By now people who follow both my blogs should know that I have some kind of fascination with old cemeteries, not because I have a fascination with death but because you find the most interesting things in them. Every now and then I go and wander around the South End Cemetery which is near my office and I always return with some interesting photo or piece of information when. The South End Cemetery came into existence in 1882. At that stage each of the other cemeteries in town had been for a specific church or religion, while South End was meant for (just about) everybody. A simple fourfold division between Church of England, Nonconformist, Roman Catholic, and Muslim was adopted and this spatial pattern was retained in subsequent cemetery planning until the 1990s when the cemetery was full.
Interesting with all the little fences. It does look like a rather full place.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we'll bump into each other one of these days..
ReplyDeleteBeyond the line of trees in the background is the gorge through which the Apple Express runs on its journey to Loerie, and less often Avontuur. On either side of the gorge there are many graves hidden under the dense shrubbery, and one can barely see the few headstones that peer out, nearly illegible. shrubs grow from the belly of these graves in a eerie and distorted fashion.
ReplyDeleteOn the other side of the gorge was the old Stuart Township, where my mother and her family lived when she was still young - I'm going back to the '70s now!- and only the root-ripped tarred streets remain. There is a clump of trees on the bend of Forest Hill Drive and Alister Miller Drive - apparently a suicide hanging too place here.
I imagine this was part of South End Cemetery which was severed when the track was laid shortly after the Anglo-Boer War ended and an influx of impoverished countryfolk were harnessed to build this, sadly now defunct, PE jewel.