Seven graves

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Winchester: Thomas Thetcher, died 1764 of a violent fever contracted by drinking small beer

If you’ve been following me for any length of time at all you will know that I love poking around in old graveyards. Here are seven gravestones, six of which I don’t think I have posted before, starting with the one above which was shown to me by the Queen of Squares herself on one of my visits to Winchester.

Glasgow Necropolis: Beloved Mother. Agnes Strang died in childbirth in 1849, aged 33, leaving the newborn baby and three older siblings. The sculpture is by George Mossman.
Glasgow Necropolis: weeping figure on a broken down stone.
Lennoxtown: Hauptmann Gerd Hansmann was one of the crew of a German bomber shot down in 1941.
Stirling: Wee Sister carved on the back of a headstone. From the front of the stone I think she was Catherine Stewart who died in 1877 aged two.
Stirling: a Chinese grave.
Kilmacolm: Janet Carson and John Joss Sinclair, my great-grandparents.

The last one is the one which has been posted before, or at least a version of it. Janet and John were my late mother’s maternal grandparents, and although I never knew them Mum talked about them so much and with such affection that I felt I did.

Linked to Becky’s Squares challenge, SevenForSeptember. I’m posting collections of seven every seven days, on the seventh day of the week. See you next Sunday!

Scotland, UK ,

51 Comments »

  1. I have a story to tell about Gerd Hansmann. My grandfather found his body on the night of the crash in Lennoxtown and when my grandfather died in 1999, my mother and I managed to trace Gerd’s wife and we went to visit her in Germany. She became a great friend of my mother. I’ve been researching this story for a couple of years now and have collated a huge amount of information.

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    • Yes, they are poignant. The monuments there are large and not very squarable so I went for the detail. As for the Reader I don’t use it so can’t answer for its vagaries! I think all systems have their drawbacks, I use Feedly which keeps losing people too.

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  4. There is something so touching about a graveyard, particularly an old one. Remembering how many people have gone before us is humbling, and helps put things into perspective.

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  6. I haven’t particularly visited many graveyards except a famous one in Paris. Pere la chaise. Have you been? I once came across a headstone of a lady called Easter, her first name, and it wasat Easter. X

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  7. He, too, love visiting cemeteries just like my dad. We would go and look at gravestones, much to my mom’s chagrin who, sometimes, would be waiting by the car…along with my brother. I’d call my dad over to look at a grave and vice versa. These Graves are so interesting..love that first one! So sad about the mom who died who, now, would be aok, considering our times…same with the child.

    hope you are aok and enjoying many walks.

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  8. I’m a big fan of cemeteries too and you shared some fabulous grave markers. I found the first one interesting because although there were both Ss and Fs throughout the engraving (oh, I wonder if there is a connection between “grave” and “engraving”), there also were letters that looked like a lower-case “f” but would have been pronounced as an “s.” I should probably go down a Google rabbit hole and figure it out.

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    • A lot of old texts use this archaic version of lower case s. Some comedians have had a field day with it in the past! I thought it was just in the middle of the word but it appears not from fmall and fleeps. Similar to, but not the same as, the German “scharfes s” ß – don’t really understand that either!

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  10. Very interesting gravestones, Anabel. Of course, the Chinese one got my attention. I believe it says, “Àizǐ qīn dì wáng shì zhī mù yījiǔliùjiǔ nián sì yuè” (Tomb of Wang, my dear brother, April 1969), but I wouldn’t swear by it!

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  11. As you know I also love to pootle around a graveyard. You have found some very interesting ones. I have absolutely no idea where my ancestors are buried, though I do have a vague recollection of going with my mother to her mother’s grave.

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  12. A good selection. A few years ago I had a bus trip to Kilmarnock. Turned out to be more interesting than I thought it would be with the Dick museum ( a local’s benefactor’s name) some fine old buildings and a good park… and I found out that Edgar Allan Poe, American author and poet went to school in Irvine and was fascinated by the local Kilmarnock gravestones many of which had elaborate death images, skulls, cross bones etc… So Scotland has influenced quite a few international writers, including Bram Stoker, Beatrix Potter and maybe him as well. Until then I’d no idea he lived in Scotland for a year as a youngster. Bob. BSS.

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  13. I enjoy walking around cemeteries and reading the inscriptions on the gravestones, wondering who the people were and what their lives were like. Some of the inscriptions are fascinating. You’ve got an interesting selection here. The ‘wee sister’ is particularly poignant.

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  16. How touching to read all the inscriptions and find out the history of the marked graves. Knowing and seeing where your great -grandparents are buried must be quite poignant.

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  18. What a fascinating collection, with so many stories to tell! The memorial for Agnes Strang is so typically Victorian and an interesting contrast to the simplicity of the Chinese grave.

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