St. Mary's Churchyard - Bath - February 2018

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topdog568

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St Mary's churchyard in Bath is a tiny abandoned Chapel just a short walk from the city center. It's worth going if you are in the contemplative mood. I must have spent about 40 minutes just strolling around the yard.



For all the information there was this notice board:



For a short rundown: Built in 1820. In 1856 the churchyard was full so begun to refuse burial plots. In the 1980's the Chapel and Churchyard was completely shut to the public due to health and safety reasons. In 2003 the site was reopened due to the help of The Friends of St. Mary' Churchyard. Around the Chapel there is a well kept path and information boards to dhow where notable figures rest. The Friends of St Mary's Churchyard meet once a month to tidy up the area (the Chapel is left untouched).











The Church itself is locked down, however you aren't missing much as this is whats inside.





This is the only entrance:





One small thing that pleased me on the way around was these metal apples all around on the circumference of many of the graves. It took me a while to figure out that they were fences around the raised graves, that were cut down during WWII to aid in the war effort,

 
Quote - One small thing that pleased me on the way around was these metal apples all around on the circumference of many of the graves. It took me a while to figure out that they were fences around the raised graves, that were cut down during WWII to aid in the war effort, - Quote

Sadly much of this wanton 'destruction' never did have a rendezvous with the scrap furnaces of Sheffield and the like. Dumped in numerous out of the way collection points all over the country - for onward delivery to the furnaces - many dumps were evidently forgotten about. Reading official histories and steel outputs at start of WW2 it seems that there was a glut of low grade scrap, because of the 'panic' collection of everything iron; hence the forgotten dumps I was fortunate to come across during my early long distance cycling days in '57/'58. My interest in the 'dumps' was initially raised I suppose because I was brought up in streets that bore the evidence of this; in the missing iron front gates and front wall copings with stumps of iron sticking out. Dumped in out of the way places, some rapidly became over grown and forgotten about. Anyway we did have iron ore deposits within the UK to be going on with, the real worry was production of aluminium and magnesium alloys - hence the disappearance of the aluminium cause pan in the early war years!
 
Wow I didn't know that. I guess it is an dirty fact, so many people had given up their fences, bathtubs, etc. only for the government to not use. I guess it's just been brushed under the carpet to save denting moral. Thanks for sharing that.
 
Quote - One small thing that pleased me on the way around was these metal apples all around on the circumference of many of the graves. It took me a while to figure out that they were fences around the raised graves, that were cut down during WWII to aid in the war effort, - Quote

Sadly much of this wanton 'destruction' never did have a rendezvous with the scrap furnaces of Sheffield and the like. Dumped in numerous out of the way collection points all over the country - for onward delivery to the furnaces - many dumps were evidently forgotten about. Reading official histories and steel outputs at start of WW2 it seems that there was a glut of low grade scrap, because of the 'panic' collection of everything iron; hence the forgotten dumps I was fortunate to come across during my early long distance cycling days in '57/'58. My interest in the 'dumps' was initially raised I suppose because I was brought up in streets that bore the evidence of this; in the missing iron front gates and front wall copings with stumps of iron sticking out. Dumped in out of the way places, some rapidly became over grown and forgotten about. Anyway we did have iron ore deposits within the UK to be going on withand cllection of iron raiings etc, the real worry was production of aluminium and magnesium alloys - hence the disappearance of the aluminium cause pan in the early war years!

If my memory serves me correctly it was Beaverbrook who instigated the removal and collection of iron railings and such to impress on the population that the war was a serious business! I recall a cannon from the Crimean war that was a centrepiece of the Forbury gardens in Reading falling victim. Even today I regularly pass a large country estate whose walls are topped with rows of short iron stumps and mentally revile his name! Pointless vandalisim.
 
Sadly Topdog one had no choice - if you had metal railings and gates, they went! Caused quite a stir on a large Estate near my home town evidently. Much of the farmland had been fenced in with beautiful iron railings when originally set out and overnight vast lengths vanished. Only problem was the farmland was used to graze a very large milking herd for centralised milk production and the story goes that anything from 80 to 150 cows were on the loose. They evidently wreck fields of veg and all the local village allotments. Looking back, Beaverbrook (for all the great good he did) was a prat and more interested in self image - Yes we needed raw materials and scrap, but loosing memorials to the fallen of previous conflicts did nothing to raise moral - remembering conversation between my parents and their friends as we walked past the local 'vandalised' memorial in the Park when I was around six or eight and they tried to explain to us kids what we were looking at, it obviously had a large opposite effect, i.e. 'if they're pulling those up, supplies must be bad', were the thoughts they had when they saw the removal of the metal objects from around the town.
 

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