The peaceful, walled cemetery overlooks the village and has great views to the sea. I like to think that the departed are keeping an eye on us, making sure we look after their village.
I find old graveyards fascinating, possibly because my dad often used to take me around them as a child. We took rubbings and read the inscriptions into a dictating machine to research our family tree. Dad started his research in his teens and still spends every spare minute on it now (mainly online), at the age of 70!
Wouldn't it be great if gravestones told you a bit more about the person they commemorate? Very few tell you much beyond dates of birth, death and sometimes marriage. There must be countless years of fascinating experience amongst the inhabitants of Johnshaven's graveyard. Who was a fisherman, a teacher, a tailor, a baker, a grocer, a cobbler, a blacksmith etc?
What a co-incidence..might even say spooky..another blog I read posted about graveyards yesterday and today I visited a fantastically, artistically and sensitivley transformed churchyard. I think you are right it would be fascinating to know more about the characters behind (or should that be beneath) the headstones or maybe its part of the enigma to just imagine..
ReplyDeleteAli x