Tales of a Gravedigger

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Ian Shipley has now been traditionally hand-digging graves for 40 years. He was taught to dig the old-fashioned way and four decades on, averaging 114 graves per year, Ian can still be found habitually toiling away in one of any number of locations across Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire.

In Tales of a Gravedigger, the author’s first book, he recalls true tales from his early years whilst working at Newark’s London Road Cemetery in Nottinghamshire. It is a light-hearted and occasionally amusing look into the life of a gravedigger. From coffins getting stuck to stomach-churning exhumations. From unexpected cave-ins to practical jokes and various other ghostly goings-on.

It’s an interesting glimpse into a profession that most of us know very little about.

Ian has always believed that a grave should be hand-dug. It’s more personal that way. For years he has declined to use mechanical digging, preferring instead to keep alive the old ways. In Newark-on-Trent and throughout the surrounding villages of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, Ian will possibly be the last of the traditional gravediggers.