- 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: St Nicholas
Laurentia Dorothea and the penniless portrait painter
Before her marriage to Francis Robertson, Laurentia Ross sat for Thomas Lawrence – then a jobbing artist, later to become President of the Royal Academy and acknowledged as the finest portrait painter of the Regency period. They were probably introduced … Continue reading
Posted in Artist, Rest Garden, St Nicholas
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From revolution to nobility – the Baronesses Erskine
General John Cadwallader was a hero of the American revolution. Having waged war against Britain it seems odd that his daughter Frances should marry into the English nobility becoming Barroness Erskine. Or maybe not. After their wedding in 1799 They … Continue reading
Posted in American, Rest Garden, St Nicholas
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Within the Vaults – Outlaws and Others
The Rest Garden is dominated by the series of raised vaults which were designed by Amon Henry Wilds as a part of his initial layout. The inscriptions were recorded by the council in the late 1940’s as part of the … Continue reading
Posted in Doctor, Missing Monuments, Rest Garden, Royal connection, St Nicholas
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Henry Smithers: Our most recent deceased.
Many of those remembered at the Rest Garden – especially those with the plusher resting places – were not ‘local’. From across the country and around the world they arrived, saw Brighton and died. Henry Smithers was not one of … Continue reading
Posted in Dignitary, Rest Garden, St Nicholas
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James Justinian Morier and the Adventures of Hajji Baba
James Justinian Morier published The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan in 1824 and followed in 1828 with The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan in England . Satirical novels, they explored contemporary Persian society through he eyes and adventures … Continue reading
Posted in Author, Novelist, Rest Garden, St Nicholas
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Sir Matthew Tierney: ‘The Bloody Baron of Brighthelmstone’
MATTHEW TIERNEY, was the eldest son of John Tierney, a farmer and weaver from Ballyscandland, co. Limerick. The family was not wealthy and Tierney’s education comprised what he could pick up at the local Hedge School. Tierney was apprenticed to … Continue reading
Posted in Author, Doctor, Rest Garden, Royal connection, Slave Trade, St Nicholas
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Ghosts of the stones: if not the bones
Of course, when the monuments – the box tombs, the chest tombs, the headstones, the foot stones, the obelisks, the table tombs, the grave rails, the kerbs and other stonework items of memorial – were cleared, the workers only scratched … Continue reading
Posted in Missing Monuments, Rest Garden, St Nicholas
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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
How to Fill a Graveyard
The Brighton Herald paints a stark picture of life at Brighton in the first part of the 19th C. Small wonder that first the churchyard, then the northern extension (1825) then the Rest Garden (1841) were filled so swiftly. “There are, … Continue reading
Posted in Northern Burial Ground, Rest Garden, St Nicholas
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Smoaker Miles: Phantasmagoria, Swimming with Dr Johnson and other stories
John ‘Smoaker’ Miles (1721-94) In Georgian Brighton, sea bathing was a highly regulated affair, with men and women separated to different times and locations and to protect modesty further, compelled to use bathing machines. These were wooden structures where bathers … Continue reading
The Brighton Mortiquarian 