In Crookes Cemetery

Crookes cemetery is a beautiful place to be buried. Overlooking the Rivelin valley, domestic Sheffield snuggles in the middleground. Further off, dramatic moorland rises. The graves drift down the hillside, forever acquainting themselves with the view. It’s a good place to watch the weather come in.

Like much of Sheffield, the cemetery feels both inside and out, a melding of close and cultivated with a wider, gust-filled feeling. Over 29,000 people are interred here. Not that you’d know it. There is no sense of crush among the plots. Some are shabbier than their neighbours. Some display a taste for ostentation eschewed by others. Others still have fallen into disrepair. In this they resemble nothing more than the suburban houses built all round. Is this what the English seek in eternity? A private piece of stone with a patch for flowers at the front? Neighbours close by but unmistakably separate? And, all around, a well-tended lawn?