I love a walk around any churchyard and finding the different headstones depicting the names of people who have been buried there over the previous centuries. Perched high at the top of a ridge, St Peter’s can be seen for miles around. It’s tall tower is made of grey ashlar was built in the fourteenth […]
Gravestones
A Curious Headstone
I’ve long had a fascination with gravestones. It’s the stories of those who lie there which fascinate me. I always wondered who they were, what were their lives like, what happened to them. It is no wonder then that I became a historian though I view it as a collector of people’s stories. I came […]
Plague!
Oh Lord save us! A great pestilence is upon us. Reports reached London in 1347 of a terrifying and incurable disease which was spreading from the East. It reached England in 1348 and is thought to have killed millions of people. There are three different types of plague; bubonic, pneumonic and septicemic. The most common […]
William Bryan
One of the interesting headstones which survive in St Mary in Arden’s graveyards is this one: Sacred To the Memory of William Bryan Late of Spode in the Parish Of Clun County of Salop Who died Suddenly In Harborough The 31st Day of July 1832 In the 42nd Year of his Age And was Buried […]
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Thomas Cook
Thomas Cook was born in Melbourne, Derbyshire, in 1808, the son of John Cook and Elizabeth Perkins. He was only four years old when his father died in 1812 and later that year, his mother married James Smithard. When his step-father died in 1818, Thomas was taken out of school to supplement the family’s income […]
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Welford Road Cemetery, Leicester
There is something special and atmospheric about cemeteries, especially Victorian ones with their gothic monuments. Towns and cities grew rapidly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with people migrating from the countryside, looking for work in the factories and industries. Overcrowding, dirty drinking water and poor (or non-existent) sewerage systems fuelled epidemics such as Cholera […]
St Mary in Arden
A short walk from the train station at Market Harborough, Leicestershire and you find an old ruined church surrounded by old headstones and trees. St Mary’s in Arden has fascinated me from the first time I saw it. I have always liked churchyards and cemeteries so an abandoned church without a roof was always going […]