A Quiet Spot

Wandered around Stowmarket's Old Cemetery while waiting for the vet to complete the paperwork which will enable S to accompany us to France. Hadn't been there before - it seems to have ceased internments in about 1901 but still accepts ashes in one small area. The main section is being managed as a nature reserve & a quiet space - it must look better when less dry, but was still pleasant with mature trees & overgrown headstones. The main Blip shows a couple of stones now overhung by laurel, while the extra is a more general view, including one of the "bug hotels". There was also a memorial plaque, which I didn't record, for the twenty something casualties, many of them children & young teenagers, from the gun cotton factory explosion back in the late nineteenth century.

I didn't read the inscription on the stone in the main photo until I enlarged it - it was obviously a memorial to a young man from a local family who lost his life in 1918 near St Quentin. The family name was fairly distinctive & I was surprised to find how easily a search brought up information on First World War casualties & cemeteries; how much information is now online.