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!

I love a good cemetery. Highgate is fascinating. My absolute favourite was the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow. I can’t read Cyrillic script so could only spot certain very famous names, but the graves are all very literal. The tank commanders grave was shaped like a tank, cosmonauts like a rocket, physicists showed his equation,ballerina sculpture of her dancing, sad clown for an actor, etc. It was the most bizarre but brilliant place.

West Highgate was used in the latest Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts film. You have to book tours for the West Cemetary but it is a fascinating place.
Ethel Preston's memorial in Lawnswood Cemetary in Leeds has quite a sad story behind it

I've always loved a wander down to the cemetery. My DH thinks it's odd, but it's a bit of a family thing. I see them as places full of love and I like to give the old stones a moment to think of the residents. Someone maybe hasn't done so for decades.

I work a stone's throw from the Brompton cemetery and it's beautiful. They even have a cafe on site!

When I was at school we were taken to a cemetery and told to do crayon etching it was fascinating and a part of history that is very interesting. Also a search can lead to a branch of your family you never knew existed.

There is a grave at Brookwood Cemetery, of a woman who was implicated in a crime of passion but was found just as guilty as the murderer so she was hung. The remark on her gravestone reads, 'her death was a legal formality'.

There is a village in the middle of Salisbury Plain called Imber, it was taken over by the MOD at the start of WWll - residents were given 30days notice to get out, and were never allowed back. Now it's a military training village. It opens twice a year to the general public - the church has a wonderful old graveyard dotted with entire families going back hundreds of years. It's fascinating. It's not been touched since the 40's. Seems so sad that the families of those buried there can't visit them.

can thoroughly recommend the walking tour of Highgate - DH and I did it last summer and was very good. We've also undertaken many a cemetery tour on holiday - Paris was good as was Havana.

Years ago I visited the Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires, the final resting place of Eva Peron. It’s a very dramatic place with extraordinary monuments, all seeking to outdo each other. Very gothic.

There one that sticks in my memory was a beautiful statue of a young woman. She had died aged 17 in the 1970s. There was an inscription describing how she was beloved of her father, together with the heartbreaking words “Why? Why? Why?”

I stood and looked at her for a long time.

One of my favourite things to do when visiting somewhere, Edinburgh Kirkyards are some of my favourite! Even as a child I was fascinated by them and would wonder around whilst we went visiting relatives (usually other children's graves or find the oldest ones there). There are a few in Milan I would love to go to, my friend went a few years ago and the stones/memorials are stunning.

TooEarlyForDecorations Was she Edith Thompson? There was a TV programme about her recently, one of the ‘Murder Mile’ series. Quite a controversial case at the time (and since, I suppose). There’s a book by Molly Cutpurse about her and the circumstances of the woeful story.
There’s a very sad memorial in a local cemetery. It’s a large Victorian marble and stone monument to a family who were a rich business family. The parents died in their thirties, within a few days of each other, both as a result of a road accident, that being stated on the monument. What makes it really poignant is the smaller memorial on the graves next to them of their two young daughters, (3 & 5 IIRC), who died on the same day as each other a few years earlier.
The cemetery is a large Victorian graveyard, on a hill overlooking a large municipal park with a river, built because the town’s churchyards were full. Beautiful peaceful place with lots of trees, birds and a haven for wildlife.
But you can see how the class system existed even in there. All the big and extravagant (expensive) monuments on the ‘main roads’ especially near the two chapels (one for CofE, the other for ‘the rest’). Only one chapel is still in use now and caters for all who want to use it.
Fascinating place, can easily lose a couple of hours wandering through it.

Brookwood and Highgate (both sides) superb.

One we always look at every time we are up there is the graveyard at Chapel Stile in the Lake District. Small and beautiful. Several climbing accidents.

I love a wander round cemeteries, especially old church and military ones. I find it fascinating, particularly the ages of the deceased who died in the 17 / 18 hundreds.
The war graves always make me weep. Particularly Thiepval.

I find them absolutely fascinating. DH thinks I'm weird, but I love reading all the old names and dates, and working out how long widows/widowers were alone for. I have a very typical Welsh name and invariably come across 'myself' at least once in any old Welsh cemetery.

I have found my people! I love a graveyard. My favourite is Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh with the bars over the graves to stop the robbers.

I once found the grave of someone who’d been born on my birthday exactly 100 years before me which gave me a bit of a shudder.

I enjoy this too it is really interesting

Yes I love to wander graveyards too. It's sad when you can't quite read the inscription . And yes sad to see children's graves, pets graves and family graves. Sometimes the times between husbands and wives deaths are so short I wonder if they died from a broken heart (it happened to dh grandparents). I don't think it's macabre although dh is a bit . I see it as honouring the dead even though I didn't know them. It's worse to just walk through a graveyard and not pause for a while IMO.

Was that the Dean Cemetery you where in Cormorant?
It is a lovely cemetery. Jean Cadell the actress is buried there, she was in Whisky Galore, and was the great aunt of Simon Cadelll who was in High De High, and Selina Cadell who is the chemist is Doc Martin. Doctor Joseph Bell is also buried there, he inspired the character of Sherlock Holmes, as he was a lecturer of Arthur Conan Doyle.

There are two tiny graves in the Dean, on the lower level, very sad as they are both children, sad stories We put flowers on when we visit as they are on there own, as it were. You can go on very interesting tours around the Dean in the summer months.

I also love to find unexpected graveyards. The ones that you find half hidden away from the main one that your looking around, they tend to be the older more historical ones. I once discovered one that was half hidden in undergrowth near a church in North Yorkshire. The dates once I'd managed to brush the worst of the dirt off read 1697. Fascinating to think centuries later I was stood in the spot where the potential mourners had stood and wonder about them and the deceased.
When we buried my grandmother, I remember glancing at a grave opposite hers and reading the headstone which told me that a 12 week old baby girl was buried there. Somehow that gave me comfort as I remember thinking she will be ok, she has my grandmother will be able to look after her now. Silly, but comforting.

Not too far from me is the village of Grasmere in Cumbria. In the church in the centre of the village is the grave of William Wordsworth , his sister Dorothy and the rest of his family. Unsurprisingly it's very busy especially by regular coach loads of Japanese visitors.

Nottingham has some really ok atmospheric cemeteries. I also find them fascinating. And I like thinking about people who have long been forgotten.

@Scandaloso that was absolutely beautiful.

The guided tours of Highgate cemetery are fascinating. I went on a freezing winter day to the old side. And s beautiful summers day to the new side. Such a beautiful place to be buried.

Brompton Cemetery. Beside Stamford Bridge. My first stop in London, every year since 1997. Lovely friendly little squirrels too

There’s a tiny little coastal village churchyard near me where the reality of living near and working on the water is made plain on the gravestones. One tells of a young girl who fell in and drowned and the slightly older boy who jumped in to try and rescue her but also drowned. There were many lost to those tides in a place that seems so benign and peaceful now.

I like to walk round churchyards and see the old fashioned names you tend not to see any more.