Elegy in a Yorkshire churchyard

Heptonstall, West Yorkshire You have to walk over a packed paving of graves to enter the Old Church, which makes me feel squeamish, but the villagers take a pragmatic view of such things

The graveyard around the two churches of Heptonstall is reputed to contain 100,000 bodies, which is about the population of Halifax; a silent city of the dead, squeezed into an area about the size of a playing field.

Weather-wise, it is a day of nothings; windless, tepid and grey as gritstone. Ted Hughes described the surrounding moors as "a stage for the performance of heaven", but today it feels like that performance would be uninspiring, so I opt to linger in the village and explore.