Marlpool Cemetery

On what transpired to be on of the hottest days of the year it was fitting to do something I love so much; walking. Wandering among wildlife and absorbing the beauty of nature is something I thrive upon. So making the end destination of a many miles walk a local cemetery, and finally a tiny ale house for some refreshment and rest bite from the heat was to me a perfect way to spend a sunny Sunday.

Like so many local cemeteries many monuments are faded and forgotten, with nature taking hold, years of erosion and poor weather felling these stony tributes, or far worse; vandals getting a cheap laugh out of the desecration of the memory of some mysterious man.

I wandered in the barmy haze, as ever pondering on the stones and their inscriptions, thinking about the lives which lay behind these few short words and how the world must have been for them. Suddenly I stumbled across one of the most striking inscriptions I've ever read 'Daniel Stirland. Aged 52. Who was killed by lightning at Heanor. August 11th 1890.' I can't imagine that was an everyday occurrence in Victorian Derbyshire. What was even more surprising was that after some subsequent research into newspaper archives it appears to have been during a cricket match!

There really are so many stories to tell hidden behind the long forgotten names of those which lay before us ...