Happy Birthday - Grave Encounters!

Where does the time go? It is a year ago today that I launched the Grave Encounters Blog focusing on all things memorial related.

My Grandmother always said, that two things were certain - death and taxes! What is beyond the paper trail of our existence? I don't mean, the question of life after death. I mean what is it we leave after we have passed away? A household of contents, a pile of memorabilia that meant something to the deceased and no one else?

What is beyond the death certificate? An Obituary, A funeral service, A memorial booklet presented at the service. Perhaps an internment of ashes or maybe a burial. Hopefully, a headstone. In some cases, a plaque somewhere that simply shows everyone that the deceased even existed.

As regular readers will have noticed, I am very interested in memorial plaques. Simple little examples that someone existed, and someone cared enough to remember them. They appear everywhere and in the strangest of locations. Of course the location would have meant something to the deceased or perhaps their relatives.

From the plaques that appear on benches at fisheries & lakes, to the large multiple named memorials of the Lockerbie Air Disaster, to the various memorials on the Channel Islands of Jersey, where the memorial is not just about remembering the dead, it is about conquering and holding on, believing that rescue will come, and finally to the memorial postcard of a Wedding, that was so unusual, that it deserved to be shared.

They are all plaques or memorials, worth recording and sharing across the superhighway, each one representing a life and a story behind that life.

Stay with me reading, as I complete the various memorials from our second break in Jersey and then onto the archives here of photographs from various cemeteries both within the UK and Overseas. I shall also author two articles for the International Graveyard Rabbits, so watch this space!

Wapperwell Lake, Chudleigh, Devon - Atkinson

Wapperwell Lake is owned by the Newton Abbot Fishing Association and the lake is situated on the land belonging to Ugbrooke House. We had a quick drive out to the lake for my husband to see what the fishing would be like and took our small Border Terrier with us. You can see the photographs HERE.

Around the outskirts of the lake were a few seats provided by the Association, but half way round I spotted this seat, complete with memorial plaque.

In Loving Memory of Pat Atkinson 1927 - 1999