Another angle

Went for a walk round the church yard, to visit Margaret Wood's grave.

Looking over the garden wall at Lucy waiting patiently at the gate

Louisa Margaret Wood July 1915 till August 2011

East end of church

decorative carving

Penny has dropped, she has seen me, after wildly waving my arms and yelling.  I know what Lucy is thinking - "mad cow

 why is she there?"

Why these photographs, well every now and then I think of  Margaret Wood, her life in the village and how it had changed over the years.  She was  brought up in this village, born and died and never married.  Her old ramshackle cottage sold to a builder, who promptly pulled it down and built two smart houses in its place. Life goes on but what we leave behind in the way of history is sad, the land on which it stood now has another three homes on it - 5 in all.

All morning the farm traffic has piled past with tractors pulling large trailers of silage, the farms have grown big over the years she lived here, when in all probability the hay was cut with scythes when she was young.

And a couple of 'stolen' photos of a lady who was very much part of  village life.

With her brother John, she was 4 years

Slightly blurry  photo of award at Buckingham Palace, I should think for selling poppies

Go to Google Earth, and you can still see the cottage hidden behind trees before it was pulled down.  The two new houses were named after the two of the trees in the garden.  She was a bit of a celebrity in the village I think, in the end she lived in a caravan in her garden and people looked after her.  Someone told me that as the cottage fell into disrepair and the roof developed a big hole, the bedroom floor collapsed under the weight of a bucketful of money.  All gone now, papers destroyed by the builder, just one life lived in one place, I wonder what she gossiped about?  She left her money to the church, no flowers on her grave to remember her though.  Grave yards can be a sad place but they are also a place where people gather their thoughts and remember their loved ones but she has no one to remember her.  Another Eleanor Rigby?  No because she lived in the quiet safety of her village.

The old Willow cottage. I can see an old beech tree which must have been replaced by a young beech tree, which has since died.

This would have been the back garden of the cottage, (jungle growth) the brick wall similar to ours. 

The brick wall has vanished now and a hawthorn hedge has replaced it, a bone of contention in the village.