Cemetery Club
8 FOLLOWERS
Burial Grounds are like libraries of the dead. Millions of people have ended up in these remarkable places and this blog seeks to highlight them, their achievements and the places where their mortal remains are. In May 2013 the Cemetery Club was founded. Stories of heroes and villains, inventors and actors, people who once lived, laughed, loved and cried.
Cemetery Club
2M ago
Life lived with a bang, ended with a whimper Look at the cover image on this biography, written by Thomas Edgar Pemberton. Dressed with long, theatrical whiskers and a quizzical, confused glance – this was an extraordinary gentleman, resembling a 19th century Tom Selleck, who commanded a fee of £235 a week (roughly £23,500 in ..read more
Cemetery Club
2M ago
West Norwood Cemetery shared an image of one of their more imposing monuments and I countered it with the same shot, but from 1968 (courtesy of Lambeth Archives). The imposing, henge-like monument to 19th century antiquaraian John Britton. A man who wanted his own memorial to endure down the eyons. So he took inspiration from ..read more
Cemetery Club
3M ago
A flat in Hampstead is up for sale. Boasting over 1,332 sq feet of living space, a private terrace and close proximity to Hampstead High Street, this top floor flat – with its plain white walls, battered leather seats and eclectic set of metal map chests and chairs – has an asking price of £1.8 ..read more
Cemetery Club
3M ago
Taphophiles unite! A few days ago Matti Geyer, a tour guide from Berlin dropped me a message sharing his love of graveyards and cemeteries. He offered to do a short post about a cemetery that I myself had been to when I was last in Berlin – one of the city’s finest, in fact. Here ..read more
Cemetery Club
7M ago
How one photographers secret stash fell foul of 19th century morality I was in The National Archives in February 2020 and found the allure of the microfilm readers too much to resist. So I picked up a reel, loaded it onto the reader, and took a punt to see what was on it. It was ..read more
Cemetery Club
7M ago
Porto, also known as Porto Cale (‘warm port’, in modern translation) in Roman times, is the city that gave Portugal its name. It’s a lovely city, albeit one that has probably surrendered a little too much to the needs of the tourists. Wanting to see a little more of its culture, I turned to one ..read more
Cemetery Club
9M ago
Things have been a little quiet for Cemetery Club this year, and there is a reason why. Well, two reasons. Caring duties for a parent being a key one. BUT. The second reason, which is more pertinent, is that earlier this year I was approached by Hoxton Mini Press to write a book on historic ..read more
Cemetery Club
1y ago
Not on the official tour of Highgate Cemetery in respect to the family’s wishes, there is no ‘here lies George Michael’ at his gravesite. All there is is his real name (Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou) and the epitaph ‘beloved son, brother, friend’. George was a man who had a huge influence on me coming to terms ..read more
Cemetery Club
1y ago
On a long, leafy road by a prestigious school, death hides in plain sight. It’s actually a slightly more embellished version of a building that once stood elsewhere. The Dulwich Picture Gallery is the world’s first purpose-built exhibition space. It houses paintings by Canaletto, John Constable and Thomas Gainsborough as well as lesser known works ..read more
Cemetery Club
1y ago
The history of a garment links three women, a 19th century painter and some beautiful places of rest Be it his Ophelia or Bubbles, the work of Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) dominates the nineteenth century. An evocative artist whose latter work to soap in the nineteenth century is just important as the image of ..read more