Saturday, 19 May, 2018
This morning I watched the Harry and Meghan wedding and enjoyed almost all of it. I will go down as one who found Bishop Curry’s sermon overwhelming and annoying. I enjoyed the cello playing of Sheku Kanneh-Mason, whose career will surely skyrocket now. Windsor looked beautiful, Meghan was radiant, Harry was besotted and tender. What more can you ask for?
Wedding watching accomplished and BBC moving on to the FA Cup, I ventured out to Stoke Newington for the Abney Park Open House.
Abney Park dates from the early 18th century and is one of the ‘magnificent seven’ garden cemeteries of London. It’s a woodland memorial park, an arboretum, and a local Nature Reserve, as well as housing events and workshops. It’s a unique cemetery in that it’s non-denominational, doesn’t have an orderly layout, is as much a park as a cemetery, and has some amazing botanicals. Its 2,500 trees and shrubs were all labelled, and arranged around the perimeter alphabetically, from A for Acer to Z for Zanthoxylum. This planting was carefully designed to do as little as possible to change the existing picturesque land.
All of this gives it a ‘wild’ look. The grass and wildflowers are overgrown and the ivy climbs everywhere, sometimes obscuring the graves. If you go to any of the stones along the path edges and peer past, you’ll see other stones and graves further in, hidden by accident or design. And, although, it’s a cemetery housing many dead, it has a lived-in atmosphere since people wander in here studying the plants, and sit among the graves, picnic, and enjoy music.
I’ll confess to having had a hard time knowing what photos to include here. To me, this the most beautiful cemetery I’ve seen and so forgive the sheer number of images. There are many that I didn’t include.
