Isn’t a walk around an old cemetery fascinating?

[CormoranStrike]

Today I found two amazing names - a man called Pelham Brodie and a woman called Dalmeny Edmonstone Black - plus a confederate soldier who died leading his men in battle in Kentucky and a naval officer who survived being ice-locked in his ship for two years and who died with his crew when they attempted to walk to Canada to escape.

All this in Edinburgh!

Totally agree.

I love the cemetery pages on Wikipedia where you can read about inventors, actors, criminals, fascinating social history.

Those are great names. I once went to a cemetery where there was a gravestone, centuries old, for a woman and it was basically a litany of her misdeeds and about how she was no better than she should have been! Was sort of shocking and hilarious all at once. I'd love to know the story behind that!

I agree. I find it fascinating (dh thinks I’m macabre for being so interested).

But always so sad seeing the numbers of babies and children who died, and young women of childbearing age - I always wonder if they died during/after birth. Thank goodness for modern medicine.

I've always wanted to go and wander round those massive cemeteries the train goes past in London (Highgate I think one of them is called) they just look so peaceful and fascinating.

There's a little graveyard in Newcastle city which has lots of old graves, and also, is where they buried the 16 people hung on the moor during the witch trials. Unfortunately they are in an unmarked grave and I don't know where it is, although I do know that a few years ago when workmen were digging a trench to install lightning they came across a handful of bones thought to be witch bones. They were reburied in another part of the graveyard but apparently more bones have worked there way out since then.

I also find cemeteries fascinating. The unusual names, the ages when they died, the verses on the headstones. So many small children, so many in the wars, very moving.

In a church near me is a grave where husband and wife are buried. He was the vicar of the church for years, and his wife died in the church during a service! Imagine that.

Love walking around old cemeteries.

The Necropolis is a Victorian cemetery in Glasgow.
I can remember going on a school trip there😂😂😂

I've always loved doing it too, OP, and took my camera once to photograph some very ornate and old headstones for a photography course. It was strangely alluring to read all the stones and wonder why someone had died so young as often happened years ago.

Two of my favourites are Nunhead (near where I used to live in SE London) and The Howff in Dundee (where I'm from)

@kelper Highgate is one of the Magnificent Seven London cemeteries. Nunhead is another. Fascinating.

Yep, I've done this I love it.

It's the ones that tell a story that are the most interesting. There's a cemetery near Earls Court in London where I read the gravestone of someone who had died in Hong Kong or somewhere in the far east in the 1800's and it seemed to take a year before they shipped his body back to Britain for burial. I wonder why.

There's a gravestone in a suburban cemetery that pretty much just gives the CV of the deceased. The unspoken, 'born, worked, died' was obvious, IMO.

When I've been overseas I'll try to get a look at a cemetery. When my husband and I are out for a walk, and we pass by a church or graveyard I'll have a little look at the gravestones. My husband finds it dull and just wants to get home or the pub or anywhere else.

The collective grief that never ends is oddly comforting. There can't be very many people who's grief isn't either old or new.

There's a plain gravestone in a cemetery near where I live now that just records, 'Music's Doctor' hmm, I wondered, I wonder what that means. In the Cathedral, there's a dedication to a music teacher/organ player who is described as a doctor to music. Is it him ? Wistful with to much time on my hands, I know !

My favourite cemetery is at Haworth Parsonage, where the Bronte sisters lived. It’s such a sad place, but fascinating.

Pere Lachaise in Paris is incredible. Wonderful tree-filled park in Paris to walk around with gothic mausoleums of lots of famous people - Balzac, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison of course. The list is endless.

Handy too that's it's near a metro stop.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A8re_Lachaise_Cemetery

I walk through a cemetery on an almost daily basis on the way to work
I find the names and some of the stories fascinating and have done some reading into the history of some of the people buried there
I find it so beautiful and moving and a stark reminder of how life is short

I've been to Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. My husband wanted to show me Jim Morrisons grave but we couldn't find it. I didn't care I wasn't that interested.

In a suburban cemetery near Woking, Surrey there are history walks most Sundays, they are fascinating.

There's full size statues which are not angels or a likeness of the deceased, but, out of the corner of the eye, you wonder what you have just seen !

The children's graves are sad. Especially if the parents had lost several children at various very young ages. Sometimes the cause of death is detailed i.e. drowned. Or died in an accident.

I've been strolling in my local graveyard since I was a teen! The grave diggers there know me by name

You should definitely check out their open days! You may even get a chance to look at the underground crypts!

Laceypants - where abouts in Newcastle? I drag the dc into ones on holiday, usually Scotland, and tell them it's being respectful to read the names of the dead not ghoulish! Sad all the bairns laid to rest so very young.

Parkhead I used to see necropolis from my window . I’m sure my great gran x 3 is buried there along with 3 of her children (she died in Eastern infirmary in 1920 or so), her children died as babies in Barnhill poorhouse but I assume she’d have an unmarked grave. Someone said to me there’s 50000 individuals in there ...

A lot of my family are buried in a tiny little church in the middle of the highlands , about 40 relatives at last count but probably more . Church has little to no passing traffic, rarely used except for funerals and is miles away from any houses etc - I don’t even think the grass is cut until there’s a service . In the summer all you can hear is birds and I often think what a lovely peaceful place to spend your forever ... We didn’t know that until we started doing family history , knew my great grandparents and their parents were there - didn’t realise it went back 5 or 6 generations to 1810-1820 . My gran now buys several bouqets and divides them as best she can !!

I visited a cemetery in a small village recently, and came across a double grave containing and mother and her newborn daughter. They both died on Christmas Eve in 1820 - presumably during childbirth. It always sticks with me.

I love a good cemetery stroll. So much history.

In one near me there are two sad-but-interesting ones. One has the name of a girl and her age (17), and nothing else. No birth or death, no message... nothing. I'd guess the date the stone was created as 1990s onwards, if rigorously looked after.

The other simply says 'Balsom. Twin girls.' Also modern stone.

We used to eat lunch in the graveyard of St Nicholas Kirk in Aberdeen .... McDonald’s right across the street . Loved going there , there were gravestones all over the place and it wasn’t seen as wrong in the slightest to sit on the big tomb ones - you couldn’t get in without walking over some as there were memorials built into the pathway .

I would love, love, love to look around Manor Park Cemetery in London. My husband has said we will go there one day. I'm still waiting. Well, whilst I'm alive obviously !

There's some huge graveyards you can see from the train into London, that's right. I'd like a look around there too. There's a huge cemetery and Crematorium along the A3 but I can't remember the name of it. I bet that's interesting.

People have spent a lot of money on the gravestones and memorials. Yet, no one ever really sees them because they are in a cemetery. I'm only reading what's written is my point of view. I don't believe I'm doing anything wrong.

I wonder where the descendants, if any, of the grave occupants are ? Do they know they have a deceased relative and headstone in a cemetery ? I have a dead relative, who is buried, and I have a guesstimate where about in the cemetery they are buried. I have the paperwork from many years ago about when the burial plot was purchased. It is not known why this burial plot was purchased. From their death certificate I can guess when their funeral was but that's about it.

I love an old graveyard. They're so peaceful. And there's always a gravestone to prick a tear. The gravestones of young children are obviously very moving and I picture their parents standing there heartbroken, but now the parents are long gone too and no one is alive who knew them or ever heard mention of them. In the end we really do turn to dust and retreat into the shadows of history as do those who mourn us. The only trace that's left is a weather worn headstone and someone who, two centuries later, peers at it and maybe spends a few moments feeling sad for three year old Thomas Smythe who died of a fever in 1806 and sad for the family he left behind. I find something quite soothing about that.

In a suburban cemetery near Woking, Surrey there are history walks most Sundays, they are fascinating.

Brookwood.