graves

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The Scottish Cemetery at St George’s Park

In the early days of Port Elizabeth the St Mary's Cemetery was used, first by the military based at Fort Frederick, and later for civilians with the cemetery being under the control of St Mary's Church.  As the town grew more burial areas were required by the various Christian denominations and in the 1830's and 1840's the various churches were granted small pieces of land adjacent to each other on the edge of town where Russell Road is today.  A…

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08/07/2017
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Cemetery fence at St Georges

The old Scottish Cemetery at St George's Park was established way back in 1854 on what was the western edge of town back then.  These days the western edge of town is all the way over at Baywest.

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28/05/2017
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Shipwreck memorial in South End Cemetery

Probably the biggest maritime disaster that ever took place on the Port Elizabeth coastline happened way back during the Great Gale of 1902.  On Sunday, 31 August 1902 there were 38 ships at anchor along the then North End Beach.  Rain and a south-easterly wind started to lash the bay and by midnight the storm turned into a hurricane.  By the end of the storm on 2 September 1902, 18 of the ships had been stranded on the beach, while…

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27/04/2017
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South End Cemetery in sepia

I stopped by the South End Cemetery last week to check up on my Geocaches in the area and took a slow drive around the cemetery.  It's really sad to see how much vandalism has taken place in the cemetery.  Pity the municipality can't put aside a bit of budget to restore a lot of these pushed over and broken historic grave stones.  Anyhow, I was looking for an interesting angle to photograph and settled on this one, converted to…

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18/04/2017
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The Bethulie Concentration Camp cemetery – a sad part of our history

Bethulie in the southern Free State is one of those places not many people pass through as it's not really on any of the main thoroughfares going south (or north, depending how you look at it).  On my last trip up to Johannesburg I deviated off the normal route to see what this town on the banks of the Orange River is all about.  One of the things I found out was that Bethulie was the site of one of…

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21/11/2016
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The sad angel

This past week I posted two posts featuring the historic St Mary's Cemetery at the bottom of the Baakens Valley.  There are so many interesting bits to photograph in a cemetery like this one of what looks like such a sad angel.

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24/09/2016
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Another view of St Mary’s Cemetery

Yesterday I posted a photo of the St Mary's Cemetery along with the grave yard's history.  I decided to follow it up with another photo of the cemetery but from a totally different angle.  This one is standing at the bottom and looking away from the road and up the terraces. 

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21/09/2016
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The history of St Mary’s Cemetery

I got to attend Nelson Mandela Bay Tourism's launch of Tourism Month at the newly refurbished Tramways Buildings a week or two ago and had some time on my hands before the event began so went for a walk through St Mary's Cemetery.  It's really sad to see the state the cemetery is in specially seeing the historic value and position it has.  I went scratching for the history around the cemetery and this is what I cam up with.In…

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20/09/2016
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South End Cemetery graves

If you go back through my blogs (or is a regular follower), you may notice that for some strange reason I have a peculiar interest in historic graves and cemeteries.  I used to work very close to the South End Cemetery and placed a Geocache there so I visited it quite often to check up on the container.  Since changing jobs a year ago I haven't been back that often but stopped by last week and took a stroll through…

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27/01/2015