I’ve often seen headstones used as paving for paths in cemeteries and churchyards and sometimes feel a little uncomfortable when I see them used in this way.. This is because it feels as if ‘I’m walking over someone’s grave’ as the old saying goes. It seems to happen when the churchyard or cemetery has become a park with the headstones removed from their original location and often placed against a wall.

However in my local churchyard, St Margaret’s in Rochester, they have gone one step further and created a small set of steps that lead up to a grassed area. This is where the graves belonging to the people to whom the headstones belonged may still lie. The slope may also have been created by the bodies being buried on top of each other over the centuries which does happen in old burial places.

So I call it the Stairway to Heaven – a little irrelevant perhaps but I felt it’s appropriate!

©  Text and photos Carole Tyrrell