Camberwell Old Cemetery

[Adidas_guy]

I was walking through the cemetery this afternoon and wondered why so many gravestones seem to have toppled over.

Some headstones are very large and I would imagine extremely heavy...

[Penguin68]

There has been land movement (the area has been prone to water logging, which will certainly have made some stones unstable). The cemetery staff tip them over, if it seems possible they might fall spontaneously, as a safety measure. Some have been re-settled, but that can be an expensive job. Probably some vandalism as well, of course.

[Siduhe]

As Penguin says, most of the movement is a combination of land movement, ongoing construction work and terribly thought out drainage. The ground alternately floods and then dries out which makes a lot of the older monuments wobble and then fall over.

According to one of the gardening team it?s not being helped by the number of people who park off the tarmac and on the grass verges - which compacts the ground causing more flooding and poor drainage. They put up parking markers to stop this a couple of years ago but some of them have been knocked over and people worry about their car blocking others so it?s a regular occurrence.

There was a survey team there about a month ago so I wonder if it?s related to that - pre-emptive to avoid injury.

[Adidas_guy]

Thank you for explaining that.

I hope it?s not vandalism though...