Is it time we changed the way we think about death?

Katie Thornton: "As the Sales and Marketing Manager at Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol, Adela Straughan has hosted everything from grief support groups to film screenings and exercise classes within the cemetery walls. Having lost loved ones early on in her life, she’s made it a “life’s mission” to break the taboo around grief. She uses the cemetery as a platform to encourage public dialogue about loss. “I think [the traditional cemetery] is a good place to start this conversation about how else we remember somebody,” she says."

Katie Thornton: "There is no record of why the graves as this Scarborough churchyard were arranged in such a peculiar fashion. But it is likely that the stones were moved over 100 years ago, and reorganised in a way that maximised the number of readable headstones while minimising the space they occupied. Local parishes and city councils have long moved headstones in old cemeteries, creating more park space without eliminating the sites’ histories."

A sustainable solution? Katie Thornton: "London has been running out of land for the dead since the industrial revolution. Some studies have estimated that the entire country of England will run out of burial space within 15 years. City of London Cemetery and Crematorium Superintendent Gary Burks is keeping burial ecologically sustainable by reusing abandoned graves. Headstones that meet the requirements for reuse can be turned around and re-inscribed with the names of the newly buried. Here, Gary looks at the new “front” of reclaimed graves. “The work that we’re doing around grave reuse should make this place sustainable around burial indefinitely,” he says."

Katie Thornton: "The gravestone of a young boy, though broken and removed from its original location, is placed neatly against a tree. Even a material as solid as stone is not everlasting."

Katie Thornton: "Today, cemeteries are respites of nature amidst bustling cities. Bristol’s Arnos Vale Cemetery is beautiful on a frosty morning. Many neighbours who aren’t bothered by the macabre raison d'être for the space treat the cemetery like a park—strolling the grounds with dogs and children, or using it as a shortcut to the bus stop. In the Victorian era, many cemetery sites were selected due to their natural variety, and early cemetery staff cultivated biodiversity."

A dying art. Simon Ashwell got into memorial masonry through his father, who worked in the trade. But he sees the process of collaborating with surviving family on a memorial as a healing artistic practice. But the craft, he says, is dying out. Today, monuments are made in a hurry by computerized technology. “It’s soulless…they all look the same,” Ashwell says. “Whereas the craft in being a monumental mason is taking your time. Speaking to your clients. It’s called being old fashioned.”

Katie Thornton: "Wayne Pickett, 51, gave up his comfortable office job to work the grounds at a suburban London cemetery. “I can actually say it’s the only job I actually love going to work, because the place is so lovely,” he says. “You can't go too many places to work, and see such beautiful things as you do [at the cemetery].”"

Katie Thornton: "English cemeteries are public libraries of stories. Individual headstones record lives, loves, and losses. Taken collectively, they shed light onto histories of migration, industry, segregation and integration, urban development, epidemics, and wars. Judith Winters, editor of online academic journal Internet Archaeology, examines a weathering headstone in a North Yorkshire churchyard. To her, cemeteries have both historic and emotional value. “They teach us how people have always lived, coped, accepted, carried on. I find visiting cemeteries very moving but also comforting.”"

Katie Thornton: "Before he retired, Steve J. set aside money whenever he could to personally fund restoration of graves at a forgotten graveyard in Bristol. But despite his love for headstones, Steve doubts he will have one himself. “What happens to me when I finally go? I don’t know, I don’t know. There’s nobody in my immediate family that will come and visit where I’m buried,” he says. “So I’ll probably be cremated and probably have my name in the Book of Remembrance. So at least [my name] is somewhere.”"

Katie Thornton: "As the population of English cities boomed during the industrial revolution, local churchyards became increasingly overcrowded, with stories of shallow graves and exposed bodies, deadly foul odours, and mass burials. In the mid-19th century, many cities opened their own municipal cemeteries. But these spaces, too, became overcrowded. The graves at York Cemetery are densely packed."

Katie Thornton: "Howard Utting grew up in Bristol’s Arnos Vale Cemetery. His parents met working on the grounds crew. After retiring from the Royal Mail, Utting volunteers each week at the cemetery’s reception desk—located in what used to be his living room. From the window of his post, he overlooks the grave of his father, whose home in death is located just a few yards from his home in life."

A labor of love. Joy Redfern comes down from the midlands to London’s Highgate Cemetery to tend the grave of Mary Ann Cross, better known by her masculine pen name George Eliot. “As someone who greatly enjoys her writing, who can never meet her, discuss her work with her or tell her how much it is appreciated and admired, caring for her grave is something tangible which I can do,” Redfern says.

Katie Thornton: "Cemeteries illustrate changing family structures and domestic realities. This grave marker at London’s Highgate Cemetery captures a period of England’s history now, thankfully, hard to fathom—a time when infant mortality was so high that some families could not even list all of their deceased children on their memorial."

Katie Thornton: "The British's ever-evolving relationship to death is embodied in their tombstones. Skulls and other explicit representations of mortality were common on 18th century graves. But in the 19th and 20th century, the dying process became medicalised, industrialised, and depersonalised; with the onset of the “funeral industry,” death was removed from the home. Gravestone imagery changed accordingly—from an explicit recognition of death and a focus on the deceased, to images of grief and rebirth, and a focus on those left behind. This 1921 grave at Woking’s Brookwood Cemetery embodies the sentimentality of many 19th and 20th century memorials."

Katie Thornton: "Cemeteries may be more diverse and representative than many public repositories of history, such as monuments and statues. But they are still far from universally accessible. In the Victorian era, families would go broke paying for large memorial markers that demonstrated--and often exaggerated--their social and economic status. Though grandiose memorials are no longer so popular, funeral poverty is at an all-time high, meaning many people go into debt to deal with the remains of their loved ones. Only by comparing the physical headstones to cemetery records and death records can we see who excluded from our memorial landscapes—and paint a more complete picture of English society, past and present."

Katie Thornton: "A headstone appears to offer an opportunity to vie for immortality. In a cemetery, a passerby can recall the name of the dead, generations after the end of a bloodline. But permanence is questioned in London’s Highgate Cemetery as a tree easily dislodges a headstone, threatening to topple it. Graves nearby stand crooked and worn, their stories covered by ivy."

Katie Thornton: "Every week, Mary Laurie, 71, dons garden gloves and volunteers clearing weeds and brambles from headstones at Bristol’s Arnos Vale cemetery. She’s already purchased her burial plot—in the woodland burial section, where there are no memorial markers. “You don’t need a lump of stone to be remembered,” Laurie says. “If they love you, they’ll remember you.”"

Katie Thornton: "Memorial landscapes are always in flux. Cities grow, and cemeteries get swallowed up. Stones weather and crumble from disuse. Digital technologies may be more accessible than expensive, stone memorials, but they have dangerously short shelf lives. In this crucial moment of change, British cemetery staff, neighbours, technologists, gravediggers, undertakers, and artists are changing the ways and places in which we remember the dead."

Katie Thornton: "Whether it’s stonemasonry, laser etching, or mobile apps, cemetery spaces have always utilised new technologies. In a project they called “Future Cemetery,” Media-maker Jeremy Routledge (Calling the Shots Media) and death academic Dr. John Troyer (University of Bath) used Augmented Reality to provide visitors to Bristol’s Arnos Vale Cemetery with a more complex understanding of the individuals buried beneath their feet. “[Cemeteries] will change as different forms of communication technology emerge and disappear,” stays Troyer. “The digital tools we used are no different.” Augmented Reality, they felt, added depth to the site without altering its historic nature."

Katie Thornton: "Sue Stearn and a team of dedicated volunteers reanimate and digitally document fading grave inscriptions at the Embsay village churchyard using Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) technology. RTI uses composite photography and strategically-placed lights to reveal text no longer visible to the human eye."