27 October 2011 – The Good Funeral Guide

The sisterhood of the skulls

27 October 2011

Charles

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Categories: Attitudes to death, cemeteries, Ossuary

Posted by Vale

If Kutna Hora and Capela dos Ossos show anything it is that we cannot let bones lie.

Buried and disinterred, stacked and stored these vast collections become places where the living can meet and marvel at the dead.

In Naples, at the charnel house in the middle of its Fontanelle Cemetary, this urge has flowered into a full blown relationship. In the 1870s a cult arose around the anonymous dead. People adopted skulls, cleaned and polished them, gave them names, brought them offerings and asked them for favours.

The cult lasted until the late 1960s when the church closed it down.

You can read about Fontanelle here and here.

Be-spoke for one like this

27 October 2011

Charles

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Categories: Hearses

From This is Surrey Today:

SCORES of cyclists formed a guard of honour for the funeral procession of a popular cyclist.

More than 120 people from local clubs turned out to honour Pete Mitchell at Randalls Park Crematorium in Leatherhead last Thursday.

Mr Mitchell covered a staggering 570,000 miles during 62 years of cycling.

He died on September 16 at the age of 76 and according to his daughter Jake Dodd, 41, of Epsom, he went out the way he would have wanted to.

She said: “He rode 37 miles back home from Maidenhead, had his tea, went to bed and then didn’t wake up, which was a really lovely way to go.”

What a great turnout for Mr Mitchell. If only, we can’t help thinking, his family had known about the Rev Paul Sinclair’s bicycle hearse.