Holywell Cemetery

I was taken to Holywell Cemetery for the first time by a friend of mine when I was in the middle of a particularly unpleasant series of events; such joy, yet such sorrow. We would sit here, by this tomb stone, and be at peace. I drew, I ate, I sat, I wrote and I contemplated. It was funny after these years to go back and speak to my ghost: ‘this is where I am now’.

I wonder, were the two times to meet, what I would think.

In 1066 this land was a meadow. In medieval times it contained a small village community full of fullers and weavers. There was a Manor House, church and Holy Wells.   In the 1700s it was used for recreation with a cockpit and bowling greens. In 1847 Merton College made the land available for use as a burial ground.

Kenneth Grahame, Author of Wind in the Willows is buried here:

This gravestone is particularly poignant:

There are a sea of crosses in this churchyard: