Southampton Old Cemetery

Ian and I took a trip to Old Southampton Cemetery last weekend. I was eager to try out a new compact digital camera and had heard good things about the place so I wasn't disappointed when I discovered the Victorian burial ground literally teaming with all manner of yummy Gothic headstones and memorials, a vast quantity of which were to be found buried beneath a tangle of brambles and nettles.



I love, love, love, places like this and could happily have spent hours wandering around, but as it was we only managed to cover about half of it, where we discovered oddities like this lovely monument which was literally growing a tree out of the stonework;

Though tremendously overgrown in parts (which only added to the wonderful sense of decay I love so much) efforts did appear to be being made to contain at least some of the undergrowth....or should that be overgrowth....threatening to envelop some of the older graves; I particularly loved the quirky manner in which old branches had been left entwined in the headstone here;



In other parts of the cemetery, time has wrought it's destruction in a different manner, with headstones left lying abandoned where they fell beneath the shade of an ancient tree;



whilst area's elsewhere seemed slightly less abandoned, such as this pathway leading to the only walk in mausoleum on site;



situated near this slightly better tended grade one listed monument;



It's such a big site, with so much still left to see, I'm hoping we can go back there sometime soon so that I can take more photos, and maybe even try find out more about some of the people buried there.

In other news we were invaded yesterday by six of Ian's fourteen grandchildren. I couldn't resist taking a photo of our 'sofa full of mischief'



Though they were only here for a couple of hours, the house now looks like a bombsite - I'm not entirely sure who had more fun though....them, or me!