Nottingham – Graves at St. Nicholas’s Church

It’s fortunate that this church has survived at all, since there was talk of demolishing it in the 1960s. Due to slum clearance and the construction of a huge road right to the side of the church, the parish manages to have absolutely no parishioners within its official boundaries, which isn’t an ideal way to run things. It’s also positive that it’s clearly now a vibrant church, but I am saddened a little to see the state of the graves in the churchyard.

These aren’t great photos, as they’re from 2016 and they’ve been compressed by Google Photos, but they tell a sad tale of their own. I like to think that the trend of embedding gravestones into pavements has long since gone, something seemingly relatively common in the 1970s, but I’m sure it won’t be the last time they’re treated in such a way. Someone at some stage likely paid out money that they couldn’t easily afford to pay for these stones for a loved one, a state of affairs that perhaps shouldn’t be forgotten in haste.