070106.Widcombe, Bath Abbey Cemetery Soil Settlement
January 6, 2007 at 1:20 AM | Posted in Architecture, Bath, Bath Abbey, cemeteries - churchyards - and tombstones, Chisel Marks, Gardens & Parks, Overcast, Ruins, somerset, Widcombe | 6 Comments
This ancient grave marker for a Ms. [undescipherable] Ellen King is in near
ruins. You would be too if you were made back in the year of our Lord,
1955. So it goes.
061212.Glastonbury, Find the Spiderweb
December 12, 2006 at 8:35 PM | Posted in Architecture, Cathedrals and churches, cemeteries - churchyards - and tombstones, Chisel Marks, Gardens & Parks, Glastonbury, Overcast, Preservation, Ruins, somerset, spiderweb | 6 CommentsGlastonbury Abbey Abbott’s Hall ruin, looking toward the Crossing. Glastonbury’s current ruined state results from its dissolution at the hands of Henry VIII, who removed the lead roof and took the maintenance money.
“The Vietnam War couldn’t have gone on for as long as it did, certainly, if it hadn’t been human nature to regard persons it didn’t know and didn’t care to know, even if they were in agony, as insignificant. A few human beings have struggled against this most natural of tendencies, and have expressed pity for unhappy strangers. But, as History shows, as History yells: ‘They have never been numerous!’
“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do the maintenance.”
–Vonnegut
In other news, Rumsfeld made a suprise visit to Iraq this week, which will also be his last.
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061120.Bath, “How Hard It Is To Die.”
November 20, 2006 at 12:02 AM | Posted in Architecture, Bath, Cathedrals and churches, cemeteries - churchyards - and tombstones, Chisel Marks, Conservation, countryside, Gardens & Parks, Monuments and Memorials, Preservation, River Avon, Sculpture, somerset, towns, Trees | 1 Comment
St. Jam es Cemetery, south of the Avon, between Lower Bristol Road and the Great Western railroad tracks. Again, this is just a Victorian Era cemetery with most of the graves dating from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries and many of them were recent burials, nothing at all special here, except that just like the cemetery near Beckford’s Tower, this one is in total disrepair! This isn’t that old! Why do Victorian cemeteries never appear to be conserved here? Please tell me this is recent vandalism!
When I lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, I was a little astonished about the grave policies in some of the rural churchyards. I would look at their spectacularly old brick churches and the graves around them, only to discover they were all from the 1980s, 1960s, late 20th century in general. Upon inquiring at a few churches, I was informed that there, the land is leased in twenty year segments, with the option to pay for several leases at one time or have a family member renew the lease. The redevelopment of Århus with Arne Jacobsen incredibly famous rådhus (town hall) there was placed in the center of the city in open land. The city is medieval, how the heck was that land free to develop? Ah, it was a medieval Christian cemetery adjacent to an old Jewish cemetery. Attempts were made to angle the building so as to preserve the Jewish cemetery, but the other one was excavated for basement storage. (Ironically, I’m sure for death certificate records.)
Today’s title quote comes from the last words of Spanish fascist dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco who died on this day in1975 after having 3/5 of his stomach removed.
Incidentally, happy birthday to a (hopefully) loyal DP viewer.
061117.Bath, Abbey Memorial Day Display Finally Displayed
November 17, 2006 at 1:25 AM | Posted in Architecture, Bath, Bath Abbey, Cathedrals and churches, cemeteries - churchyards - and tombstones, Flowers, Foggy & Misty, Ladders, Monuments and Memorials, Overcast, somerset, Tabernacles | 1 Comment
It’s still up. I only saw it recently, several days after Memorial Day.
See previous Armistice/Memorial/Veteran‘s Day post here.
061111.Bradford, Cemeteries and Armistice Day
November 11, 2006 at 2:52 AM | Posted in Architecture, Bath, Bradford, Budapest, cemeteries - churchyards - and tombstones, Conservation, countryside, cumulus clouds, Flowers, Gardens & Parks, Monuments and Memorials, New York, people, somerset, towns | 6 CommentsFriday’s lecturer was a distinguished, and thoroughly British, structural engineer who had worked on all the great English Heritage listings. Out of all the case studies he projected, what struck me was his outfit. Accepting that it was a tad cold in the room, he wore a very formal heavy suit with a maroon vest and even had attached a gold pocket watch chain. His whole appearance was very colourful, which is how I came to notice that pinned to his label was a red and black poppy.
My grandfather’s occupation required him to frequently travel and these were two photos he took sometime in May of 1948. The first is the otherwise unremarkable skyline of Geneva, Switzerland but he had typed on the back of the photo that the League of Nations’ headquarters building (Palais des Nations) was located at the extreme right of the horizon line. (I believe the old League of Nations’ HQ building, Palais Wilson, is on the extreme left of the horizon line.) The second photo is of a then recent WWII cemetery in Arnheim, Holland, filled with wooden crosses marking the graves of fallen American soldiers whose bodies had not yet been sent home, or their grave markers made permanent with a stone cross.
Today in the US, Amistice Day is known as Veteran’s Day due to the events that occurred between the League of Nations building and this cemetery in Arnheim.
Please see my previous posted photo of a Hungarian WWI monument-like memorial, and here for the post explaining it.
The cemetery at Beckford’s Tower in Bradford, previously posted, struck my eye because of the incredible swirling clouds and its location on Lansdown Hill overlooking the city of Bath.
It reminded me of this last photo, which I grabbed off Wikipedia’s Photo of the Day a while back, and which features the cemetery in New York City that that grandfather is buried in.
It would appear Bath has fewer people to bury and fewer buildings to house them in than New York City.
061025.Bradford, Lansdown Hill, Cemetery View from Beckford’s Tower
October 25, 2006 at 12:46 PM | Posted in Architecture, Bath, cemeteries - churchyards - and tombstones, Halloween, somerset, Towers, Trees | 1 Comment
Lots of post streams to get back to, and since Halloween is right around the corner, I figured I might as well return to Beckford’s Tower and the cemetery that surrounds it high above both Bath and Bradford on Lansdown Hill.
First, to answer Zsolt72‘s question as to the date of the cemetery, it is a Victorian cemetery from the 1840s still-open for plots. The earliest grave there was William Thomas Beckford (October 1, 1760 – May 2, 1844), himself, (actually first his dog went but there’s no surviving marker). Buried above ground in a pink-marble sarcophagus that rests on a dry-moat island, next to his beloved tower and on this great hill, so he’d be closer to heaven (see thumbnail picture below). Interment didn’t occur immediately after his death since his daughter first sold the tower to a tavern developer but belatedly realizing the buyer’s intentions she bought it back and donated the place to a church and had the ground consecrated for daddy. Although the richest untitled man in England, Beckford wasn’t the greatest of men (his money came from slave-run sugar plantations in Jamaica) so it really did take the donation of an entire estate with tower for a church to let him rest.
He had two daughters but left everything in his will to only one–because she had married into aristocracy (the other only married a general)! Tragically, he hadn’t been present during that daughter’s birth nor most of her life since he exiled himself from England to avoid a death sentence after having been caught in bed with a 10 year-old boy (it was mainly scandalous because the boy was aristocracy–the future Hon . William Courtenay, 3rd Viscount and 9th Earl of Devon). What makes this worse was that the boy’s family probably set the whole thing up and used their son to bait the “new money” Beckford to his disgrace.
His tower on Lansdown Hill designed by Goodwich was his second and more humble Neverland, built after he had lost most of his money (the first having been sold just two years before it collapsed!). It doesn’t matter that he’s buried there now, it’s very fashionable and the family plots cost an arm and a leg.
061022.Bradford, Lansdown Hill, Beckford’s Tower and Cemetery
October 22, 2006 at 8:46 AM | Posted in Architecture, Bath, Bradford, cemeteries - churchyards - and tombstones, countryside, Gardens & Parks, Museums, Ruins, Sculpture, somerset, Towers | 3 Comments
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