History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past...
As Britain s population grew throughout the 19th Century and the demand for water in its towns and cities increased, local authorities and water boards looked to rural areas, building dams in remote valleys and creating large reservoirs. The Stocks Reservoir, completed in the 1930s, is one such reservoir, located in Dalehead in the Forest of Continue reading The cemetery serving a submerged…
The vast cemetery at Putney Vale in south-west London seems an unlikely last resting place for one of the men involved in Russia s revolutions of 1917, but close to the back wall of the cemetery, shaded by the trees of Wimbledon Common, two bright white Orthodox crosses mark the graves of Russia s first post-tsarist leader, Continue reading An exiled leader s grave on the edge of Wimbledon Common
Bunhill Fields, just to the north of the City of London, is one of the capital s most famous burial grounds and particularly noted as the final resting place of many of London s nonconformist Christians. Close to Bunhill Fields is another green space, its history as a burial ground much less conspicuous than that of its Continue reading The lost burying-ground of London s Quakers
Today, Spitalfields often feels like something of a battleground between the area s rich and varied heritage and the seemingly unstoppable march of gentrification and redevelopment. Located on the north-eastern edge of the City of London, in recent decades it has been transformed from a mostly working-class district that was home to textile producers and a Continue reading A medieval charnel house…
One of the joys of graveyard exploration is the discovery of unusual graves and memorials those with eccentric designs or strange stories attached to them. The imposing monument we re looking at today, which towers above its neighbours in a pretty churchyard in the suburb of Pinner, definitely ranks as one of the strangest in Continue reading A very strange grave in a suburban churchyard: Pinner s…
Artefacts from Ancient Egypt are scattered in museums across the world, with many of them being excavated and removed from Egypt by European- and American-led expeditions during the 19th Century and finding their way into the hands of private collectors or foreign museums. However, some of the best-known treasures of ancient Egypt the contents Continue reading Taking a walk through history at…
If you follow a flight of steps down from Edinburgh s busy Princes Street you ll find a church, largely hidden by trees and surrounded by an extensive burial ground. This is St Cuthbert s Kirk, a site with a history going back many centuries. The kirkyard at St Cuthbert s is home to some exceptional examples of funerary Continue reading Memento Mori: symbols of death in St Cuthbert s Kirkyard,…
In November 2017 one of London s most famous Roman sites reopened to the public after spending several years hidden away in storage. The Mithraeum, a subterranean temple dedicated to the god Mithras, has had an eventful afterlife since its celebrated rediscovery in 1954. Moved from its original site to make way for a new office Continue reading Uncovering the story of Roman London s mysterious…
At the heart of Lancashire s Ribble Valley, standing close to the banks of the River Ribble and overlooking Pendle Hill, is the church of All Hallows, Great Mitton. Within its walls is a remarkable collection of effigy graves, dating from the 16th to early 18th Centuries, all commemorating members of a local family whose fates Continue reading Knights, Jacobites and a rebellious duchess: the…
West Norwood, which opened as the South Metropolitan Cemetery in 1837, is one of London s most spectacular cemeteries, its grand tombs and monuments laid out along landscaped paths and mature trees. Of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries that opened on London s outskirts in the early Victorian period, West Norwood was arguably the most sought-after of them Continue reading West Norwood: the first…