Sunday 2 March 2008

Hidden Darlington (1)







On warm summer days my favourite place to wander out to at lunchtime is the Quaker Graveyard behind the Friends' Meeting House on Skinnergate. After a busy morning at work there's nothing better than half an hour eating lunch, or dozing off, in this beautiful, peaceful corner of the town centre. I find that many people don't even know it's there.

I have never, though, visited it during winter. Today I was delivering Focus around the town centre, as you do, and decided to take a break there. If possible, the graveyard is even more attractive now than in summer. A veritable carpet of snowdrops, interspersed with clumps of crocus flowers and the start of the daffodils, were set off perfectly by the low late winter sun.

The regimented rows of identical Quaker gravestones, dominated by the Pease and Backhouse families, have a pleasing simplicity which allow nature to blossom all around. I hope you like the photos.
Addition: here's a link to the local Quaker website, including photos and a map.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Show us a map Mike...
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=darlington&ie=UTF8&ll=54.524992,-1.557484&spn=0.002852,0.01075&t=h&z=17

Mike Barker said...

I've put a link on the bottom of the original post.
I'm sure Mike McT. can add something from Google Earth!

Mike said...

It's just off Skinnergate. Not the greatest photo, unfortunately.

Mike said...

The photos from Yahoo!, Ask and Nasa aren't any better (checked on FlashEarth.com).