This post isn’t about anything in particular (I mean it’s hardly museum-related) but I see it as my last chance to post some random cemetery photographs as October winds down. I knew the cremation rate was high in England and Wales (something like 75%) when I moved to Great Britain but I was still surprised by the lack of cemeteries. The only time you actually see any graves is when you happen to be at an old church or abbey. But in my mind walking through an old graveyard (or in this case churchyard) is kind of like walking through history. These collections of headstones and monuments tend to be ignored spaces, probably because most people deny the inevitable, that one day we will die. But for whatever reason, they remind me that life is fleeting; we should enjoy it while it lasts. Anyway, I took these pictures nearly a decade ago and as you can tell by their locations, with the exception of one, (Church of Saint Mary in Whitby, Cartmel Priory in Cumbria, St. John the Baptist Church in Knaresborough, St. Mary the Virgin Church in Kent, and Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire) I once lived in the North. Interesting to note that the church graveyard in Whitby was used as a setting in Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula. There’s your scary Halloween connection!
Great Britain’s graveyards
