#history

Sheldon Goodman

Aug 9, 2021
4 min

Stumbling Stones

My foot scuffed something. I was walking down the Kloveniersburgwal in Amsterdam in 2018 when something slightly tripped me over. I looked down and saw something shiny embedded into the pavement. There were small plaques, which stood slightly proud from the brickwork. They resembled brass beer coasters, so I knelt down for a closer look. As I did so, I saw names, dates, and then…a place name. A place name that had me exhale sharply as soon as I re-read it to myself. Auschwitz

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Sheldon Goodman

Aug 5, 2021
5 min

Six Olympians From the Past

Despite the setbacks of happening in the middle of a global pandemic, the Tokyo Olympics of 2021 has already seen an impressive haul of medals for Team GB: as of current time of writing we have thirteen golds, sixteen silvers and thirteen bronze medals, placing as sixth overall out of two hundred and six nations. As we celebrate the likes of Tom Daley fulfilling a life ambition in achieving a long-overdue gold medal in men’s synchronised 10 metre diving and Beth Shriever in W

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Death in the British Museum: Object in Focus

Sheldon Goodman

Jul 22, 2021
4 min

Death in the British Museum: Object in Focus

Being invited by our wonderful Cemetery Club master of ceremonies Sheldon K. Goodman to participate in Death in the British Museum this coming Saturday has given me a little push towards reevaluating what the massive museum collection in Bloomsbury means to me. It has encouraged me to consider the importance of furnereal objects and how they connect us to our ancestors in powerful ways. Vietnamese incense-burner (British Museum number 1985,0125.1) This Vietnamese incense-burn

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Sheldon Goodman

May 26, 2021
4 min

The Peregrine of St. Pauls

The Museum of London has a fabulous Peregrine Falcon. It is however, dead. I saw this bird of prey when I visited the Beasts of London exhibition in 2019 and there was something terribly sad about seeing a creature, although long deceased, stuffed, mounted and displayed in a way that does not reflect the nature of its species (excluding standing over a dead pigeon). This bird once swopped over the skies of London and in the same way that I’m fascinated in following the footst

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Sheldon Goodman

Apr 28, 2021
5 min

Vesty

I’m in a cemetery today. I don’t want to be. Anyone who knows me will know one of my favourite jokes, considering my passion for cemeteries as museums of people, is to ‘threaten’ people with a blog post. “I’ll be writing about you one day!” I say, tongue in cheek. Earlier this month, it finally happened. An exceptionally good friend of mine died after a brief battle with cancer and I am now writing a blog I’d prefer to have written years in the future. There is a little more

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Sheldon Goodman

Feb 4, 2021
5 min

The Music of Patrick Cowley

Cowley was instrumental in developing dance music in the late 70s/early 80s – and his death from AIDS in 1981 robbed the queer community one of its most promising talents Late night editing for Queerly Departed had my Spotify playlist deliver an unexpected tune that slaps. I liked the sound of it, turned up the volume, and played it on repeat. Continuously. Who was the artist? A quick Google introduced me to a queer music producer who isn’t as well known as he should be. Patr

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Sheldon Goodman

Feb 4, 2021
5 min

The Music of Patrick Cowley

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A Day in the Death of A Cockney Cemetery

Sheldon Goodman

Jan 22, 2021
6 min

A Day in the Death of A Cockney Cemetery

Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park is one of my favourite cemeteries to research and explore. It doesn’t have the sepulchral magnificence of West Norwood, neither the romantic decay of Highgate, but out of the so-called Magnificent Seven of London, its the lower classes who are predominantly buried here and its their stories that I find more gripping than that of Lord and Lady Hobknob. Today it is a woodland oasis, frequented by dog-walkers and people making use of the tranquil natu

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Sheldon Goodman

Jan 22, 2021
6 min

A Day in the Death of A Cockney Cemetery

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Sheldon Goodman

Apr 17, 2020
5 min

The Greatest Library of Them All

Libraries are a world you can get lost in. Earlier this week I paid a visit to my local cemetery, where I filmed a video about John Harris – the subject of one of my sixty second videos on Twitter. He’s buried in Queen’s Road Cemetery, Croydon. I explored his legacy to both the British Museum and the British Library by looking at his remarkable career as an artist and facsimilist – have a watch here first: I’ve decided to share another life story I discovered after researchin

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Sheldon Goodman

Apr 17, 2020
5 min

The Greatest Library of Them All

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Sheldon Goodman

Mar 2, 2020
5 min

Killed By A Coffin

It’s an image that does the rounds on social media from time to time. I’m not the first to share it and it’s one of the initial images I found when I began my immersion into cemetery history. Kensal Green was the second cemetery I visited for this blog and its not an event you’d typically depict – or frankly want – to associate with a place of rest. The drawing graced the front page of the Illustrated London News on Saturday 2nd November 1872, a few days after the tragic eve

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Sheldon Goodman

Mar 2, 2020
5 min

Killed By A Coffin

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Sheldon Goodman

Jun 25, 2019
2 min

Help Restore The Burdick Grave

Right; roll up sleeves time, people. An accident befell my friends at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park not too long ago; a ruddy great tree decided it was time to collapse and in the process it took out a monument that is now in pieces on the floor. Tower Hamlets doesn’t have the most spectacular tombs but what it does is act as a repository of the honest Londoner; it’s a reminder of a time when this part of London wasn’t the nicest of places to live and work – airs and graces are

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Sheldon Goodman

Jun 25, 2019
2 min

Help Restore The Burdick Grave

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Sheldon Goodman

Feb 18, 2019
6 min

Octavia Hill

For LGBT History Month 2019 I’m inviting friends and fans alike to delve into our cemeteries and unearth some queer stories – there are loads, if you know where to look! Today I’m very pleased to post a blog by Sean Curran; Sean is a heritage educator and curator currently Community Learning Manager at the National Trust’s Sutton House and Breaker’s Yard. For those of us in the heritage sector, and with interests in LGBTQ histories, two significant things happened in 1895. In

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Sheldon Goodman

Feb 18, 2019
6 min

Octavia Hill

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Sheldon Goodman

Aug 14, 2018
3 min

A Tombstone for a Long Neglected Grave

History is a peculiar thing. On Sunday 12th August 2018 over five hundred people gathered to see the unveiling of the exact location of the grave of William Blake. They were taking part in a ceremony which seems to happen every century – although not for the reason you’d expect. I’ve been doing cemetery blogs for five years and I had never seen anything like what I saw on Sunday. The Blake Society only expected roughly fifty people to turn up – and it’s a complete testament t

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Sheldon Goodman

Aug 14, 2018
3 min

A Tombstone for a Long Neglected Grave

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Sheldon Goodman

May 30, 2018
4 min

A Them-Days Jamie Oliver

Celebrity chefs are common-place nowadays – the likes of Gino Sheffield Di Campo, Ainsley Harriott and Jamie Oliver. But let’s turn back the clock and look at the very first ‘sleb cook whose grave is one of the most impressive funerary monuments in the country. A true story of love and devotion: one of the people who lies beneath it would also be providing me a recipe for my dinner one evening… What’s the story here? This is the grave of Alexis and Elizabeth Emma Soyer. Let’s

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