Thanks to Dan Hunt and BBC Online News for the Headline
One of my favourite reads are gravestones. I’m never happier than when I’m in a graveyard, looking at the details of those who have been laid to rest there. Their stories and what you can put together from the dates, the period language and perhaps the arrangement of the graves are interesting. I almost feel sad when you can’t read them, not for selfish reasons, but because I’d like to know about the people who lived their lives and rest in peace now.
So I was very pleased to read that a group of students from University of Leicester have uncovered and restored the inscription on an 18th Century tombstone in Leicestershire. The gravestone marked the grave of a 22 year old man Henry Reeve who died in 1772. The imaging techniques enabled them to establish his identity and also that he had borne his illness with fortitude. A faint inscription at the bottom of the gravestone read.
“Affliction sore with patience bore, Physicians w(h)ere in vain”
Henry’s mother who died twenty years later, is buried beside him. Their gravestones almost touching.
I have photos of gravestones from graveyards I have visited they include George Eliot(AKA Mary Ann Cross), Samuel Jackson , one of the first colonisers of Victoria, Australia, who has a monument to him erected by his wife Mary Ann Jackson, Karl Marx, Dorothy , One of Emperor her faithful dog (unfortunately I can’t read the name on the grave.)
One of my favourites is this one Max Wall, we needed to get help from one of the volunteers at Highgate Cemetery to find it and we did.
I have quite a collection of photographs of gravestones.They are all interesting and some are very difficult to read. I think it was a very useful project for the Leicester University students to do.
Namaste and thank you for reading.🙏
thenotsomightyom 