Death is Not the End: Tales from Merridale Cemetery - Softcover

Outterside, Nic

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798337929880

Publisher: Independently published, 2024

Synopsis

FINDING Merridale Cemetery was an accident… a beautiful accident which would open my eyes to life and death and so many hidden things about Wolverhampton.
My first glimpse of the cemetery was gothic and intriguing and then vast and seemingly never-ending.
I only stayed for an hour, but there was a chill in the air and I had seen enough to make me want to return. This I did many times over the next few months.
Then during the Covid lockdowns in 2020/2021 much more frequently with our Canaan dog Scout and a green poop bag for company
I discovered hundreds of intriguing gothic graves, a hauntingly windswept babies' and children’s burial plot on red sandstone gravel, many imposing obelisks, monuments and tombs, a line of ancient sealed crypts, a beautiful Jewish burial area of black marble headstones, a scattered assortment of diverse ancient memorials, a carefully manicured Commonwealth War Graves plot with rows of white headstones standing to attention in honour of their incumbents and much more beneath the shimmering shade of magnificent old trees, including a rare Great Hornbeam, and Scots Pine with elm, beech and yew and two wonderfully mature Monkey Puzzle trees.
Occasionally my concentration wandered as a Spotted Flycatcher darted by, a squirrel took the attention of my dog or a Tawny Owl hooted the distance.
I had spent a working lifetime as an investigative newspaper reporter and the journalist inside me wanted find out more about the many lives within these graves.
Following some cursory investigations and local conversations, nothing prepared me for Wolverhampton’s elephant man, the murder of a local police officer, a cholera epidemic which killed hundreds of residents, one of the last survivors of the Charge of the Light Brigade, the family of Jack the Ripper’s fourth victim, German bombs which flattened homes in a Wolverhampton street, a closeted monastic order of Roman Catholic nuns, the 1916 Irish Rebellion, a champion boxer, a brilliant young footballer… plus so much more.
Death really is not the end, as I hope what lies within these pages proves!

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798337929880
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 298