Places of Ceremony

Graveyards are good places to study the customs of a community. Religious customs may change or disappear, but there will always be the dead who need a place in our midst. Our burial sites spring from a grid of decisions and rules, anchored in the community and laid down in the physical structure of the graveyard. Are they functional places where we simply dispose of the dead, or are they friendly places where people come to care for their ancestors? Do all gravestones look similar, or is a certain freedom in decoration, size or material allowed? Where is the graveyard situated in relation to the rest of the settlement? Banned to the outskirts in accordance with environmental regulations, or close to a church or a pleasant park in town? Does the showroom of your car dealer look more welcoming than the local burial site? And who thought it was a good idea to build apartment blocks for urns?

In Dutch the words 'graveyard' and 'churchyard' are interchangeable, even though graveyards have become separated from the churches long ago. This has not only changed the function of the graveyards, but of the churches themselves as well. The numbers of active practitioners of the christian faith are in decline. The churches become empty places, too expensive to maintain for the dwindling communities. As a consequence, many church buildings are being sold to project developers and demolished to make room for more profane uses of the land. Especially churches erected in the period after the war (1945-1965), designed to be the crown jewels of the modernistic post-war restoration, fall prey to this development. Now is a good time to document them.