Southwark Cathedral, London

Southwark Cathedral, London

Visited October 2016

Southwark Cathedral, just south of London Bridge, is smaller than most cathedrals in England, due to starting out from humble origins. During its long history, it started as a Saxon church, became a priory in 1106 for the Augustinians, then became a parish church after the Reformation, as the church of St Saviour. In 1905 the church became a Cathedral.

Marking this long history, there's a wealth of memorials in the church, including a cadaver tomb depicting the deceased in a skeletal fashion, some wonderfully painted tombs and memorials (perhaps a little over-enthusiastically restored in the mid-20th century!), and plainer stones set in the floor and walls, many dating to the 18th century and earlier.

The cathedral is free to visit, although there's a £1 fee for photography which goes towards the upkeep of the building. It's well worth a visit, and if you're lucky you might even see the resident cat (who was lurking in the shadows when I visited!)

Tomb of Court Poet John Gower (15th century)

Cadaver tomb of Thomas Cure (d.1588)

Belfast City Cemetery

Belfast City Cemetery, Belfast, Northern Ireland

Visited February 2017

This Victorian cemetery is found in West Belfast at the end of the Falls Road. It was opened in 1869 and has sections for both Protestant and Catholic burials, divided by an underground wall, as well as a separate Jewish section. It's a lovely, well maintained cemetery, with some more overgrown areas away from the main entrance. 

If you're in Belfast, it's well worth stepping off the tourist trail to visit this one. There's a heritage trail you can follow to find some of the great and the good who are buried here (including, of course, links to Titanic), as well as the prostitutes and paupers who were also buried in the cemetery.

There are some lovely views out over the surrounding countryside - no doubt they'd be better if the sun was shining, rather than drizzle as when I visited!

Kit's Coty House and Little Kit's Coty House Neolithic dolmen tombs

Kit's Coty House and Little Kit's Coty House

Dolmen tombs near Aylesford, Kent

Visited May 2017

Both of these Neolithic burial tombs are found in farmland a few miles out of Aylesford in Kent. Kit's Coty can only be reached on foot, as it's in a field beside a footpath. While Little Kit's Coty is beside a road, there's no parking nearby (or indeed footpath beside the road!).

Both of these monuments are in the care of English Heritage, but entirely free to visit. A circular walk from the lovely town of Aylesford takes you past both of these, as well as through the surrounding countryside, via the North Downs Way and Pilgrim's Way. The monuments both date from the Neolithic period, circa 6000 years ago, and are all that remain of two dolmen tombs used for communal burials. They would originally have been under mounds of earth, as part of long barrows (such as West Kennet in Wiltshire); there's more information about their history on the English Heritage website.

Kit's Coty House consists of three uprights and a capstone, all behind railings. Little Kit's Coty House, also known as the Countless Stones, is a jumbled mass of sarsen stones which you can walk among, separated from the road by a path, hedge and railings. When I visited on a bank holiday Monday there was no-one else around at either site. Little Kit's Coty House in particular was very atmospheric. 

Bunhill Fields, London (2018)

Bunhill Fields, London

Visited January 2018

I previously visited the dissenters (i.e. non-Church of England) burial ground of Bunhill Fields (near Old Street station, London) in 2014. Nothing much has changed at the site - it's still used mainly as a cut-through, but no-one takes any notice of those leaning over railings to take photographs. 

All but a very few graves are behind railings, with access only by guided tour held on Wednesday lunchtimes. The stones of William Blake and Daniel Defoe, two of the main attractions of memorials, are not behind rails and are close together so easy to find. The winter sunlight was in the wrong direction for a photo of Defoe's stone to come out however...

Another of the stones worth stopping at, again not behind the railings, is that of Dame Mary Page (top 2 photos, below), whose medical history is writ large for all to read!

Part of the burial ground is managed for wildlife, another is landscaped to give a pleasant place to rest. There are squirrels galore, and if you can tune out the sound of passing traffic its a lovely little oasis.

Ossuary at St Leonard's Church, Hythe, Kent

St Leonard's Church, Hythe, Kent

The Ossuary in the Crypt

Visited September 2017

http://www.stleonardschurchhythekent.org/thecrypt.html

In the basement of the church of St Leonard's in Hythe is the largest ossuary in Britain. I'm not going to go into the details of dates etc, as their own website (link above) gives more information than I could ever hope to. 

Round the side of the church is a small, nondescript path and stairway leading to a door, where (in summer only) you can pay the attendant £1 and go in to this incredible place in the crypt. It's not very big, it's probably not for the squeamish (there's nothing between you and the bones of about 2000 people), but it's really quite something. Skulls of people who died in about the 12th or 13th centuries sit on shelves in the arches, while their long-bones - and a few more skulls - form a solid pile which runs almost the full length of the crypt.

On the day I visited, there were a few other curious visitors in the ossuary at the same time, including children who seemed utterly fascinated by the whole thing. Is it an appropriate thing to do, to have these bones on display? I'm not entirely sure, given that it's likely these were local parishioners exhumed from their graves in the churchyard in about the 1600s, and, despite some scientific testing, are perhaps now seen more as a curiosity than as people. Still, at least no-one was touching them despite the lack of protection, and there seemed to be a real air of respect among visitors.

If you should make it to the ossuary, be sure to go into the lovely church upstairs too, and look out for the Medieval graffiti on some of the pillars.

Ironmongers' Graveyard, Geffrye Museum Gardens, London

Ironmongers' Graveyard, Geffrye Museum Gardens, Hoxton, London

Visited September 2017

In the north-west corner of the Geffrye Museum grounds, just as you go through the gate into the gardens, there are a small collection of gravestones relating to the Ironmongers' Company, who owned the almshouses which the museum is now housed in. Three date to the 1700s (one, of Mrs Cook, has a rather nice skull atop it), the others to the Victorian period and include the reburial of Sir Robert Geffrye, who founded the almshouses via money left in his will, and his wife. They were reburied after the church they were buried in was demolished in 1878.

The gardens are, at the present time (Januyary 2018) closed due to the redevelopment of the Geffrye Museum and will reopen in 2020. I don't know if the gravestones will be visible during that time, and they're not worth a special visit to see them, but once the museum is open you should definitely pause to look at them on your way into the splendid period gardens behind the museum.

Reilig Odhráin, Iona, Scotland

Reilig Odhráin, Iona, Scotland

Visited June 2017

St Oran's chapel and burial ground is right next to the Abbey on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland. The small, plain chapel was built in the 12th century, and was restored in the 20th century at the same time as the abbey. It is named after one of St Columba's followers, Oran (or Odhráin).


The chapel is surrounded by a graveyard which pre-dates the building by perhaps 500 years. Known as the Reilig Odhráin, it was the abbey graveyard and is said to be the burial place of kings of Scotland, Norway and Ireland up until the 11th century. A survey in 1549 records 60 kings buried there, although the inscriptions were gone by the end of the 1600s.


Many of the most important gravestones have been removed to the Iona Abbey museum to protect them from erosion, so most of the stones which remain are Victorian and later. The burial ground is still in use, with a modern extension in one corner where John Smith, leader of the Labour Party, was buried in 1994.

Canongate Kirkyard, Edinburgh

Canongate Kirkyard, Edinburgh

Visited September 2016

The kirkyard of the Canongate Kirk on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh contains burials from the 18th century onwards, in a variety of states of repair. The church itself is still in use, and there are modern memorials in the kirkyard as well as ancient. 

It’s a neatly laid out kirkyard, on the Holyrood rather than Castle part of the Royal Mile, and there weren’t too many tourists when I visited. There are large monuments around the walls and towards the back, and smaller stones in the middle. A few early stones bear memento mori such as skulls, but they’re few and far between.

Two memorials of note are the memorial to the Coachdrivers of the Canongate, whose stone shows a coach and horses, and the stone to poet Robert Fergusson, who was the inspiration for Robert Burns.