Abi Pattenden: Quiet Ground

Send a text

Actor and funeral director Abi Pattenden joins me for a walk to Old Hamsey Church, where her grandparents are buried, and where memory refuses to stay still.

We walk just north of Lewes, tracing the path her grandparents took when they moved from Wales after her grandfather found work nearby as a signalman. We pass the house Abi remembers from childhood, before arriving at the churchyard that still holds her family story in the ground.

Along the way, we talk about her work as a funeral director, how death is handled and avoided in modern life, and what happens when grief becomes part of your working day rather than something whispered about behind closed doors.

This is a walk about work, ancestry, and the strange calm that arrives when death is no longer treated as a stranger.

Season Two of the story pilgrim walks with people — their histories, their callings, and the places that shaped them.

buen camino, and keep listening.