12 May 2012

Set in stone

It's cycling season again and I've been out twice so far this month, starting fairly gently with 16km and 20km rides. When I started cycling last summer I struggled to do 6km, so I've somehow maintained a degree of fitness over a fairly inactive winter.

Today I visited the Loyalist cemetery on Burr Road. I drive past this all the time but haven't ever gone through the gates before.


The stones are small and skew-whiff and in most cases there isn't much left to read on them.


I like the home-made feel they have about them and the way they've weathered over the years. The last burial here was in 1927, according to the sign on the gate, but for some reason the local people decided to put up another monument to commemorate the early pioneers in 1928. This huge, stone-studded edifice dominates the tiny cemetery and, in my view anyway, spoils its homely nature.


Next to this monstrosity is a poignant marble slab recording the deaths of the children of Samuel and Harriet Wakeford. There's something not right about the date of five-year-old Harriet's death, though...


2 comments:

Quinn said...

Old graveyards have so many stories to tell, don't they? The landscape is dotted with them here in New England; there are at least four within a few miles of my place.
What do you mean about the date of the death being wrong?

Diana Studer said...

30th of February?