Lying at the end of Horseshoe Lane, a private road winding out of the town between Widcombe Hill and Bathwick Hill, Smallcombe Garden Cemetery appears surprisingly rural and far from the bustle of Bath. Surrounded by gentle slopes and the oak, ash, and lime trees of Smallcombe Woods, the only signs of human habitation are a farm and cemetery cottage.
Opened in 1855 the cemetery closed to burials in 1988 and was left to decline until The Friends of Smallcombe undertook its care in 2014. Since then, they have restored walls and paths, with a new footway linking the cemetery to National Trust land and the Bath Skyline Walk, and carried out research, recording the histories of some of the occupants with whom they have a personal connection or interest. [email protected]
The care The Friends have offered is discreet, and Smallcombe remains seemingly undisturbed save for the birdsong and the whispered passage of foxes and deer. The animals are almost tame, hardly startled when they observe infrequent visitors, mildly inquisitive, moving away cautiously but without haste. Graves laze through the seasons, comfortable, companionable, and undisturbed, graced in spring and summer by wildflowers and by the vibrant berries of autumn and winter.
But one grave here unsettles me. Beneath a statue of an androgenous child, it records the deaths of twin babies:
“WHO PLUCKED THESE FLOWERS?
I, SAID THE MASTER, AND THE
GARDNER HELD HIS PEACE.”
In loving memory of
our darling twins
Phyllis
Born June 17th, 1903
Died June 23rd, 1903
Victor
Born June 17th, 1903.
Died June 17th, 1903
“THEY FOLLOW THE LAMB
WITHERSOEVER HE GOETH.”
It was a popular epitaph on the graves of children in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, expressing acceptance that young lives taken by god were his to take. It is impossible not to wish that the grieving parents found consolation in erecting the sad memorial and believing the resigned words.
Yet the death of the babies was not even the end of the pitiful story: the reverse side of the stone records another death, an elder son who like thousands of other young men died in the meaningless carnage of the First World War. The parents’ gentle acceptance was unshaken, for the words read:
Also
Of our beloved eldest boy
John Hay Maitland Hardyman,
D.S.O.M.C. Youngest Lieut. Col.
In the British Army
Born September 28th, 1894
Killed in Action
August 24th, 1918
“YOU WERE OUR PRIDE,
WE DREAMED GREAT THINGS
OF YOU. GOD INTERVENED, AND SO
OUR DREAMS CAME TRUE.”
O Grand and Blessed Death,
Quite ready for the call.
He heard his captain’s voice.
Life’s Battle Fought,
Life’s Victory Won.
The soldier thus received
His welcome and his crown.
Certain that all religions are but myths and fallacies, such conviction and gentle forbearance in the face of such cruel and arbitrary deaths seems strange to me. And were I to believe in some omnipotent being, I could only be repelled and angered by the terrible masterplan or capricious action of a careless god who played so needlessly and mercilessly with young lives.