Friends of Rake Lane Cemetery
Mariners’ Home Memorial Stone
The Mariners’ Home has been a haven for retired seafarers since 1882. At first, those mariners who died were buried in the public section if they had no family grave in the cemetery. But in 1914 the Mariners’ Home purchased a large plot for burials. The first sixteen men had all their details (name, rank and age) listed on four large gravestones. This was too costly, so after the last mariner was laid to rest in the marked graves, subsequent burials were in unmarked graves, four in each plot. There are 158 men buried in the unmarked section. A flower bed now surrounds the old marker stone with the letters ‘MN’ picked out in cineraria and the garden is maintained by Nautilus gardeners from the Mariners’ Home.
The new site with ‘MN’ (Merchant Navy) in flowers
The old site with stone hidden