The Green Hill

A year at Sharpham Meadow

  • Welcome to this website about my relationship with Sharpham Meadow, a natural burial ground on a hill overlooking the River Dart estuary in Devon. My son Felix was buried here in March 2017, after dying suddenly and unexpectedly. He was 20.

    Visits here have become part of the rhythm of my life over the past few years. It is wonderful to see the seasons change in this beautiful place, and I wanted to record a year here, to try and explore how bereavement and time are inextricably linked.

    Between Autum 2021 and Autum 2022, photographer Kate Mount and I visited once a month, at dawn. Daybreak is a liminal time, a sort of liquid, hardly discernable, moment of transference. Each month is recorded in a separate page on this website, which is a sort of visual accompaniment to my memoir, The Green Hill: Letters to a Son.

    Sophie Pierce