I really like the typical english graveyard. Those old leaning headstones randomly scattered around the church, so very different from the graveyards I’m used to from Germany. There your “eternal” resting place gets rented to you for 20 or 30 years depending on soil structure and then the plot gets cleared and rented out to the next person. Everyone rests in orderly lines in neat squares, sharply edged off from their neighbours. Pretty boring really.
So when Rachel told me about the magnificent Seven I was all set to go. So off we trotted to Abney Park. I was stunned, firstly because we went on a really hot day, but mostly because they really had crammed them all in. Any German graveyard official would have screaming nightmares. Rows upon rows upon rows of graves almost stacked on top of each other, heavily overgrown with ivy, trees and weeds, Abney Park was very different from what I had expected. But – I liked it. Interesting, sometimes creepy memorials, lovely old trees, plenty of birds, you forget that you are in one of the busiest cities in the world.
Well, I did anyway. I was quite surprised at the amount of dogwalkers and made some four-legged friends.
But while I was busy snapping photos and petting dogs, my writer’s mind went its own way. It touched briefly on the obvious subject of ghost stories to the slightly less obvious dumping place for a body in a murder mystery, including, but not limited to murder behind a weeping Angel, before going into a family story. At some point my mind went completely off track. I blame the heat though.
Eventually we went home, me with plenty ideas in my head and pictures on my phone, both with the resolution to come back in cooler weather and take more pictures. Maybe even of arsenic mushrooms as they made themselves scarce this time.
I think Highgate is next.
DS Porton Books 