Manky Monkey Motors

I took some car parts to the powder-coaters yesterday. I've been using the same company for nearly 40 years & they always seem to have interesting stuff in their workshop. Everything from oil-rig pipeline parts, to vintage race car stuff to a complete Massey Ferguson tractor, being coated grey as a garden ornament.
Yesterday it was these.

Cast iron crosses from a cemetery at a nunnery in London. Apparently the cemetery was overgrown & neglected but is now being "restored". A lot of the crosses had fallen over or been taken down & stacked in a corner. So Craig & Lee at A & C Shotblasting in Berkshire have blasted them all back to bare metal, etch primed them & coated them in gloss grey, which was their original colour.

Each nun had a number, which are the discs attached to the crosses & most stand about 3 feet tall -the crosses, not the nuns. The more important you were, the taller the cross. Late 19th/early 20th century.

I'm not religeous at all, but I just think these are beautiful objects in their own right. Very tactile -Craig says visitors to the workshop can't resist touching them. They've got a couple of hundred to do. Interesting.

A tangible link to somebody that seems to be built in us ? I always feel at ease in cemetery's  ..

They look good. The writing still stands out well considering the years of weather the crosses have withstood.

Nice that they are going to the trouble of having these restored. A bit of a shame that usually the sisters only got a number when in multiple burial plots. Seems a little authoritarian and soulless.

I thought that too Dave -anonymous even in death. Like the Borg, just part of the collective.

Don't mention the BORG..you may get assimilated ? ::)

 :o

I wonder if sister St Bruno was in charge of the Pipe smoking tobacco. ::)

Part of the point of being a nun is give up your indepence and individuality - they choose it in life, I don't suppose they're bothered about it when they're dead!   ;)