- Examining the heritage and history of Brighton through the lens of its oldest burial ground. Providing a Gazeteer of St Nicholas Gardens, tomb by tomb.
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Mortiquaria
- Corporal Staines – The Musical
- The Return of the Gent
- Francis Robertson and the Death of Kings
- Things fall apart
- Life Before Death and the Final Status Update
- Fanny Ricardo and the Father of Free Trade
- The Girl Soldier, The Poet and the Highwaymans Mother
- We Know Where The Bodies Are Buried
- John Walters – The Man Who Worked Too Hard
- Colonel Trickey and the End Of Time
- Richard Pahl and the Baby Blitz
- Mary Coupland and the Wall of Death
- Hard Times at Brighton – A Matchmans’ Tale
- Edward Colman and the ‘Job for Life’
- Martha Gunn and the Kings Evil
- A & AH Wilds and the Ups and Downs of Life
- Hanover Chapel Vault: Enough to Wake the Dead
- The Lady Eldona At Her Tower
- A Life Too Full To Fit – Sake Dean Mahomet
- Coded Mortiquaria
- Hilbers the Blood Royal Homeopath
- Laurentia Dorothea and the penniless portrait painter
- From revolution to nobility – the Baronesses Erskine
- Within the Vaults – Outlaws and Others
- Henry Smithers: Our most recent deceased.
- James Justinian Morier and the Adventures of Hajji Baba
- Sir Matthew Tierney: ‘The Bloody Baron of Brighthelmstone’
- Ghosts of the stones: if not the bones
- How to Empty a Graveyard
- How to Fill a Graveyard
- Smoaker Miles: Phantasmagoria, Swimming with Dr Johnson and other stories
- Stanley Stokes and the Lynch Mob – East Street 1836
- Captain Custard and the Northern Extension
- Lord Byron, Class War and the price of a Decent Send Off
- Buried ‘neath the snow
- Sir Richard Phillips and the skull of Cardinal Wolsey
- The Deathly Pyramid
- ‘The Log of a Jack Tar’; James Choyce 1777 – 1836
- John Rowles and the Battle of Tar Tub
- The Honest Hairdresser
- Conversation with the dead
- Graveyard Hauntings
- A Rest Garden Factuary
- Into the Labyrinth
- The Double Death of Anna Maria Crouch
- Mr Weiss and his Instrument of Certain Death
- Corporal Staines
- Martin Archer Shee (1789 – 1850)
- Funerary Violin and the Forgotten Vault
- Historical disorder
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Category Archives: Childrens Playground
Fanny Ricardo and the Father of Free Trade
Born Wilkinson, Fanny endured a tyrannical childhood at the hands of her father – known to the wider family as ‘curmudgeon Wilkinson’ who had a detestable disposition “which makes him unwilling to give pleasure to any human creature unless he … Continue reading
How to Empty a Graveyard
Between 1949 and 1951, all three burial grounds were cleared by the council. Some monument pieces were placed around the perimiter of the site, but most were removed completely. The photographs below illustrate the scale of change; the first was … Continue reading
Captain Custard and the Northern Extension
The northern extension to St Nicholas Ground (which now includes the popular children’s playground) received its first occupant in 1825, having been formally consecrated by the Bishop of Chichester the year previous. From the Brighton Gazette July 1824: ‘The Bishop of … Continue reading
The Great Clearances
The growth of the dead will mirror the growth of the living, and as the population of Brighthelmston increased so did the old ground around the church. Expansion peaked in the 19th century, with the northern extension opening in 1825 and the … Continue reading
The Brighton Mortiquarian 