Holes, moles and other graveyard musings
Posted by Kitty ED’S NOTE: Kitty is a relatively new commenter on the blog. She emailed the following to us, and we are pleased to post it. Come one, come all, we say. I’m not that keen on cats and my name’s not really Kitty. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and being anonymous seems the […]
Diagonal Daze in St Mary’s Churchyard, Twyford
Posted by Eleanor Whitby I was wandering around a churchyard on that one sunny summer’s day, as you do, and came upon a few really lovely headstones. The first was surrounded by a burst of colour in a green area of flat memorials in the council owned section – I loved the smooth, pebble like […]
The depths they go to
In Palmerston, New Zealand, permission to inter ashes in a new natural burial ground has been put on hold. The council wants a period of consultation in order to arrive at a “a better understanding of what sort of natural burial ground people want” in the light of the assertion by a councillor that “cremation […]
The eloquence of silence
Posted by Georgina Pugh On Friday the autumn sun was just too much – I had to leave my cave like dwelling and head out somewhere you can touch the sky. On the advice of a friend I found myself at the edge of the North York Moors, just past the aptly named ‘surprise view’ at […]
Crookback dug up?
Posted by Richard Rawlinson A skeleton, a skeleton, my kingdom for a skeleton! Might we soon discover if Richard III is the hunchbacked tyrant with a withered arm depicted in Shakespeare or if his physical disability was merely Tudor propaganda? The king was buried in the church of a Franciscan friary in Leicester after being slain at […]
Busybody nonsense
Christopher Harris Some time this evening Christopher Harris will deliver the following speech to Woodstock Town Council, calling upon it to strike out its requirement that the interment of his father’s ashes be superintended by a funeral director. Here’s another example of someone tenaciously pursuing the rights of the bereaved with an important test case. […]
London’s Pyramid of Death
Posted by Belinda Forbes In the second of BBC Radio 4’s series Unbuilt Britain, Jonathan Glancey describes one of the most audacious buildings ever planned for London – it would have been the largest pyramid ever built. Church yards were so crowded at the beginning of the 19th century that corpses were literally bursting out […]
Grave dressing at Easter
Posted by Vale On my way to the crematorium today I passed a family tidying a grave, clearing it after the winter and bringing fresh flowers for Easter. It reminded me of this description from the diary of Francis Kilvert. At the time of writing he was a curate at Clyro on the Welsh border […]
They fit into a spread hand, yet reach into eternity
Posted by Rupert Callender, owner of The Green Funeral Company. As human beings, we look for meaning everywhere, superimposing it over everything that comes into our lives. The Australian aborigines believe that the world was vocalised into existence, literally sung into creation, and that the song needs to be continued so that reality can flourish. […]
Publishing event of the year!
The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, […]
