My name is Caroline – welcome to Flickering Lamps! Here you’ll find writing and photographs about the sort of history that passes many by – the history in our surroundings. I’m really interested in exploring how buildings, monuments and spaces reflect the attitudes, values and stories from the time they were created, and how their uses and meanings have changed over time. I especially enjoy exploring graveyards and old buildings looking for the stories they tell, and I’m often to be found with my trusty camera snapping the beautiful and fascinating places I come across.
I’m originally from Lancashire, but have been living and working in London since 2011. It’s thanks to the encouragement of the wonderful members of London Historians that this website exists – they are an excellent group of people who do a great deal to encourage those interested in London’s history, whether they be tour guides, bloggers, academics, authors or simply those wishing to learn more about London’s extraordinary history.
I am a fully-qualified tour guide and a member of the Clerkenwell and Islington Guides’ Association (CIGA). I write and deliver a number of guided walks that cover some of London’s historic burial grounds and cemeteries, and have worked in partnership with organisations such as Southwark Cathedral, London Historians, and London Month of the Dead. For details of any upcoming walks, please check out my Events page.
Support Flickering Lamps
If you would like to make a small contribution to help with the costs of web hosting, you can make a one-off donation here: Buy Me A Coffee.
Cemetery Club
From time to time I have joined Cemetery Club as an occasional guest contributor to their blog about all things burial grounds. You can read all of my Cemetery Club posts by clicking here, or on any of the direct article links listed below:
- Exploring Hyde Park’s Hidden Pet Cemetery
- The Ghosts of Hammersmith Palais
- William Hogarth and his neighbours in a Chiswick churchyard
- The Burton Mausoleum: an adventurer’s tomb in a quiet suburb
Other writing
- Review of London’s Hidden Burial Grounds by Robert Bard and Adrian Miles, for London Historians, 20th March 2017
Historical Trinkets
Prior to the launch of Flickering Lamps in 2014, I blogged (rather intermittently) over at Historical Trinkets. You might have come here from a link on that site. Thank you to everyone who has supported Historical Trinkets, be it through blogs or Twitter, and I hope that you’ll enjoy Flickering Lamps too.
If you would like to get in touch with me, please use the contact form below.
Flickering Lamps 
Hello! And thank you for visiting! Hope to come to London Historians’ gathering soon
LikeLike
Hello Candy! Hope to see you at an LH gathering soon.
LikeLike
Hello, this sounds like fun!! 🙂 I studied History at Uni
LikeLike
What a lovely website! Looking forward to following your thoughts and adventures over the next year 🙂
LikeLike
Thank you! 😀
LikeLike
Hello Caroline, I really like your post, they are very interesting, and I like you am interested in cathedrals and castles,I enjoy learning about medieval castles, 3 years ago I went to England for 2 weeks vacation and every day my sister and I were visiting a cathedral or a castle, I wish I had the money to be researching all about cathedrals and castles, here in USA is nothing about that..
Talk to you soon.<3
LikeLike
Hello, thank you for visiting! I too adore visiting old cathedrals – even though I live in London there never seems enough time to visit all the wonderful sites this country has to offer. Slowly, though, I’m starting to tick a few places off my “to visit” list!
LikeLike
I very much enjoyed your blog, Flickering Lamps. I am working on a history book-blog of my own, which can be seen at [one word] theoryofirony.com, then clicking on either the “sample chapter” or “blog” buttons at the top. My Rube Goldberg brain asks with an odd, well-caffeinated kind of logic: Why is there an inverse proportion between the size of the print and the importance of the message? Art. Literature. Science. Military. Religion. I call this eccentric thinking the Theory of Irony and if your busy schedule permits, give a read, leave a comment or create a link. In any event, best of luck with your own endeavors.
P.S. It concerns Classical, Medieval and Modern eras.
LikeLike
Hello Caroline, I very much enjoy your beautiful photography and insightful commentary. I’m interested in historic architecture here in Indiana, and I have taken many photos of local historic gravestones (“historic” around here means early 1800s, in the decades following settlement of the frontier). If you’re interested, I can send you some photos of interesting local grave monuments, including a free-standing Great War limestone statue representing the fallen soldier standing at attention, complete in every detail, and the gravestones of the popular American songwriter Hoagy Carmichael and the famous sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. Around here in the early 1800s they used a different symbolic language than the inverted torches you often mention. Instead they employed images of willow trees and urns, and later in the 1800s, stones carved like broken tree-trunks wrapped in ivy and ferns. Children’s graves were often indicated with a carven lamb. My contact info is at housesandbooks.wordpress.com.
Keep up the good work!
LikeLike
Thank you for such a lovely comment! I’m glad you have enjoyed the blog posts and photographs – I’m definitely still a beginner when it comes to photography but hopefully with time and practice I am improving!
I’d definitely be interested in learning more about historic gravestones in Indiana – I’ll send you an email!
LikeLike
This is an amazing site! love it! The amount of detail is fantastic!
LikeLike
Thank you Terry!
LikeLike
This is like finding treasure, many thanks
LikeLike
Thank you so much!
LikeLike
I just discovered your blog. Wonderfully written and beautifully photographed. I enjoyed the extent to which you researched and wrote about the sites you have visited. You made a follower out of me. I have visited England several times and can’t wait to return.
I just began my blog two weeks ago, so I am only getting started. I too am interested in history, architecture and especially stained glass. So my blog starts out describing windows in Kansas City, MO where I live, I will be documenting the windows in this area. (A big job.)
I take photos of windows wherever I go, so the blog will certainly be expanding. It is really great to discover your blog. I will get back and look over and read your older blogs and follow your new ones. Best to you for 2015. Bruce
LikeLike
Thank you, Bruce! I will look forward to reading your blog posts about Kansas City – stained glass windows can tell so many stories.
LikeLike
Just read your notes on Barnes Old Cemetery and it struck a cord. I’ve just completed a photographic survey of the old churchyards and cemeteries in Richmond upon Thames borough and your report of Barnes was spot-on. My main interests are Georgian and Victorian epitaphs and also church monuments.
I’m just gearing-up to have a go at the big London cemeteries.
Your web-site is a wonderful and it’s truly delightful to dip into and realise that others share the same interests. Maybe see you at Highgate, Abney Park, Nunhead, Kensal Green, etc etc!
Very best regards. John
LikeLike
Thank you for commenting John! I’m glad you enjoyed the Barnes Cemetery post. I live in Richmond borough but there are so many of cemeteries and churchyards I’ve not yet explored.
You’re in for a treat with the big London cemeteries, there are some incredible monuments to be found and an almost endless array of interesting stories and inscriptions. I’ve visited all but one of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries but it’s impossible to see everything in one visit.
Always good to hear from fellow cemetery explorers! All the best.
LikeLike
As a fellow Richmondite, have you visited the Old Church Ground? It’s adjoining the older section of Richmond Cemetery proper but it can be easily missed as it’s under a thick canopy of trees. Well worth the effort though as it’s Richmond’s very own Highgate with many forgotten Victorian memorials there. I’ve been there on six or seven occasions and there’s still surprises to be had.
All the best, John
LikeLike
I haven’t yet visited, but I’d heard that it’s there – it definitely sounds like a good place to explore! With spring (hopefully) on its way I’m looking forward to having some better weather to get out and explore some new graveyards.
LikeLike
Very impressive site, Caroline. I’ll be following with interest.
LikeLike
Thank you!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Enjoying reading your blog, Caroline, after following a recommendation on adcochrane.wordpress.com. Appreciation of remains from the past is becoming so scarce nowadays – you’re doing great work. (I write as a 100+ year old pub opposite our house, where we have lived for over 20 years, has just been demolished to make way for new housing. We used to have Morris dancers outside it every year.)
LikeLike
Encredible sculpting. I like this one for certain. Bruce
LikeLike
I always enjoy your pieces. Exceptionally well-written, laid out and fascinating. Altogether better than much of the guff on the internet: a pleasure.
LikeLike
Very good discription of life back then. Bruce
LikeLike
Enjoying reading your blog, Caroline, I found your really great blog after following an amazing trail of chance encounters, and synchronistic events. I hope that you will post more about Lancashire and your discoveries/activates with the cemetery club. I am trying to get myself up on any information about England because some relatives are going over to visit soon and I hope that I can find some places of interest for them to go.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Coincidentally I’m currently living in Lancashire and share your interest in the histories of place.
LikeLike