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 Location Of Walk |
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Ritual Places... Graveyards have always fascinated me (not in a macabre way you understand) we are the only species on this planet to bury their dead in a ritual way. All those people buried next to each other or on top etc. A Grave digger once said to me that "The dead aren't lonely. Only the living isolate themselves from each other." I think he is right ,all those people in one place....
In 1839 the first London Cemetery was built on modern lines (rows and rows of graves). George Walker wrote a most scathing attack on the sick-making revelations he found. "A London woman noticed amongst a heap of graveyard rubbish, the finger of her own mother who had been buried there not long before" he continued. "In making a grave a body, partly decomposed, was dug up, and placed on the surface on one side, slightly covered with earth; a mourner stepped on it, the loosened skin peeled off, he slipped forward, and fell headlong into the grave" Not only were the coffins resold for 'Coffin Furniture' the wood, silks and brass being reworked. Also the poor occupants of the coffins were taken to the bone house to be ground up for manure. An interesting modern day fact is, over 90% of the worlds Gold that has been mined and sold as jewelery is still in circulation.. |
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In our endeavors to find dark places, we were fortunate to have access to a local Church's Crypt. The entrance is shown above, would you enter this? |
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The above door is of a Gamekeepers cottage. The cottage was renovated for a television production, some twenty years ago. The contract with the production company, was to return the Gamekeepers Cottage to its original condition as they had found it. As is shown in the picture. Doorways hold a profound interest. What is behind them is held in abeyance until the door is opened... A old Shropshire custom, is to have mistletoe hanging above the door to ward off and absorb evil. |
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| The church pictured above is 1500 hundred years old. The Strange thing about the church was that every window was boarded up.... |
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George Walkers concerns over cemeteries in the 1800's continued in his book, The revelations of the day sickened the nation. One concern was as well as the churches being a place of worship, they were also used as places of meeting (i.e. schools, refuges community meeting places etc.) In one instance a church in London that was being used as a school house, had a problem as did a lot of churches in that day. |
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Black Rats raced round the church, not scared of the occupants. In fact the black sewer rat was so common that unlike today, children could make a few pennies by killing the rats. The church in question had a problem, it was reported that the noise below the main floor would disrupt the lessons. The children complained of the constant squeaking and the smell that made some pupils violently sick as the heat of summer intensified. When Church elders investigated they found 300 human bones picked clean of flesh and the crypt full of rats. The only other problem the children had was the large flies that started to invade the Church during the hottest days. These flies were named by the children "Body Bugs" |
