Sunday, December 30, 2012

Audio Tour of London Cemetery

Hampstead Graveyard
A cemetery in London now has an Internet supplement -- audio recordings of stories related to several of the people buried there.  The Hampstead Parish Churchyard in Camden is the oldest surviving original churchyard in the center of Greater London.  Saint-John-at-Hampstead has burials dating from about 1745 to at least World War II.  The "Life and Death in Hampstead Sound Trail", conceived of as a way to interest people in local history, has extracts from 44 interviews with descendants, family members, academics, and experts.  There are transcripts of the recordings and an additional 21 texts with information about other burials and topics.

Some of the more famous burials in the churchyard are painter John Constable, comedian Peter Cook, and George and Gerald Du Maurier (grandfather and father of Daphne Du Maurier).  The Web site includes interviews about Constable and the Du Mauriers.  An article about the Sound Trail is available on the BBC Web site.

My thanks to Jeremy Frankel for telling me about this interesting story.

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