The bones of Jacob Forster
With every autumn storm, the clifftop nibbles closer to the bones of Jacob Forster.
He lies in the churchyard of All Saints in Dunwich, where he died in 1796.
(from Suffolkcam)
The church went a hundred years ago, and the only intact gravestone I could find was Jacob's. He's ten metres from the edge in a rabbity hawthorn thicket. Just along the cliff is a clearing where some thoughtful soul has left a plastic bottle and an aluminium tray of used charcoal briquettes. The cliff (30 metres high maybe?) isn't even stone. Just pure compressed sand.
(from Suffolk churches)
Jacob, rabbits, hawthorns and clearing should be tumbling over the edge in a decade or two. Does the council have someone to come and clear up mortal remains after a storm? Or do they just wait for the high tide to suck everything away?
I suppose they could give him another couple of centuries by digging old Jacob up and re-interring him in the new church in the grounds of the old leper colony. But, frankly, who wants to be digging six feet down on the edge of a crumbling cliff? Safer just to let him drop.
Anyway, that's where Jacob's family and friends must have ended up. If skeletons had thoughts, perhaps one thundery night, as his plot starts to slip, he'll be thinking, "about bloody time too".
He lies in the churchyard of All Saints in Dunwich, where he died in 1796.
(from Suffolkcam)
The church went a hundred years ago, and the only intact gravestone I could find was Jacob's. He's ten metres from the edge in a rabbity hawthorn thicket. Just along the cliff is a clearing where some thoughtful soul has left a plastic bottle and an aluminium tray of used charcoal briquettes. The cliff (30 metres high maybe?) isn't even stone. Just pure compressed sand.
(from Suffolk churches)
Jacob, rabbits, hawthorns and clearing should be tumbling over the edge in a decade or two. Does the council have someone to come and clear up mortal remains after a storm? Or do they just wait for the high tide to suck everything away?
I suppose they could give him another couple of centuries by digging old Jacob up and re-interring him in the new church in the grounds of the old leper colony. But, frankly, who wants to be digging six feet down on the edge of a crumbling cliff? Safer just to let him drop.
Anyway, that's where Jacob's family and friends must have ended up. If skeletons had thoughts, perhaps one thundery night, as his plot starts to slip, he'll be thinking, "about bloody time too".
posted by Disintegrating Clone at 9:41 am
6 Comments:
I can think of worse ends for my mortal remains than to lie in a "rabbity hawthorn thicket" for a couple of hundred years and then topple into the majesty of a North Sea storm.
In fact I can't think of many better.
Went up to the Cliffs at the weekend Jul 09 where's the stone gone has someone knicked it ????
Nope, stone still there July 11, though nearing the edge.
Still there July 2012
Still there 2020 rip jacob
Still here March 2021, we often walk through the woods to the beach & always say hello to Jacob
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