Comments on: Summer At Bow Cemetery

By: Mary

Mary — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 18:41:57 +0000

Sixty four years ago on a bright June day, I walked up Southern Grove behind a horse-drawn hearse carrying my grandmother’s body to her final resting place in Bow Cemetery. A day I vividly remember as it was the first funeral I had ever attended. Last year, I returned to the cemetery, but despite knowing the section where she had been buried, I was unable to find her tombstone as nature had taken full possession of the area–as nature so often does. I did linger there for some time, walking the paths, sitting quietly on benches, and stepping in and around some of the sections, being careful to show respect for the living (nature) and the dead. So pleased that the resting place of so many hardworking people who had so little access to nature in their lifetime are finally surrounded by tranquility.

By: Jillian Foley

Jillian Foley — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 14:01:12 +0000

What a lovely article. When I next visit London will endeavour to visit this lovely place with so much history.

By: Lynne Perrella

Lynne Perrella — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 13:53:12 +0000

“where death once held dominion” — A lyrical and provocative phrase. Thank you for that.
And thanks for these stirring atmospheric photos. I felt like I was walking between the various
headstones, the greenery up to my thighs, leaves brushing against my fingertips. The grave stone with the wave-tossed ship totally captivated me and I sat for quite a long time just staring at it. The veil of green velvet moss was the crowning touch to this glorious artifact.
We have several small family cemeteries in our rural town in the Hudson River Valley, and I’ve paid visits to these secret wooded locations (along with our town historian, who is ever-knowledgeable about who/what/when). The stones are mostly tossed, laid aside, tilted, and
engulfed in dense overgrowth. I enjoy observing the motifs included in the carvings — watchful cherubs, stalwart urns, etc. One notable small cemetery has been restored and is lovely and tended — but the beauty of the other wild plots is undeniable.

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 11:28:09 +0000

Yes thank you for the evocation of place and histories!

The church yards across the land are a infinite archive for the imagination:

St. Andrews, Greenstead, Essex and its Crusader’s resting place or St. Mary’s, Acton, Cheshire, with its Bloody Field just outside the grave yard, now good Cheshire pasture, where the dead of the Battle of Nantwich (1644) now lie.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 10:50:24 +0000

Great pics. Cemeteries and gravestones have always interested me to such a degree that I ended up as a grave digger for a year in the late 1980s.
Wonderful places.
I really love the dark humour of the stone with the beautifully carved ship (wreak?) in heavy seas with the words “such is life” underneath.
The finger pointing down on another stone gives me the chills, tho but!
Apt for the Tories today.
Thanks.

By: Lorraine

Lorraine — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 06:59:40 +0000

A glorious description of a glorious place. Thank you. I have many ancestors who rest here, some in the non-conformist area with unmarked graves & no individual plots (they were poor German immigrants who, as you say, helped build our city), others in so-called ‘millionaire’s row’ – the Germans who were more successful in their ventures as publicans and who built themselves large glamorous memorials. And the ones in between with small plain headstones now entwined by the vegetation but who are not forgotten.