The Halls

Part of my fascination with cemeteries is our practice of creating monuments to deal with the passing of our loved ones — the architecture of headstones alone is an artform, one that is subject to trends and changes, just like any other creative endeavour.

But I also love the stories of individual lives that are hidden behind the names and dates.

For instance, given that she died aged 77 in 1993, we know that Stella Margaret Mary Hall was probably born in 1916. This means she saw everything from the Russian Revolution in 1917 to the first public access to the Internet in 1992. She was 14 before Pluto, the ninth planet, was discovered, and yet lived to see the first “test tube” baby born 1978.