Hilderstone Quaker Burial Ground

Hilderstone Quaker burial ground in Cumbria is just a mound with some trees growing atop it. Friends’ cemeteries were seldom ornate, some even eschewing grave markers or stones. Other than a small sign advising of the dates 1670-1820, one would never have known that this was a place of Christian burial.

Early Quakerism combined deep spirituality with a love of scripture, a marriage from which modern Friends seem divorced. The folk interred at Hilderstone and their grieving kin were less troubled by an earthly resting place and more interested in a heavenly home. The people of today are the exact opposite. Funeral plans, funeral planners and reserved plots are all carefully and meticulously researched, while the passage to heaven or hell is carelessly ignored and conveniently neglected. Better to be buried under a tree, or at the Council Tip, and know one goes to be with Christ, than to have the grandest grave in the cemetery but enter eternity unprepared.