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| Cold Comfort for the Residents |
If you drive along the Lower Icknield Way from Aston Clinton towards Marsworth and Pitstone you pass a field with a high hedge and a lych gate. If you stop to investigate you will find a small 20th century cemetery completely surrounded by fields.
This is the cemetery of St Cross, at the nearby village of Wilstone, and if you visit the church you will find it has a small churchyard - without a gravestone in sight.
The reason is in the soil. The Vale of Aylesbury is very flat and the natural drainage is poor. If you dug a suitably deep grave at the church it would immediately fill with water! However a mile away, as you approach the Chiltern Hills, the ground rises slightly and the drainage is better.
I have posted a number of modern photographs of the cemetery on Geograph.
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