Silent Sunday Cemetery Scapes ~ Saffron Walden

Blanket of Snow

Blanket of Snow

Resting under a blanket of snow,

like a child who is tucked in his bed,

the body eternally sleeps,

laid down, is a life weary head.

No frozen tear, need you cry,

For a soul under this snowy white down,

They are forever beside you,

In the brightness that is all around.

Sue Jones

The Holly and the Ivy........

Sacred Cemetery Trees

Holly's significance as a Christian symbol, is connected to it's prickly leaves and likened with Jesus' crown of thorns and the berries with the drops of blood shed for humanity's salvation, as related to in the Christmas carol, 'The Holly and the Ivy'.

Yet even here the reference to these two plants refers to a pre-Christian celebration, where a boy would be dressed in a suit of holly leaves and a girl similarly in ivy, to parade around the village, bringing Nature through the darkest part of the year to re-emerge for another year's fertility.

Like several other native trees it was felt to have protective properties, and there were taboos against cutting down a whole tree. Hollies were frequently left uncut in hedges when these were trimmed. A more arcane reason for this was to obstruct witches who were known to run along the tops of hedges.

The yew tree was another sacred tree of the Druids in pre-Christian times. They possibly observed the tree's qualities of longevity and regeneration (drooping branches of old yew trees can root and form new trunks where they touch the ground), and the yew came to symbolise death and resurrection in Celtic culture.

They will also have been familiar with the toxicity of the tree's needles in particular, which can prove fatal, and which may have further contributed to its connections with death.

The themes of death and resurrection continued into the Christian era, with the custom of yew shoots being buried with the deceased, and boughs of yew being used as 'Palms' in church at Easter. Yew trees have in fact established a popular association with old churches in Britain, to the extent that very old specimens of yew trees are now relatively rare outside of church grounds.

According to Richard Mabey in his Flora Britannica "... no other type of ancient tree occurs so frequently inside church grounds ..." and he goes on to say that he does not know of any other relationship between places of worship and a single tree species existing anywhere else in the Western world.

Yew trees have traditionally been planted beside churches. But in other cases it seems that very old yew trees may have already been growing on a site before the earliest churches were erected there; such as the one beside Fortingall's Church, Perthshire, Scotland may even predate Christianity itself.

Several other yews growing by churches have become famous in their own right, such as the Bleeding Yews of Nevern in Pembrokeshire, Wales.

Deep and Crisp and Even ........

The tree in the picture above is the same one that I photographed just over six weeks ago in my November post titled 'Autumn in the Cemetery' - and it was stunning bright orange at that time.

Wednesday's Children

Sacred to the Memory of

? William Erswell

aged 11 months

? William Erswell

aged 9 months

and 

Edgar Enoch Erswell

aged 8 years

who are interred in the churchyard of this parish

also of ? 

I didn't want to disturb the snow and spoil the scene, and so I shall have to come back and discover the identities of the other Erswell children after the thaw.

I also noticed how the reflective quality of the snow made the reading of some of the other stones, much easier, a bit like using tinfoil to illuminate from below.

In addition to which, snow makes a really handy wipe for inscriptions - I was able to find out the name of the mother of 'Little Johnny' in a recent Wednesday's child post, that I had been unable to see at the time - that post has since been amended.

   

Walking in a Winter Wonderland.......

When I arrived at the cemetery, the only other tracks in the snow where those of the animals who live there and one other kind person who had left some bread out for the birds.

Monday Mourning ~ Shelter from the Snow

Mother and Child

I love the way that the bigger stones appear to be protecting the smaller ones from the cold winter snow

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow..........

After last nights Snow Fall, this is a Sunday morning stroll through my local cemetery, who could resist it.........

A Sudden Cold Snap

All that is left of this Seasons first light dusting of Snow