Laurel and Hardy

On a beautiful autumn morning, Sheila joined Cllr Karen Davies at Spital Cemetery for one of the regular sessions. While Karen showed the cemeteries manager around the site and discussed future plans, I set to work cutting the laurel bushes back from over a set of headstones. Laurel is an extremely hard wood and tough to get the loppers through. Some of the thicker branches had to be left until we can bring a bow saw to do the job. But it didn't take long before I had accumulated a large pile of branches, which Karen helped me drag to the path to be collected. The headstones and memorials uncovered were for John George Carey, his 2 wives and 10 of his children, 6 of whom had sadly died before they reached the age of 3. A quick Google revealed a newspaper report that he had been a father to 29 children by his 2 wives! We may have several more gravestones to find!