Out and About || Hastings Cemetery

Hiya!

If you are sick of my obsession with cemeteries, now is the time to back away. Actually I'm kinda feeling the overkill too so I'm promising some non-cemetery shenanigans at some point in the near future....but first have at this lot.

I can't believe I'd written Hastings cemetery off as being tiny (it looks so from the front as we whizz by in the car) when it's actually huge. We spent about 90 minutes there and saw about a quarter of it.

So, why the fascination with cemeteries? Well, they're outdoors so you're surrounded by nature, they're free to visit, they're peaceful and I love history. I guess I've been fascinated with death since I was a teenager. When I was a teen I had a bit of a rough time because of my mum's then-partner, and I developed my first mental problems then. They manifested in a couple of ways - I was terrified of my mum's partner (and of being in the house alone with him), and I was terrified of dying, which is reasonable when you're forced to live with a violent, alcoholic abuser of women. Do you remember book clubs? Well I joined one when I was about 16-17 and bought a book which was all about death, all the gory stuff which happens afterwards, and it took away the unknown and eased my fears. The issues with my mum's fella weren't so easily explained away, unfortunately.

Moving swiftly on....I guess it fascinates me that people would make such elaborate and beautiful memorials to their dead. I love the workmanship, the art of it all. You rarely see elaborate gravestones in the modern age, so there's a wistfulness, a romanticism of days gone by.

There's one small area which was my favourite part. It was under the cover of trees and very overgrown. As you can see from the photo below a tree has swallowed up and broken a gravestone. It'll probably totally engulf it in time.

This one on the left looks like a fireplace. The right one is modern but I like it.

Thanks for looking!
Leah xoxo