Resting place

One of the sites in my neighborhood that I have been most looking forward to visiting is the Brompton Cemetery, which, on Google Earth, looks like it's just in my front yard. Well, it's not, exactly, and given our busy schedule and the fact that I'm just now becoming familiar enough with which streets are where, I didn't make it over there until yesterday afternoon.

What a lovely, peaceful place! You don't notice how loud the main streets are until you enter the cemetery, when it becomes instantaneously luxuriously quiet (except for the jets leaving Heathrow over you every few minutes, but it's still a soothing calm.)

I plan to make many more visits and explore different areas, but yesterday I had errands to run and so just made a quick circuit. In addition to the veritable forests of crosses that you can get some idea of in the picture above, one of the things that struck me were the many above-ground, casket-shaped memorials like these at the right. Another striking fact certainly is the crowded nature of the place; perhaps some of these plots are double- or triple-deckered?

The oldest death dates I saw were in the late 1800's, but since it opened in 1840 I'm sure there are older ones. On just my quick little tour I saw some very poignant war-related memorials, including a section devoted to a particular regiment's fallen in the Great War (known as World War I on our side of the Atlantic). And this very interesting piece of cemetery art on the left made me very curious as to its story. In case you can't read the inscription, it refers to an "accidental" death in 1915 and the relief sculpture shows an airship in flames. Very intriguing!

In spite of the peace and quiet within, you can't ever completely forget that you're in the middle of a bustling metropolis. Neighboring the cemetery is the mammoth Earl's Court Convention Center, which you can see peeping over the treetops in the picture below.

I know my "cemetarian" friends would love this place—wish you could come stroll through it with me! I'm really glad it's so close to my flat. It will be a perfect place to come and de-stress, enjoying the quiet and regaining the proper perspective on—to borrow from Ben Casey—birth, death, and infinity.