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 walking around cemeteries. Like others in here, I say their names out loud and like to think they're at peace with the rest of the family with them.
It's fascinating.

There's an old one near me, the church is all but collapsed, but if you climb a fence or two, you end up in a stunning graveyard, so many sand stone headstones though, making it difficult to read some of them.

I’m a bit late to this, glasnevin in Dublin is fascinating. There was a great tv programme made a few years on it called 1 million dubliners, excellent if you get the chance to have a look.

I should also have mentioned that 1 million dubliners is on YouTube

There is a wonderful cemetery in Amlwch in which fully half of it is devoted to old sea captains. Their headstones make for fascinating reading.

Not large and really insignificant but the church graveyard where my ancestors are buried in Norfolk is a beautiful haven of rundown tranquility.
Surrounded by a wall of grey Norfolk cobbles, it stands on a hill looking down onto an impressive red brick Queen Anne country house, lake and parkland. Not a bad place to spend eternity.
The cemetery is only infrequently mown as it relies on congregation volunteers, so it is a mass of bees and butterflies in the summer. Owls roost in the church porch.

We visit around 6 times a year to tend our graves, sit, have a chat and tell them all that's happened in the family. Usually there is at least one rabbit in sight.

Agree ! Some out west around tin mines in Cornwall make you think. So many travelled to new mining sites in South Africa, South America etc then came home to tiniest villages. Plus the shipwreck and mining disaster graves. All very thought provoking and intimate glimpse into a past.

@Hefzi you and others on the thread would probably love Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book - about a boy growing up in a graveyard raised by the ghosts ("It will take more than two kindly souls to raise a child. It will take," said Silas, "a whole graveyard.") He learns to read from the gravestones and there are some fascinating epitaphs quoted - I think my favourite is "Deeply regretted by all who knew him."

Ooh, thank you, @UnaOfStormhold - that sounds wonderful! (Off to look for it now...)

I love graveyards too. I love Arnos Vale and went to find Ram Mohan Roy but ended up staying for hours.

There is a little graveyard up the hill from where my parents live which you can walk through to get to the shops and in the corner is a grave for a little boy who died aged 4 years 5 month. His grave has an angel on it and is still well cared for. My mum used to stop as he would have been the same age as her if he had lived. I used to look with my DS as he loved the angel and the last time we walked through (around Christmas) I realised that my DS is now older than the boy was when he died. I think of his parents who are now probably dead and feel so sad for their loss.

One of my very favourite pastimes in the world

I am in NE Scotland and there are so many derelict churches and the church yards fascinate me

I go by a very small on on the coast...actually it teeters at the cliff edge, and I often go in for a mooch

Up the coast is this place I used to go there a lot as we lived there

Have been to the Howff and the Necropolis

I do photograph a lot of the headstones, and find there is often a theme to them,....one church yard in a local town is full of stones with salmon on which is/was a local trade
Another we visited , near Stirling seemed to be full of headstones with tree trunks/logs
One of the nicest ones I have been to was on the tiny island of Gigha, so much history in one tiny place.