ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors examine how East Enders and members of the United Synagogue, as well as members of newer, geographically based communities, are reinterpreting older burial grounds as sites of community history and collective significance. They argue that disused burial grounds have not exhausted sacred purpose and meaning but continue to bind present generations to their forebears and to future descendants in new ways. Fictive contracts may appear to be retrospectively constructed as past communities are brought into focus, but our study participants also alluded to a future in which they and their families or communities could also be lost to memory. Such a fearful insight may have motivated their actions in ‘adopting’ the dead. The chronicle of Abney Park Cemetery, though unique, resembles the histories of many other Victorian cemeteries in London and, undoubtedly, elsewhere.
