided a valuable refuge for a wide variety of species.
Mr Richardson explained that, very often, bigger was better when it came to supporting biodiversity.
"Municipal cemeteries, like Southern in Manchester, are very big in scale, and that scale is very useful in terms of supporting more species, such as mammals that need more space."
The sites also provided a route for species passing through an urban landscape, he added.
"It does seem to be the case that you do not need green spaces to be physically connected as long as you have the stepping stones - and cemeteries provide those spaces.
"The fact that we are finding deer in cemeteries close to city centres in Salford and Manchester means that cemeteries are certainly being used as stepping stones.
Staff member Tommy Moran, who has worked at Southern Cemetery for 40 years, said that many of the natural features had been there much longer than any of the staff.
"In some places, the ivy has been there for over a hundred years," he said in the film, before acknowledging how the burial site has provided stability in a rapidly changing landscape.
"If Southern Cemetery was not here then you might have a factory with smoking chimneys, or a housing estate with a load of Asbos on it."
Emma Cepek said that it came to light during filming that some of the cemetery staff had trained as arborists, and they also encouraged wild flowers to grow among the headstones.
"During my time there, they were also constantly debating how much of the ivy needed to be cut back, and what trees needed to be cut back - it was fantastic atmosphere."
Advice in an English Heritage report, Paradise Preserved, offers guidance on maximising the benefits the areas offer wildlife.
This includes only cutting grass once, maybe twice a year, to encourage the growth of wild flowers that are important food sources of butterflies and pollinators.
The Greater Manchester Ecology Unit advises councils on the most effective ways to manage urban green spaces, including cemeteries.
Mr Richardson said that when developing strategies, the unit did understand that the primary use of the site had to be taken into account.
"What people want when they are visiting is signs that there has been some care of the site, but that is not totally at odds with managing wildlife," he observed.
"You can put up bird or bat boxes, sowing wild flowers, or encouraging hedges. These sorts of things do not make a site look unattractive, but nevertheless it is good for wildlife."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11546089
Urban biodiversity beyond the grave
By Mark Kinver, Science and environment reporter, BBC News
"It was such a beautiful place, it was easy to capture on film," said film-maker Emma Cepek, explaining the lure of Manchester's Southern Cemetery as a location for a wildlife documentary.
Her film, Beyond the Grave, sets out to highlight the importance of cemeteries as vital habitats in urban areas.
"Whilst I was there, it was never a gloomy place. It was a place of life - there was a real sense of biodiversity," she explained.
The 40-hectare site, established in 1897, is listed on the national landscapes of special historic interest register.
Artist LS Lowry and football legend Sir Matt Busby are among the famous names to be have been laid to rest in the leafy surroundings.
Ms Cepek, a student on the University of Salford's MA course in wildlife documentary production, said: "It is a huge green space, and it is located just three miles from the centre of Manchester, which was one of the first industrialised cities.
"For Manchester, this more or less meant a wipe-out of all green spaces except for this one location."
Derek Richardson, principal ecologist for the Greater Manchester Ecology Unit, explained why the sites were deemed so important for biodiversity.
"As most cemeteries were laid out prior to the more industrial farming practices, they can be refuges for species that are not found in the wider countryside," he told BBC News.
"We have records in cemeteries near the city centre of foxes, badgers, deer, songbirds, as well as flora and invertebrates."
He added that the locations also provided shelter for species because they were not as intensively managed as other urban green spaces.
"They are not like agricultural land, or even gardens, where you have herbicide spraying or slug pellets being put down.
"So this means that the whole food chain is there, from invertebrates right up to the higher mammals - even close into the city centre."
He explained that mature or veteran trees, which were often originally planted as a feature of the cemetery - such as London's St Pancras Garden's "Hardy tree", an ash tree growing in the middle of a grouping of headstones which novelist Thomas Hardy planted as a young trainee architect, provided a valuable refuge for a wide variety of species.
Mr Richardson explained that, very often, bigger was better when it came to supporting biodiversity.
"Municipal cemeteries, like Southern in Manchester, are very big in scale, and that scale is very useful in terms of supporting more species, such as mammals that need more space."
The sites also provided a route for species passing through an urban landscape, he added.
"It does seem to be the case that you do not need green spaces to be physically connected as long as you have the stepping stones - and cemeteries provide those spaces.
"The fact that we are finding deer in cemeteries close to city centres in Salford and Manchester means that cemeteries are certainly being used as stepping stones.
Staff member Tommy Moran, who has worked at Southern Cemetery for 40 years, said that many of the natural features had been there much longer than any of the staff.
"In some places, the ivy has been there for over a hundred years," he said in the film, before acknowledging how the burial site has provided stability in a rapidly changing landscape.
"If Southern Cemetery was not here then you might have a factory with smoking chimneys, or a housing estate with a load of Asbos on it."
Emma Cepek said that it came to light during filming that some of the cemetery staff had trained as arborists, and they also encouraged wild flowers to grow among the headstones.
"During my time there, they were also constantly debating how much of the ivy needed to be cut back, and what trees needed to be cut back - it was fantastic atmosphere."
Advice in an English Heritage report, Paradise Preserved, offers guidance on maximising the benefits the areas offer wildlife.
This includes only cutting grass once, maybe twice a year, to encourage the growth of wild flowers that are important food sources of butterflies and pollinators.
The Greater Manchester Ecology Unit advises councils on the most effective ways to manage urban green spaces, including cemeteries.
Mr Richardson said that when developing strategies, the unit did understand that the primary use of the site had to be taken into account.
"What people want when they are visiting is signs that there has been some care of the site, but that is not totally at odds with managing wildlife," he observed.
"You can put up bird or bat boxes, sowing wild flowers, or encouraging hedges. These sorts of things do not make a site look unattractive, but nevertheless it is good for wildlife."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11546089
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Bereaved mother told she may have visited wrong grave for 60 years
A bereaved mother who lost her daughter 60 years has been told she may have been laying flowers on the wrong grave.
Published: 8:00AM BST 23 Oct 2010
Janet Murcott, 80, has spent the past six decades placing floral tributes on the plot she believed contained the remains of her child Carol.
But last week she found a laminated note on the grave at Sudbury Cemetery in Suffolk telling her there may have been an error and someone else may be buried there.
Mrs Murcott, from Sudbury, said: "It is really disgusting. I just found this notice - we have been going up there as often as we could for years.
"She would have been 60 in March and I only laid some posies there a few days ago.
"It is disgusting - it is very upsetting. I'm 80 years old and I don't need this."
The notice, left by fellow visitors to the cemetery, thanked Mrs Murcott for tending the grave but asked her to contact the superintendent at the cemetery to clear up the matter.
Mrs Murcott, who has three sons, lost her daughter to spina bifida.
She believed Carol was buried in an unmarked plot which sits alongside another unmarked grave.
Sudbury Town Council launched an urgent investigation to establish the truth about the plots.
Deputy town clerk Jacqui Howells said: "It is extremely distresing for the parties concerned.
"We do have all the records and if it is the wrong grave we can put the situation right."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... years.html
A bereaved mother who lost her daughter 60 years has been told she may have been laying flowers on the wrong grave.
Published: 8:00AM BST 23 Oct 2010
Janet Murcott, 80, has spent the past six decades placing floral tributes on the plot she believed contained the remains of her child Carol.
But last week she found a laminated note on the grave at Sudbury Cemetery in Suffolk telling her there may have been an error and someone else may be buried there.
Mrs Murcott, from Sudbury, said: "It is really disgusting. I just found this notice - we have been going up there as often as we could for years.
"She would have been 60 in March and I only laid some posies there a few days ago.
"It is disgusting - it is very upsetting. I'm 80 years old and I don't need this."
The notice, left by fellow visitors to the cemetery, thanked Mrs Murcott for tending the grave but asked her to contact the superintendent at the cemetery to clear up the matter.
Mrs Murcott, who has three sons, lost her daughter to spina bifida.
She believed Carol was buried in an unmarked plot which sits alongside another unmarked grave.
Sudbury Town Council launched an urgent investigation to establish the truth about the plots.
Deputy town clerk Jacqui Howells said: "It is extremely distresing for the parties concerned.
"We do have all the records and if it is the wrong grave we can put the situation right."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... years.html
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- Messages
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Russian bears treat graveyards as 'giant refrigerators'
A shortage of bears' traditional food near the Arctic Circle has forced the animals to eat human corpses, say locals
Luke Harding in Moscow guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 October 2010
From a distance it resembled a rather large man in a fur coat, leaning tenderly over the grave of a loved one. But when the two women in the Russian village of Vezhnya Tchova came closer they realised there was a bear in the cemetery eating a body.
Russian bears have grown so desperate after a scorching summer they have started digging up and eating corpses in municipal cemetries, alarmed officials said today. Bears' traditional food – mushrooms, berries and the odd frog – has disappeared, they added.
The Vezhnya Tchova incident took place on Saturday in the northern republic of Komi, near the Arctic Circle. The shocked women cried in panic, frightening the bear back into the woods, before they discovered a ghoulish scene with the clothes of the bear's already-dead victim chucked over adjacent tombstones, the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomelets reported. :shock:
Local people said that bears had resorted to scavenging in towns and villages - rummaging through bins, stealing garden carrots and raiding tips. A young man had been mauled in the centre of Syktyvkar, Komi's capital. "They are really hungry this year. It's a big problem. Many of them are not going to survive," said Simion Razmislov, the vice-president of Komi's hunting and fishing society.
World Wildlife Fund Russia said there had been a similar case two years ago in the town of Kandalaksha, in the northern Karelia republic. "You have to remember that bears are natural scavengers. In the US and Canada you can't leave any food in tents in national parks," said Masha Vorontsova of WWF Russia.
"In Karelia one bear learned how to do it [open a coffin]. He then taught the others," she added, suggesting: "They are pretty quick learners."
The only way to get rid of the bears would be to frighten them with something noisy like a firework or shoot them, she said.
According to Vorontsova, the omnivorous bears had "plenty to eat" this autumn, with foods such as fish and ants at normal levels. The bears raided graveyards because they offered a supply of easy food, she said, a bit like a giant refrigerator. "The story is horrible. Nobody wants to think about having a much loved member of their family eaten by a bear."
The bear population in Russia is relatively stable with numbers between 120,000 and 140,000. The biggest threat isn't starvation but hunting - with VIP sportsmen and wealthy gun enthusiasts wiping out most of the large male bears in Kamchatka, in Russia's Far East. Chinese poachers have killed many black bears near the border, selling their claws and other parts in markets.
The Russian government is drafting legislation to ban the killing of bears during the winter breeding season.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oc ... graveyards
A shortage of bears' traditional food near the Arctic Circle has forced the animals to eat human corpses, say locals
Luke Harding in Moscow guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 October 2010
From a distance it resembled a rather large man in a fur coat, leaning tenderly over the grave of a loved one. But when the two women in the Russian village of Vezhnya Tchova came closer they realised there was a bear in the cemetery eating a body.
Russian bears have grown so desperate after a scorching summer they have started digging up and eating corpses in municipal cemetries, alarmed officials said today. Bears' traditional food – mushrooms, berries and the odd frog – has disappeared, they added.
The Vezhnya Tchova incident took place on Saturday in the northern republic of Komi, near the Arctic Circle. The shocked women cried in panic, frightening the bear back into the woods, before they discovered a ghoulish scene with the clothes of the bear's already-dead victim chucked over adjacent tombstones, the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomelets reported. :shock:
Local people said that bears had resorted to scavenging in towns and villages - rummaging through bins, stealing garden carrots and raiding tips. A young man had been mauled in the centre of Syktyvkar, Komi's capital. "They are really hungry this year. It's a big problem. Many of them are not going to survive," said Simion Razmislov, the vice-president of Komi's hunting and fishing society.
World Wildlife Fund Russia said there had been a similar case two years ago in the town of Kandalaksha, in the northern Karelia republic. "You have to remember that bears are natural scavengers. In the US and Canada you can't leave any food in tents in national parks," said Masha Vorontsova of WWF Russia.
"In Karelia one bear learned how to do it [open a coffin]. He then taught the others," she added, suggesting: "They are pretty quick learners."
The only way to get rid of the bears would be to frighten them with something noisy like a firework or shoot them, she said.
According to Vorontsova, the omnivorous bears had "plenty to eat" this autumn, with foods such as fish and ants at normal levels. The bears raided graveyards because they offered a supply of easy food, she said, a bit like a giant refrigerator. "The story is horrible. Nobody wants to think about having a much loved member of their family eaten by a bear."
The bear population in Russia is relatively stable with numbers between 120,000 and 140,000. The biggest threat isn't starvation but hunting - with VIP sportsmen and wealthy gun enthusiasts wiping out most of the large male bears in Kamchatka, in Russia's Far East. Chinese poachers have killed many black bears near the border, selling their claws and other parts in markets.
The Russian government is drafting legislation to ban the killing of bears during the winter breeding season.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oc ... graveyards
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mugwump2 said:
mugwump2, maybe because I'm Spanish, I don't find it very interesting
. It's the gravestone of a Basque lady (or girl). Andra Mari means Holy Mary and Goian Bego "Rest in Peace" in Basque. What Leslie was doing in Newcastle is a different issue.
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- Messages
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Burial ground of Bunyan, Defoe and Blake earns protected status
Bunhill Fields in north London, where nonconformists, radicals and dissenters are buried, is declared Grade 1 park
Maev Kennedy The Guardian, Tuesday 22 February 2011
Bunhill Fields, the London cemetery where some of the most radical figures in history lie quietly side by side in unhallowed ground, will today be declared a Grade I park by the government, with separate listings for scores of its monuments.
The cemetery, founded in the 1660s as a burial ground for nonconformists, radicals and dissenters, holds the remains of John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress, Daniel Defoe, who wrote Robinson Crusoe, and the poet and artist William Blake, among thousands of others.
In the 19th century, when it had already become a place of pilgrimage for nonconformists and radical reformers, the poet Robert Southey called it the Campo Santo (holy ground) of the dissenters. By the time it was finally declared full and closed in 1853, at least 120,000 people had been interred in the four acres.
"Paradoxically, the fact that many of those buried here would cheerfully have damned one another to hell on some minute point of theological dispute has brought them all together in this peaceful place," said David Garrard, the English Heritage historian who advised the government that such a unique place deserved the highest grade listing and protection. "Many of these people suffered a lifetime's persecution for their beliefs before coming to rest here."
He spent weeks poring over weathered inscriptions with an Edwardian guidebook - the most recent - in one hand and Dictionary of National Biography in the other.
Leftwing pilgrims of many shades visit regularly to lay wreaths, including Blake Society members, who come every August on the anniversary of the death of the man who wrote Songs of Innocence and the poem which became the hymn Jerusalem.
When the Independent newspaper was founded in 1986 with offices overlooking the burial ground, the editor Andreas Whittam Smith led a small delegation to lay flowers on the grave of Bunyan, who was in prison for his beliefs when he began writing Pilgrim's Progress, the book that is the most translated into other languages after the Bible.
Along with the Grade I listing for the burial ground as a landscape – putting it into the top 10% of the 106 listed cemeteries in England – 75 monuments are being individually Grade II listed including Blake's extremely plain headstone. His bones were lost in a partial clearance and landscaping in the 19th century and the original sites of more burials were lost as a result of 1960s landscaping to repair second world war bomb damage.
Bunyan's much grander tomb is to be listed Grade II*, along with Defoe's obelisk.
Bunhill Fields, just west of City Road in Islington, also provides the final resting place of Isaac Watts, the "father of English hymns", many still sung every Sunday; less famous hymn writer William Shrubsole, whose headstone is carved with three bars of his music; Susanna Wesley, mother of 19 children including Charles and John Wesley, whose London home, chapel and grave lie just across the road; and the engineer Thomas Newcomen, a pioneer of steam power.
Some monuments are being listed on their own merits rather than for their occupants; Henry Hunter, a Presbyterian minister and translator, earns a listing for his imposing 1801 obelisk, made of artificial Coade stone, while Eleanor Coade, inventor of the stone, is buried nearby. Dame Mary Page was buried in 1728 under a massive marble chest, with a long and excruciating inscription recording her last illness: "In 67 months she was tapp'd 60 times, had taken away 240 gallons of water, without ever repining at her case or ever fearing the operation." :shock:
Garrard says the burial ground is of unique importance as a vivid example of the London's old cramped cemeteries, with forests of headstones and thousands of graves jammed into every possible space, which shocked the Victorians and were almost all cleared as the large new garden cemeteries opened in the outskirts.
The land for the cemetery was originally leased from St Paul's Cathedral, which had used it as a dumping ground for bones being cleared from the charnel house and tiny burial ground around the church.
So many cartloads of bones were dumped that the land is said to have risen high enough to support a windmill. It was also designated as a plague pit, when – as chronicled by Defoe – thousands were dying in the city every week, but Garrard can find no evidence that plague victims were actually buried there.
It has been managed as a public open space by the City of London since the 1860s.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/ ... efoe-blake
Bunhill Fields in north London, where nonconformists, radicals and dissenters are buried, is declared Grade 1 park
Maev Kennedy The Guardian, Tuesday 22 February 2011
Bunhill Fields, the London cemetery where some of the most radical figures in history lie quietly side by side in unhallowed ground, will today be declared a Grade I park by the government, with separate listings for scores of its monuments.
The cemetery, founded in the 1660s as a burial ground for nonconformists, radicals and dissenters, holds the remains of John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress, Daniel Defoe, who wrote Robinson Crusoe, and the poet and artist William Blake, among thousands of others.
In the 19th century, when it had already become a place of pilgrimage for nonconformists and radical reformers, the poet Robert Southey called it the Campo Santo (holy ground) of the dissenters. By the time it was finally declared full and closed in 1853, at least 120,000 people had been interred in the four acres.
"Paradoxically, the fact that many of those buried here would cheerfully have damned one another to hell on some minute point of theological dispute has brought them all together in this peaceful place," said David Garrard, the English Heritage historian who advised the government that such a unique place deserved the highest grade listing and protection. "Many of these people suffered a lifetime's persecution for their beliefs before coming to rest here."
He spent weeks poring over weathered inscriptions with an Edwardian guidebook - the most recent - in one hand and Dictionary of National Biography in the other.
Leftwing pilgrims of many shades visit regularly to lay wreaths, including Blake Society members, who come every August on the anniversary of the death of the man who wrote Songs of Innocence and the poem which became the hymn Jerusalem.
When the Independent newspaper was founded in 1986 with offices overlooking the burial ground, the editor Andreas Whittam Smith led a small delegation to lay flowers on the grave of Bunyan, who was in prison for his beliefs when he began writing Pilgrim's Progress, the book that is the most translated into other languages after the Bible.
Along with the Grade I listing for the burial ground as a landscape – putting it into the top 10% of the 106 listed cemeteries in England – 75 monuments are being individually Grade II listed including Blake's extremely plain headstone. His bones were lost in a partial clearance and landscaping in the 19th century and the original sites of more burials were lost as a result of 1960s landscaping to repair second world war bomb damage.
Bunyan's much grander tomb is to be listed Grade II*, along with Defoe's obelisk.
Bunhill Fields, just west of City Road in Islington, also provides the final resting place of Isaac Watts, the "father of English hymns", many still sung every Sunday; less famous hymn writer William Shrubsole, whose headstone is carved with three bars of his music; Susanna Wesley, mother of 19 children including Charles and John Wesley, whose London home, chapel and grave lie just across the road; and the engineer Thomas Newcomen, a pioneer of steam power.
Some monuments are being listed on their own merits rather than for their occupants; Henry Hunter, a Presbyterian minister and translator, earns a listing for his imposing 1801 obelisk, made of artificial Coade stone, while Eleanor Coade, inventor of the stone, is buried nearby. Dame Mary Page was buried in 1728 under a massive marble chest, with a long and excruciating inscription recording her last illness: "In 67 months she was tapp'd 60 times, had taken away 240 gallons of water, without ever repining at her case or ever fearing the operation." :shock:
Garrard says the burial ground is of unique importance as a vivid example of the London's old cramped cemeteries, with forests of headstones and thousands of graves jammed into every possible space, which shocked the Victorians and were almost all cleared as the large new garden cemeteries opened in the outskirts.
The land for the cemetery was originally leased from St Paul's Cathedral, which had used it as a dumping ground for bones being cleared from the charnel house and tiny burial ground around the church.
So many cartloads of bones were dumped that the land is said to have risen high enough to support a windmill. It was also designated as a plague pit, when – as chronicled by Defoe – thousands were dying in the city every week, but Garrard can find no evidence that plague victims were actually buried there.
It has been managed as a public open space by the City of London since the 1860s.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/ ... efoe-blake
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
(This could also go in the 'Population Growth' thread.)
Where could I be buried if graveyards run out of space?
Cemeteries across the UK are becoming overcrowded. Lucy Townsend explores whether there might be any space left for her.
Resting beside our loved ones when the time comes is a reassuring notion for the living. Families pay thousands of pounds for land where generations can rest in peace together for eternity.
But in the UK at least, the ground is filling up.
Should I wish to, I could not be buried near to my relatives at Yardley Cemetery in south Birmingham. Space there ran out in 1962.
Similarly, I would struggle to find a place near another strand of my family in Halesowen. There is no room left underground there and other facilities at nearby Lye and Wollescote are expected to run out in the next four years.
What if I head south? I lived in Brighton once and a seaside burial sounds quite nice. But four of the seven cemeteries run by Brighton and Hove Council are already full, and of the three remaining, one is for Orthodox Jews only.
That leaves me two potentials, but as I plan to live till I am 100, there are 72 years of people dying before I can claim my spot. The odds of me being able to do that seem daunting.
Planning my eternal resting place has become less morbid and more of a logistical conundrum.
I could be cremated, as with the majority of Britons, and have my ashes scattered. Or I could leave my body to science.
One option is Promession, expected to arrive in the UK in the next 18 months, where my body would be frozen to -18C, then submerged in liquid nitrogen at -196C and vibrated until I shatter. Any metals I might have accumulated - such as a new hip or fillings in my 100-year-old teeth - would be extracted and recycled and my organic remains would go back into the life cycle of the soil.
But these alternatives are non-starters for some. Religious reasons or other long-held beliefs mean that for around 30% of the population, burial is the only option.
But in some of the crowded cities of the UK, the situation is serious.
"Quite frankly, we've run out of space," says Barrie Hargrove of Southwark Council in south London. As cabinet member for environment, he is trying to get to grips with the overcrowding issue.
With only three months worth of space left, he is searching for ever more creative ways to find usable land. Included in the list of potential remedies is the "dig and deepen" method, where remains are dug up and reburied deeper to create stacking space for new coffins - a double-decker graveyard.
Hargrove says the idea makes people wince, but it has been used by the Church of England for years and research shows the public to be broadly in favour.
"It's not something people want to talk about or think about," he adds.
More controversially, Southwark Council is also considering converting a community playground into a burial site. More than 2,000 people have signed a petition to keep the land, which was bought in 1910 as grave space but given to the public because it wasn't needed at the time. Now it is needed, and if developed it would provide 30 more years of burials.
This situation is not universal. In some countries a more pragmatic approach to human remains means they have largely avoided the overcrowding issue.
In Germany, graves are reused after only 30 years, the existing remains usually being exhumed and cremated. In Australia and New Zealand, "dig and deepen" is carried out in urban areas as a matter of routine.
Tim Morris, chief executive of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management, says it is time to change tack.
"It's a no-brainer," he says. "Re-use is common in lots of other countries, and was common practice in the UK until the 1850s. I've spent some time with some German gravediggers and there the limit is 30 years, but people aren't happy with that, they want it lowered to 20."
People living in areas where space has already run out are being forced to go to cemeteries in neighbouring authorities, and they are charged a premium for it - around three times more than the people who live there.
"It's getting more expensive for everyone though," adds Morris. "It's like the lease on a house, the less time there is left, the more expensive it becomes to buy."
The 1856 Burial Act made it illegal to disturb existing bodies. The benefits were twofold - it discouraged grave-robbing and slowed turnover. Churchyards were so overcrowded that bodies were being dug up after only a few months to make way for the next one.
Morris has been lobbying successive governments for years for a change in the law. In 2007 the Labour government indicated support for reusing graves older than 100 years but two years later, the project was shelved. "Death doesn't win votes," he says. "There is always something more urgent, but we are at crisis point."
Fingers crossed, I have plenty more time to make my choice.
But while the radical measures remain on the shelf, the situation is unresolved, illustrating two enduring truths - death is unavoidable and space is disappearing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14647010
My local cemetery is in a lovely location, and still accepts some burials, although most of the newer ones seem to be in the newer cemetery across the road.
I recently discovered St Ives cemetery, on a hillside above Porthmeor beach, with grand sea views. I wouldn't mind being planted there, and there does seem to be space...
(I found it when looking for the grave of primitive artist Alfred Wallis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wallis )
Where could I be buried if graveyards run out of space?
Cemeteries across the UK are becoming overcrowded. Lucy Townsend explores whether there might be any space left for her.
Resting beside our loved ones when the time comes is a reassuring notion for the living. Families pay thousands of pounds for land where generations can rest in peace together for eternity.
But in the UK at least, the ground is filling up.
Should I wish to, I could not be buried near to my relatives at Yardley Cemetery in south Birmingham. Space there ran out in 1962.
Similarly, I would struggle to find a place near another strand of my family in Halesowen. There is no room left underground there and other facilities at nearby Lye and Wollescote are expected to run out in the next four years.
What if I head south? I lived in Brighton once and a seaside burial sounds quite nice. But four of the seven cemeteries run by Brighton and Hove Council are already full, and of the three remaining, one is for Orthodox Jews only.
That leaves me two potentials, but as I plan to live till I am 100, there are 72 years of people dying before I can claim my spot. The odds of me being able to do that seem daunting.
Planning my eternal resting place has become less morbid and more of a logistical conundrum.
I could be cremated, as with the majority of Britons, and have my ashes scattered. Or I could leave my body to science.
One option is Promession, expected to arrive in the UK in the next 18 months, where my body would be frozen to -18C, then submerged in liquid nitrogen at -196C and vibrated until I shatter. Any metals I might have accumulated - such as a new hip or fillings in my 100-year-old teeth - would be extracted and recycled and my organic remains would go back into the life cycle of the soil.
But these alternatives are non-starters for some. Religious reasons or other long-held beliefs mean that for around 30% of the population, burial is the only option.
But in some of the crowded cities of the UK, the situation is serious.
"Quite frankly, we've run out of space," says Barrie Hargrove of Southwark Council in south London. As cabinet member for environment, he is trying to get to grips with the overcrowding issue.
With only three months worth of space left, he is searching for ever more creative ways to find usable land. Included in the list of potential remedies is the "dig and deepen" method, where remains are dug up and reburied deeper to create stacking space for new coffins - a double-decker graveyard.
Hargrove says the idea makes people wince, but it has been used by the Church of England for years and research shows the public to be broadly in favour.
"It's not something people want to talk about or think about," he adds.
More controversially, Southwark Council is also considering converting a community playground into a burial site. More than 2,000 people have signed a petition to keep the land, which was bought in 1910 as grave space but given to the public because it wasn't needed at the time. Now it is needed, and if developed it would provide 30 more years of burials.
This situation is not universal. In some countries a more pragmatic approach to human remains means they have largely avoided the overcrowding issue.
In Germany, graves are reused after only 30 years, the existing remains usually being exhumed and cremated. In Australia and New Zealand, "dig and deepen" is carried out in urban areas as a matter of routine.
Tim Morris, chief executive of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management, says it is time to change tack.
"It's a no-brainer," he says. "Re-use is common in lots of other countries, and was common practice in the UK until the 1850s. I've spent some time with some German gravediggers and there the limit is 30 years, but people aren't happy with that, they want it lowered to 20."
People living in areas where space has already run out are being forced to go to cemeteries in neighbouring authorities, and they are charged a premium for it - around three times more than the people who live there.
"It's getting more expensive for everyone though," adds Morris. "It's like the lease on a house, the less time there is left, the more expensive it becomes to buy."
The 1856 Burial Act made it illegal to disturb existing bodies. The benefits were twofold - it discouraged grave-robbing and slowed turnover. Churchyards were so overcrowded that bodies were being dug up after only a few months to make way for the next one.
Morris has been lobbying successive governments for years for a change in the law. In 2007 the Labour government indicated support for reusing graves older than 100 years but two years later, the project was shelved. "Death doesn't win votes," he says. "There is always something more urgent, but we are at crisis point."
Fingers crossed, I have plenty more time to make my choice.
But while the radical measures remain on the shelf, the situation is unresolved, illustrating two enduring truths - death is unavoidable and space is disappearing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14647010
My local cemetery is in a lovely location, and still accepts some burials, although most of the newer ones seem to be in the newer cemetery across the road.
I recently discovered St Ives cemetery, on a hillside above Porthmeor beach, with grand sea views. I wouldn't mind being planted there, and there does seem to be space...
(I found it when looking for the grave of primitive artist Alfred Wallis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wallis )
Mythopoeika
I am a meat popsicle
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2001
- Messages
- 51,753
- Location
- Inside a starship, watching puny humans from afar
I don't care much about what may happen to my body after death. I think cremation may be the most space-effective option, and if any member of the family wants to put my urn on their mantelpiece - fine.
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Family mementos stolen from Newquay cemetery
A family from Newquay has been left devastated after mementos were stolen from their daughter's grave.
Fifteen sentimental gifts were taken from the grave of Lucy Webber at Newquay's Fairpark Cemetery.
Lucy's mother Julie discovered the thefts after visiting the grave still decorated with balloons to commemorate her daughter's 13th birthday.
Insp Ian Drummond-Smith from Newquay Police said it was an "utterly heartless crime".
Lucy died in a car accident on Goss Moor ten years ago.
Ms Webber said the items were "irreplaceable" and "part of the memories of having her and not having her".
"They weren't things of huge financial worth, we don't put things up there that are financially that expensive, but it's stuff that meant something to her or meant something to us, that were colours that she liked, or fairies and princesses that she always wanted to be," she added.
Ms Webber said: "Items were also stolen in 2007 but after a local newspaper report some were returned to a nearby grave and then to us."
Mr Drummond-Smith said it was a "really appalling crime" and he hoped that a public appeal may help in returning the items stolen.
"If we do find them, they will have the full weight of the law upon them," he added.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-15169348
This family is having trouble 'letting go'.
The grave reminds me of the child's grave I found last year:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 05#1012405
A family from Newquay has been left devastated after mementos were stolen from their daughter's grave.
Fifteen sentimental gifts were taken from the grave of Lucy Webber at Newquay's Fairpark Cemetery.
Lucy's mother Julie discovered the thefts after visiting the grave still decorated with balloons to commemorate her daughter's 13th birthday.
Insp Ian Drummond-Smith from Newquay Police said it was an "utterly heartless crime".
Lucy died in a car accident on Goss Moor ten years ago.
Ms Webber said the items were "irreplaceable" and "part of the memories of having her and not having her".
"They weren't things of huge financial worth, we don't put things up there that are financially that expensive, but it's stuff that meant something to her or meant something to us, that were colours that she liked, or fairies and princesses that she always wanted to be," she added.
Ms Webber said: "Items were also stolen in 2007 but after a local newspaper report some were returned to a nearby grave and then to us."
Mr Drummond-Smith said it was a "really appalling crime" and he hoped that a public appeal may help in returning the items stolen.
"If we do find them, they will have the full weight of the law upon them," he added.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-15169348
This family is having trouble 'letting go'.
The grave reminds me of the child's grave I found last year:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 05#1012405
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2007
- Messages
- 115
A few years back my husband and I went on a business trip to Paris to meet a french Funeral Director, interested in our products for supporting gravestones. We had to visit one of Paris's largest graveyards. They certainly have the edge on British ones for Gothic horror with weeping statues/ lugubrious photos and large stone edifices with rusting iron gates leading to family crypts.
I was dismayed to see the practice of graves with plastic tape and notices stating that unless anyone related to the interred person came forward by such-and-such a date, they would be disinterred and the grave reused. It's a grim practice, forcing families to pay for the extended use of a plot. "Rest in Peace", becomes meaningless.
A bit off topic...........We also visited a Paris Funerary 'Supermarket' where a large showroom displayed every style of tombstone, urn, flower vase, brass plaque, flower arrangement etc. At first I thought it was tacky, but subsequently, changed my mind when faced with choosing such items myself at my local UK funeral parlour. Photos only, no prices and pressure to buy 'the best', and not what I could afford.
Excuse the black humour, but the funeral director was a young girl trainee, about 20, I would guess. When asked if embalming was entirely necessary for a cremation she replied, smiling sweetly " OH, NOT really, we have the fridges and that keeps them quite fresh". .........Bless her!
I was dismayed to see the practice of graves with plastic tape and notices stating that unless anyone related to the interred person came forward by such-and-such a date, they would be disinterred and the grave reused. It's a grim practice, forcing families to pay for the extended use of a plot. "Rest in Peace", becomes meaningless.
A bit off topic...........We also visited a Paris Funerary 'Supermarket' where a large showroom displayed every style of tombstone, urn, flower vase, brass plaque, flower arrangement etc. At first I thought it was tacky, but subsequently, changed my mind when faced with choosing such items myself at my local UK funeral parlour. Photos only, no prices and pressure to buy 'the best', and not what I could afford.
Excuse the black humour, but the funeral director was a young girl trainee, about 20, I would guess. When asked if embalming was entirely necessary for a cremation she replied, smiling sweetly " OH, NOT really, we have the fridges and that keeps them quite fresh". .........Bless her!
escargot
Disciple of Marduk
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2001
- Messages
- 43,460
- Location
- HM The Tower of London
titch said:I wanted to donate organs and leave my body for medical students to mess about with, but i was told i cant have both.
I'd go for organ donation as very few of the bodies donated for dissection are used. Dunno what the criteria are but they are apparently quite strict, whereas fresh organs're likely to be snapped up.
Saw a programme last week about transplants which featured a female donor who was 62, surprised me a bit.
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2009
- Messages
- 1,584
One of the problems with organ donation is that in the last few years, the quality of the organs donated are not what they were. More and more renal transplants are being halted because upon retrieval, the kidneys are showing early signs of deterioration - mostly the kind associated with heavy drinking. I started working in the cross matching lab 20 years ago and was there for about 8 years, this only happened once I think.
The worry is that when transplantation is mentioned to donors families, it's usually to a family that has lost a relatively young person, say in their 20's, as the organs should be in tip top condition for someone that age, but this is where we're seeing the effects of the binge drinking culture. :cry:
The worry is that when transplantation is mentioned to donors families, it's usually to a family that has lost a relatively young person, say in their 20's, as the organs should be in tip top condition for someone that age, but this is where we're seeing the effects of the binge drinking culture. :cry:
I love wild flowers on graveyards. Sometimes I order flowersbypost and then I bring them to the local graveyard and put it on a grave nobody cares about. I think it is sad that there are often not so many wild flowers there. I think it would be good if there would be lots of colorful flowers.
staticgirl
Abominable Snowman
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2003
- Messages
- 995
That is an absolutely wonderful idea, Amy and very kind of you.
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
A sad tale:
Council strips war hero's grave bare in row over who owns the plot
By Simon Tomlinson
Last updated at 8:36 AM on 24th November 2011
Council workers have left a family distraught after stripping a war hero's grave bare in a row over who owns the plot.
Widow Judy Collins, 72, found decorations had been removed when she turned up to pay her respects.
In place of her late husband Harry's memorial was a mound of mud, she claimed.
Judy, who has visited the grave every week for the last 23 years, even found the cross bearing his name had been taken away.
The council said it removed the items because its records showed the grave was ‘unpurchased'.
They say they put up notices in the area saying graves at the cemetery not owned by relatives would be cleared away.
But the family of Mr Collins - who served as an army mechanic in the Second World War - insist they were never informed.
And they claim his plot was paid for by the Co-operative Funeral Directors when he was buried at the cemetery on May 25, 1988.
Daughter June Collins said her mother was on one of her weekly visits to the grave when she found the items were 'bagged up' in council sacks and left in a shed.
June said: 'We have been looking after the grave and putting flowers on it every week without fail for 23 years.
'My mum has been left very distressed by this. A wooden cross made by my sister Linda’s partner has been ruined.'
Miss Collins said the family met council officials and claim they were told there is no record of the grave plot being paid for.
She said the authority told the family that notifications were placed on 'unpaid' graves and letters sent to families.
June, from Portsmouth, Hants, added: 'We haven’t received anything from the council and there wasn’t a notice on my dad’s grave. It could have blown off.
'The council said they have no record of mum owning the grave and have it listed as ‘common’, which means they can bury someone else on it.'
The council confirmed the plot is one of 2,756 listed as 'unpurchased' at Warblington Cemetery, near Havant, Hants, and said decorations recently started appearing on it.
A spokeswoman for Havant Borough Council said: 'Prior to removing these items, we attached a sign to the area asking for those who had been visiting to make contact with us.
'After the time had lapsed for the visitors to make contact, the decorations were carefully removed and stored in a safe place.'
Graham Lymn, head of operations for The Southern Co-operative End of Life Services, said it has offered to pay half of the cost for purchasing the plot.
He said: 'We, nor the council, have been able to find records going back to 1988. It’s difficult to say what may have happened nearly 25 years ago.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1ecBgYWgX
Council strips war hero's grave bare in row over who owns the plot
By Simon Tomlinson
Last updated at 8:36 AM on 24th November 2011
Council workers have left a family distraught after stripping a war hero's grave bare in a row over who owns the plot.
Widow Judy Collins, 72, found decorations had been removed when she turned up to pay her respects.
In place of her late husband Harry's memorial was a mound of mud, she claimed.
Judy, who has visited the grave every week for the last 23 years, even found the cross bearing his name had been taken away.
The council said it removed the items because its records showed the grave was ‘unpurchased'.
They say they put up notices in the area saying graves at the cemetery not owned by relatives would be cleared away.
But the family of Mr Collins - who served as an army mechanic in the Second World War - insist they were never informed.
And they claim his plot was paid for by the Co-operative Funeral Directors when he was buried at the cemetery on May 25, 1988.
Daughter June Collins said her mother was on one of her weekly visits to the grave when she found the items were 'bagged up' in council sacks and left in a shed.
June said: 'We have been looking after the grave and putting flowers on it every week without fail for 23 years.
'My mum has been left very distressed by this. A wooden cross made by my sister Linda’s partner has been ruined.'
Miss Collins said the family met council officials and claim they were told there is no record of the grave plot being paid for.
She said the authority told the family that notifications were placed on 'unpaid' graves and letters sent to families.
June, from Portsmouth, Hants, added: 'We haven’t received anything from the council and there wasn’t a notice on my dad’s grave. It could have blown off.
'The council said they have no record of mum owning the grave and have it listed as ‘common’, which means they can bury someone else on it.'
The council confirmed the plot is one of 2,756 listed as 'unpurchased' at Warblington Cemetery, near Havant, Hants, and said decorations recently started appearing on it.
A spokeswoman for Havant Borough Council said: 'Prior to removing these items, we attached a sign to the area asking for those who had been visiting to make contact with us.
'After the time had lapsed for the visitors to make contact, the decorations were carefully removed and stored in a safe place.'
Graham Lymn, head of operations for The Southern Co-operative End of Life Services, said it has offered to pay half of the cost for purchasing the plot.
He said: 'We, nor the council, have been able to find records going back to 1988. It’s difficult to say what may have happened nearly 25 years ago.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1ecBgYWgX
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Daughter's grief as she visits mother's grave in cemetery… and finds someone else being buried in same plot
By Leon Watson
Last updated at 3:16 PM on 9th February 2012
A grieving daughter has told how she stumbled across cemetery workers burying another person in her mother's grave.
Carol Stone, 49, desperately halted a funeral with the hearse just yards from the plot after spotting a large funeral party gathered at her mother Joyce's graveside.
Heartbreakingly, she had gone to the cemetery to mark the second anniversary of her mother's death when she spotted the the mix-up.
And after rushing up to the plot, she was stunned to find cemetery workers had dug a shallow grave where her mother was already buried.
Memorial items left by family - including a wooden cross and potted plant - had also been thrown to the side by careless workers as another family prepared to bury their loved one on top of Joyce.
Ms Stone, from Warmley, Bristol, said: 'I am absolutely devastated. If I hadn't visited at that specific time another person would have been buried in the same plot as my mum.
'My dad has always wanted to be buried there and we had hoped the spot would be saved for him.
'A wooden cross my brother had made which had a photo our mum on it had just been pushed to the side.
'There was also a potted plant and some flowers I had left last week that had also been moved.'
Ms Stone quickly halted the ceremony before bungling cemetery staff realised their mistake.
And after checking with bosses, they realised that the person was meant to be buried in a plot three spaces away - not Joyce's.
Luckily the grave had not been dug deep enough to reach her mother's coffin - but the other person was due to be buried on top, in a shallower grave.
Family and friends of the person about to be buried then faced an upsetting 25 minute wait for a new plot to be dug before they could pay their final respects to their loved one.
Ms Stone added: 'I don't understand how the cemetery staff could have thought it was alright to bury another person there.
'Surely it's not normal practice to bury a stranger with someone who only died two years ago. When I complained to the person in charge he admitted they had made a mistake.
'I was so upset to have to watch the soil go back in - it was like going back two years and having to go through it all over again.
'I am still dealing with my mother's death and this has just opened another can of worms.
'The fact that it was the second anniversary of her death just made it all the worse. I'm not looking to gain anything from this, but simply want to know that it won't happen again.'
To add insult to injury, Ms Stone can no longer place anything by her mother's grave for a year - so 'the ground can settle'.
etc...
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1lyT1Fr1B
By Leon Watson
Last updated at 3:16 PM on 9th February 2012
A grieving daughter has told how she stumbled across cemetery workers burying another person in her mother's grave.
Carol Stone, 49, desperately halted a funeral with the hearse just yards from the plot after spotting a large funeral party gathered at her mother Joyce's graveside.
Heartbreakingly, she had gone to the cemetery to mark the second anniversary of her mother's death when she spotted the the mix-up.
And after rushing up to the plot, she was stunned to find cemetery workers had dug a shallow grave where her mother was already buried.
Memorial items left by family - including a wooden cross and potted plant - had also been thrown to the side by careless workers as another family prepared to bury their loved one on top of Joyce.
Ms Stone, from Warmley, Bristol, said: 'I am absolutely devastated. If I hadn't visited at that specific time another person would have been buried in the same plot as my mum.
'My dad has always wanted to be buried there and we had hoped the spot would be saved for him.
'A wooden cross my brother had made which had a photo our mum on it had just been pushed to the side.
'There was also a potted plant and some flowers I had left last week that had also been moved.'
Ms Stone quickly halted the ceremony before bungling cemetery staff realised their mistake.
And after checking with bosses, they realised that the person was meant to be buried in a plot three spaces away - not Joyce's.
Luckily the grave had not been dug deep enough to reach her mother's coffin - but the other person was due to be buried on top, in a shallower grave.
Family and friends of the person about to be buried then faced an upsetting 25 minute wait for a new plot to be dug before they could pay their final respects to their loved one.
Ms Stone added: 'I don't understand how the cemetery staff could have thought it was alright to bury another person there.
'Surely it's not normal practice to bury a stranger with someone who only died two years ago. When I complained to the person in charge he admitted they had made a mistake.
'I was so upset to have to watch the soil go back in - it was like going back two years and having to go through it all over again.
'I am still dealing with my mother's death and this has just opened another can of worms.
'The fact that it was the second anniversary of her death just made it all the worse. I'm not looking to gain anything from this, but simply want to know that it won't happen again.'
To add insult to injury, Ms Stone can no longer place anything by her mother's grave for a year - so 'the ground can settle'.
etc...
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1lyT1Fr1B
escargot
Disciple of Marduk
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2001
- Messages
- 43,460
- Location
- HM The Tower of London
The Cadoxton Murder Stone
This page has a nice photo of the Murder Stone. I first read about this stone and its story as a child. Being a precocious reader, I was able to read books for which I was really too young and I often gave myself nightmares! :lol:
Until the 1920s there were reports of ghost sightings around the stone. However, even without the ghosts I think it's a suitably macabre place for a morbid Fortean or two to visit. I'm planning to have a look at it sometime this spring. Has anyone else seen it? Is it worth a trip? Any good pubs nearby?
This page has a nice photo of the Murder Stone. I first read about this stone and its story as a child. Being a precocious reader, I was able to read books for which I was really too young and I often gave myself nightmares! :lol:
Until the 1920s there were reports of ghost sightings around the stone. However, even without the ghosts I think it's a suitably macabre place for a morbid Fortean or two to visit. I'm planning to have a look at it sometime this spring. Has anyone else seen it? Is it worth a trip? Any good pubs nearby?
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2001
- Messages
- 7,240
If anyone is interested in graveyards and what information can be gleaned from the grave stones the Edinburgh Fortean Society has a talk next month on Tuesday the 13th.
Dead men do tell tales...
- meetings with remarkable (albeit deceased) men...
the evidence from Edinburgh's gravestones, by Dave Fiddimore
Edinburgh Fortean Society, Edinburgh, UK
http://www.edinburghforteansociety.org.uk
Dead men do tell tales...
- meetings with remarkable (albeit deceased) men...
the evidence from Edinburgh's gravestones, by Dave Fiddimore
Edinburgh Fortean Society, Edinburgh, UK
http://www.edinburghforteansociety.org.uk
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2009
- Messages
- 237
My brother has done a thorough job researching our family tree. As part of this we visited various graveyards and municipal cemeteries around Leeds, Wharefdale and out near Thirsk. All the rural ones had different atmospheres, from peaceful to edgy to plain bleak and lonely.
In Leeds Becket St Cemetery is well known for being a urban nature area, and for the varying levels of natural succession! In comparison, Harehills cemetery is much better maintained. It was there we had a minor fortean event one afternoon. Looking for a particular family grave, but with only a rough idea of its location we split up and started quartering the rows of gravestones. Over ten minutes or so we moved further and further away from one another, until he shouted over to call it a day. We walked towards each other on one of the paths. He shook his head and said we should move on, then looked to the side of the path and said 'ah, there it is'. We had stopped right next to it.
Also need to put in a quick word for Undercliffe, Bradford. Don't think its been mentioned on this thread. All the atmosphere you will ever need!
In Leeds Becket St Cemetery is well known for being a urban nature area, and for the varying levels of natural succession! In comparison, Harehills cemetery is much better maintained. It was there we had a minor fortean event one afternoon. Looking for a particular family grave, but with only a rough idea of its location we split up and started quartering the rows of gravestones. Over ten minutes or so we moved further and further away from one another, until he shouted over to call it a day. We walked towards each other on one of the paths. He shook his head and said we should move on, then looked to the side of the path and said 'ah, there it is'. We had stopped right next to it.
Also need to put in a quick word for Undercliffe, Bradford. Don't think its been mentioned on this thread. All the atmosphere you will ever need!
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Digging up the dead
By Lucy Townsend, BBC News Magazine
Thousands of graves will be dug up and moved to make way for the new high-speed rail line between London and Birmingham. But how does this happen and why do people feel squeamish about it?
The space above ground can belie the congestion below. With each new building and every spade in the ground, something is unearthed.
But in a world where space is short and land is at a premium, what should be left in the soil?
The HS2 rail line is expected to run straight through old cemeteries in London and Birmingham. It is estimated that the remains of about 50,000 people could be affected.
And it is not the only instance.
In Salford, campaigners are fighting the development of an Asda store on an old cemetery believed to have more than 300 graves.
In the US, the Chicago Department of Aviation is just coming to the end of its project to remove about 1,500 graves and use the land for a new runway at O'Hare International Airport.
And Walmart has been criticised for applying to build on land in Alabama that is believed to be an unmarked graveyard for slaves.
There have always been developments that have touched formerly consecrated ground. In the 1860s when the Henry Barlow rail line to St Pancras was built, novelist Thomas Hardy, at the time a young architecture student, was among the people who took part in a dig to remove old graves.
He wrote about it in his poem The Levelled Churchyard in 1882:
"O passenger, pray list and catch Our sighs and piteous groans, Half stifled in this jumbled patch Of wrenched memorial stones!"
Natasha Powers, head of osteology at the Museum of London Archaeology, says there is not much land left in cities that hasn't been used before.
"Coming across human remains is a fairly common thing."
It is Powers's job to study the human remains that have been exhumed for building projects, examining the bones for information about health, disease and demographics from the time they were buried.
Among the projects that she worked on was the Spitalfields development in East London, once a medieval priory, now a trendy shopping and living area, where 10,500 remains were removed.
"The onus is always on dignity", she says. "There are some cases if we know the remains are very deep that it might be appropriate to use machinery, but generally we use trowels and go very slowly and carefully."
So when digging up old graveyards is such a common thing, why does it make some people squeamish?
"Death is the last taboo at a time when absolutely everything else has been deconstructed," says Brian Draper, associate lecturer at the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity.
"There's something about letting the dead rest in peace that shows we want to keep this last unknown area of life and death sacred."
Strict rules apply to the exhumation of bodies. In England and Wales, the Ministry of Justice first has to grant a licence for their removal, it then has to gain planning permission and adhere to rules set out by organisations such as English Heritage and the church. Because of the age of most of the burial grounds this tends to be the Church of England.
Reburial must also take place - usually in other nearby cemeteries.
The graves in question date back at least 100 years, though many are much older. In some cases, they are unmarked by headstones and any living relatives are no longer contactable.
As Draper adds, the lack of close living relatives could for some be the line between acceptable digging and not.
"Some would argue that the whole thing about burial is actually more for the benefit of the living than the dead. Once the living connection is lost, then you lose completely the reason to rest in peace in that particular way."
For developers, this is the preferred view.
With large infrastructure projects like HS2, the precedent has been set and there is no room for squeamishness.
Plans for the £33bn scheme were approved by the government in January, and phase one between London and Birmingham should be running by 2026, later extending to northern England.
Under the plans, the Curzon Street terminal would be built on Park Street in Digbeth, Birmingham, a 19th Century graveyard.
And St James Gardens, a consecrated former church burial ground in Euston, central London, will also need to be dug up.
Tim Smart, head of engineering and operations at HS2, says: "It would be different if it was somebody's granny that was being moved, but these are about 100 years old.
"We are talking about disused burial grounds - generally when no bodies have been interred in a century. People understand it might be better to disturb disused burial grounds than other disturbances."
Smart's pragmatism is based on years of established practice. The exhumation path is well trodden.
In 1893, the people of Brooklyn, New York, had their own graveyard issues to deal with. The New York Times ran a story about bodies at the Old Methodist burial ground being exhumed to make way for two new residential roads.
A man called Berger is quoted as saying: "Fudge! They are only bones, so much rotten old bones I don't care a fillip about them."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18505222
Coincidentally, today I've been reading a crime novel where an exhumation has been proposed....
By Lucy Townsend, BBC News Magazine
Thousands of graves will be dug up and moved to make way for the new high-speed rail line between London and Birmingham. But how does this happen and why do people feel squeamish about it?
The space above ground can belie the congestion below. With each new building and every spade in the ground, something is unearthed.
But in a world where space is short and land is at a premium, what should be left in the soil?
The HS2 rail line is expected to run straight through old cemeteries in London and Birmingham. It is estimated that the remains of about 50,000 people could be affected.
And it is not the only instance.
In Salford, campaigners are fighting the development of an Asda store on an old cemetery believed to have more than 300 graves.
In the US, the Chicago Department of Aviation is just coming to the end of its project to remove about 1,500 graves and use the land for a new runway at O'Hare International Airport.
And Walmart has been criticised for applying to build on land in Alabama that is believed to be an unmarked graveyard for slaves.
There have always been developments that have touched formerly consecrated ground. In the 1860s when the Henry Barlow rail line to St Pancras was built, novelist Thomas Hardy, at the time a young architecture student, was among the people who took part in a dig to remove old graves.
He wrote about it in his poem The Levelled Churchyard in 1882:
"O passenger, pray list and catch Our sighs and piteous groans, Half stifled in this jumbled patch Of wrenched memorial stones!"
Natasha Powers, head of osteology at the Museum of London Archaeology, says there is not much land left in cities that hasn't been used before.
"Coming across human remains is a fairly common thing."
It is Powers's job to study the human remains that have been exhumed for building projects, examining the bones for information about health, disease and demographics from the time they were buried.
Among the projects that she worked on was the Spitalfields development in East London, once a medieval priory, now a trendy shopping and living area, where 10,500 remains were removed.
"The onus is always on dignity", she says. "There are some cases if we know the remains are very deep that it might be appropriate to use machinery, but generally we use trowels and go very slowly and carefully."
So when digging up old graveyards is such a common thing, why does it make some people squeamish?
"Death is the last taboo at a time when absolutely everything else has been deconstructed," says Brian Draper, associate lecturer at the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity.
"There's something about letting the dead rest in peace that shows we want to keep this last unknown area of life and death sacred."
Strict rules apply to the exhumation of bodies. In England and Wales, the Ministry of Justice first has to grant a licence for their removal, it then has to gain planning permission and adhere to rules set out by organisations such as English Heritage and the church. Because of the age of most of the burial grounds this tends to be the Church of England.
Reburial must also take place - usually in other nearby cemeteries.
The graves in question date back at least 100 years, though many are much older. In some cases, they are unmarked by headstones and any living relatives are no longer contactable.
As Draper adds, the lack of close living relatives could for some be the line between acceptable digging and not.
"Some would argue that the whole thing about burial is actually more for the benefit of the living than the dead. Once the living connection is lost, then you lose completely the reason to rest in peace in that particular way."
For developers, this is the preferred view.
With large infrastructure projects like HS2, the precedent has been set and there is no room for squeamishness.
Plans for the £33bn scheme were approved by the government in January, and phase one between London and Birmingham should be running by 2026, later extending to northern England.
Under the plans, the Curzon Street terminal would be built on Park Street in Digbeth, Birmingham, a 19th Century graveyard.
And St James Gardens, a consecrated former church burial ground in Euston, central London, will also need to be dug up.
Tim Smart, head of engineering and operations at HS2, says: "It would be different if it was somebody's granny that was being moved, but these are about 100 years old.
"We are talking about disused burial grounds - generally when no bodies have been interred in a century. People understand it might be better to disturb disused burial grounds than other disturbances."
Smart's pragmatism is based on years of established practice. The exhumation path is well trodden.
In 1893, the people of Brooklyn, New York, had their own graveyard issues to deal with. The New York Times ran a story about bodies at the Old Methodist burial ground being exhumed to make way for two new residential roads.
A man called Berger is quoted as saying: "Fudge! They are only bones, so much rotten old bones I don't care a fillip about them."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18505222
Coincidentally, today I've been reading a crime novel where an exhumation has been proposed....
escargot
Disciple of Marduk
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2001
- Messages
- 43,460
- Location
- HM The Tower of London
One Way To Necropolis
Dunno if this link has been put up before but I remember discussing the Necropolis Line.
Happened across it on R4 Extra this morning. Brilliant stuff. 8)
Dunno if this link has been put up before but I remember discussing the Necropolis Line.
Happened across it on R4 Extra this morning. Brilliant stuff. 8)
Fanari_Lloyd
Abominable Snowman
- Joined
- May 7, 2012
- Messages
- 588
Not sure if I have posted this before, but it's graveyard related, so here goes.
My sister lives out in a small village, and she's had a few experiences she questions since moving there. (One was of hearing what we now call the 'Faerie bells' one summer afternoon when walking up in some woods).
One of the public footpaths runs through the churchyard, and she'll take her dogs there, with one or more of her teen/grown children, so in this case, as in the Faerie bells incident, she was with some-one.
I've done this walk myself. It's a pleasant church and churchyard, very quiet. The path curves through the graves, out along a watery ditch, and across the fields, which are arable, although there are cows in some of the other fields.
She said she was walking back through the churchyard when she heard the sound of galloping hooves coming closer, really thundering, so she looked around, although there's no way there could be a herd of horses in the churchyard, but her instinct was to get out of the way, and the dogs too, behaved with some alarm. The sound, she says, was almost on top of her, and then seemed to whirl upward into the air over her head, and just stop. She was relieved, but baffled and left quite quickly. She considered it might be a herd of cows in one of the nearby fields, except for the loudness, and the feeling that the hooves literally came to where she was, then galloped above her as if into the sky. It's a little place called Clyffe Pypard, if any-one wants to google it.
My sister lives out in a small village, and she's had a few experiences she questions since moving there. (One was of hearing what we now call the 'Faerie bells' one summer afternoon when walking up in some woods).
One of the public footpaths runs through the churchyard, and she'll take her dogs there, with one or more of her teen/grown children, so in this case, as in the Faerie bells incident, she was with some-one.
I've done this walk myself. It's a pleasant church and churchyard, very quiet. The path curves through the graves, out along a watery ditch, and across the fields, which are arable, although there are cows in some of the other fields.
She said she was walking back through the churchyard when she heard the sound of galloping hooves coming closer, really thundering, so she looked around, although there's no way there could be a herd of horses in the churchyard, but her instinct was to get out of the way, and the dogs too, behaved with some alarm. The sound, she says, was almost on top of her, and then seemed to whirl upward into the air over her head, and just stop. She was relieved, but baffled and left quite quickly. She considered it might be a herd of cows in one of the nearby fields, except for the loudness, and the feeling that the hooves literally came to where she was, then galloped above her as if into the sky. It's a little place called Clyffe Pypard, if any-one wants to google it.
escargot
Disciple of Marduk
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2001
- Messages
- 43,460
- Location
- HM The Tower of London
Had some business in South Wales today so I naturally visited a couple of interesting graveyards.
Cefn Golau Cholera Cemetery
A very atmospheric graveyard, in a beautiful if windswept setting. Well worth a look. 8)
Pressing on, we found the Murder Stone :shock:
I'd wanted to see that for 40-odd years, since reading about it one of my Dad's ghost boooks. I was not disappointed. 8)
Took loads of photos of both places, naturally.
Cefn Golau Cholera Cemetery
A very atmospheric graveyard, in a beautiful if windswept setting. Well worth a look. 8)
Pressing on, we found the Murder Stone :shock:
I'd wanted to see that for 40-odd years, since reading about it one of my Dad's ghost boooks. I was not disappointed. 8)
Took loads of photos of both places, naturally.
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Bodies 'buried in former car parks due to graves shortage'
Burial space is becoming so scarce that families are increasingly unable to be buried in the same cemetery, a BBC study has found.
By Edward Malnick
7:00AM BST 27 Sep 2013
Cemeteries are so full that people are being buried in former cemetery car parks. The findings have led to calls for ministers to introduce laws allowing graves to be reused.
Dr Julie Rugg, of the Cemetery Research Group at the University of York, said: “Families want to be buried together, but there’s no guarantee that burial will remain local, or even available at all in some areas.”
She called for a change in the law to allow graves to be “lifted and deepened”.
Under the proposals, the remains of buried people would be exhumed and the existing grave would be dug deeper.
The original remains would then be reburied and the additional space used for fresh burials.
Cemeteries and churchyards are run by burial authorities, including councils and other bodies operated by the Church of England and other faiths.
BBC Local Radio surveyed 700 burial authorities across England, of which 358 responded. Of those, a quarter will run out of space within 10 years, it found.
Nearly half will run out in 20 years and some areas already have no space.
Approximately 75 per cent of those die are now cremated.
Tim Morris, the head of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematoria Management, said the survey was worrying.
“It’s a serious situation that really needs tackling now — the knowledge of this problem has been around for a long time and government inaction over the last couple of decades has led us to a looming crisis in our burial grounds.”
Dr Rugg added: “It’s not just a London or a big town problem. Even small parish councils are wondering how they are going to cope when land runs out.”
Currently, only London burial authorities are allowed to reuse existing graves.
Last year, after calls for the policy to be extended across the country, Jonathan Djanogly, then a justice minister, said it “was not critical at this time”.
However, Dr Rugg said: “I’d be very surprised if, after this, the government still maintains that there’s no evidence of a problem.”
The survey found that the only cemetery in Bicester, Oxon, was so full that the council was considering using a small verge on the side of a path and moving a memorial bench to create more spaces.
Other cemeteries are using their car parks and pathways or putting in extra topsoil to create more burial space.
The full results of the research will be disclosed on local radio on Friday morning.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “Any changes in the way in which graves and cemeteries might be managed need to be considered carefully and sensitively. We keep this area under constant review and no decisions have yet been taken.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religio ... rtage.html
Burial space is becoming so scarce that families are increasingly unable to be buried in the same cemetery, a BBC study has found.
By Edward Malnick
7:00AM BST 27 Sep 2013
Cemeteries are so full that people are being buried in former cemetery car parks. The findings have led to calls for ministers to introduce laws allowing graves to be reused.
Dr Julie Rugg, of the Cemetery Research Group at the University of York, said: “Families want to be buried together, but there’s no guarantee that burial will remain local, or even available at all in some areas.”
She called for a change in the law to allow graves to be “lifted and deepened”.
Under the proposals, the remains of buried people would be exhumed and the existing grave would be dug deeper.
The original remains would then be reburied and the additional space used for fresh burials.
Cemeteries and churchyards are run by burial authorities, including councils and other bodies operated by the Church of England and other faiths.
BBC Local Radio surveyed 700 burial authorities across England, of which 358 responded. Of those, a quarter will run out of space within 10 years, it found.
Nearly half will run out in 20 years and some areas already have no space.
Approximately 75 per cent of those die are now cremated.
Tim Morris, the head of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematoria Management, said the survey was worrying.
“It’s a serious situation that really needs tackling now — the knowledge of this problem has been around for a long time and government inaction over the last couple of decades has led us to a looming crisis in our burial grounds.”
Dr Rugg added: “It’s not just a London or a big town problem. Even small parish councils are wondering how they are going to cope when land runs out.”
Currently, only London burial authorities are allowed to reuse existing graves.
Last year, after calls for the policy to be extended across the country, Jonathan Djanogly, then a justice minister, said it “was not critical at this time”.
However, Dr Rugg said: “I’d be very surprised if, after this, the government still maintains that there’s no evidence of a problem.”
The survey found that the only cemetery in Bicester, Oxon, was so full that the council was considering using a small verge on the side of a path and moving a memorial bench to create more spaces.
Other cemeteries are using their car parks and pathways or putting in extra topsoil to create more burial space.
The full results of the research will be disclosed on local radio on Friday morning.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “Any changes in the way in which graves and cemeteries might be managed need to be considered carefully and sensitively. We keep this area under constant review and no decisions have yet been taken.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religio ... rtage.html