Hands over the Sea

We investigated a local nature reserve today - the Darenth Country Park which is only a few minutes from Mum's flat.  The reserve is located on the the old Darenth Park Hospital estate, which was a Victorian hospital or asylum for children and adults with learning disabilities, and remained open until the 1970s.  Today the hospitial buildings have been totally demolished and an upmarket "village" has been built.  The remaining 400 acres or so of land have been restored as a country park.

Part of the land includes the hospital's two cemetries, one used up to the the early 1900's, the other smaller one until the hospital closed.  Walking around them I was initially disappointed to find few headstones. Reading up later I discovered that only "important people" had them. Tellingly, the new plot only had a war memorial in it.

This stone caught my attention as it was dedicated to one Ebenezer J Palmer of Accra West Africa, who died in 1901 at the age of 38.  The stone was erected by his widow and the staff of the African Direct Telegraph Company Limited.  After some research I discovered he actually died on a hospital isolation ship moored up near Dartford, most likely of smallpox, and he was clearly one of the "important" ones as only a handful of headstones remain in the old cemetry. Further reseach found he worked for a company founded by Sir John Pender, the British submarine communications cable pioneer who owned a number of companies laying communiction cables between countries, one of which eventually became Cable and Wireless, one of the world's leading international communications companies. Sir John also lived and died nearby in Foots Cray. 

It's fascinating how much history one can learn from a single headstone in an almost forgotten cemetry.  The extra shows the view across the cemetry toward Shooter's Hill and London.