I have posted before on Key Hill's neighbouring cemetery, Warstone Lane Cemetery, but had actually never been to this one until today. The reason Birmingham has two cemeteries next door to each other is one was for the nonconformists, namely Key Hill. It is actually the older, since Warstone Lane was only started after Church of England churchyards started filling up.
They are both now closed to new burials, & both on preservation registers, yet feel subtly different. For a start, I'm surprised at the exaggerated height of the surrounding buildings, on what is already a sloping site. This means the key feature at Key Hill is mush, damp, sludge (at least today). It is also apparently not as well cared for as Warstone Lane: the paths are clearly visible in Warstone Lane today, but indistinguishable in Key Hill. Both have had their chapels demolished.
The gravestones at Warstone Lane are more flamboyant, whereas at Key Hill they bring the feeling of the solid nineteenth century Nonconformity on which so much of Birmingham was built. Many of the great names of Birmingham's early history are buried here, & their scientific interests bring to my mind the dead atmosphere of nineteenth-century Deism. Yes, darlings, it is possible to reconcile Christianity with rational thought, & what you end up with a strange moral Christianity with almost nothing supernatural in it.
What did I feel there? Absolutely nothing. The people buried there are either long gone or horrified at the thought of me. I've never got on well with Christian nonconformity, preferring Anglicanism & Catholicism, where at least you get to dress up. My mother was brought up as a Primitive Methodist, giving her a strange approach to drink: the man she describes as the 'black sheep of the family' got that title purely for drinking, which is rank hypocrisy when you think what some of the rest of the family have been like.
Actually, I did meet someone there: I met the stock from which my mother's side of the family comes. I wound up getting in contact with my roots, because let's face it, saying 'I am a witch' is about as non-conformist as you can get. I had not thought before that what I do is actually in a great family tradition, even if those people would turn in their graves at the very thought of me. But here's the difference: I aim to live on many levels at once in a multitude of worlds & possibilities. They aimed to close possibilities, & even memorialised their attempt by slamming the mausoleum door shut.
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