Category Archives: Places

One of my favourite memorials anywhere: it's just stunning. It commemorates Lady Ann Henniker who died in 1792, and is made from Coade stone, a kind of ceramic which allowed the creation of large, detailed cast sculptures.

More importantly (for me right now), it's on my old hard drive, which also has all my old cemetery photographs on it, and has been restored to working order. All the old cem pictures are going back on this blog, so you'll see the post count increase dramatically over the next couple of days. I'm filing them under "2002" (the actual dates are between 2002 and 2005 but I don't know what they are... just the order in which I visited cemeteries), so they'll show up in the archives but not on the front page. The list of cemeteries has the full count.

I'm happy to say, I think I've become a much better photographer over the last few years. Starting from such a low base, I'm not convinced that's saying much...

To St. Albans with B., mostly to sample the excellent produce of the West Cornwall Pasty Company. Warning: website is made from annoying Flash and has sound. Pasties are nonetheless excellent.

I had a brief "didn't know he was dead" moment by Lord Runcie's grave, and a rather longer "there's nothing bloody here" moment in Verulamium Park. Further warning: Roman mosaic closes at 4.30 and museum's last entry is 5pm: if you get there too late, there's not much else to see. Even the series of small walls is sparse.

First in a random series of saints: St. Alban
Alban was the first British Christian martyr, one of three from Roman Britain. According to Bede, he was executed after sheltering a priest: when Roman soldiers came to look for the priest, Alban swapped cloaks with him and was beheaded in his stead. Bede tells how the executioner was so impressed with Alban's faith that he converted on the spot and refused to kill him. A second executioner had his eyes fall out as he completed the task.

A punctuation nazi observes
St. Albans has no apostrophe, though it should have. Ditto for Bury St. Edmunds.