Wall spikes

At the time the garden wall surrounding our local undertaker was built, perhaps about the time I was born, they clearly believed that corpses, while just about mobile, were fairly dim.

That is to say, the soft wall spikes made of flakes of slate were believed to be sufficient deterrent to stop the corpses from attempting to roll out of their precincts at night, mistaking the slate for the rather more effective flakes of flint or flakes of glass. The latter were favourite, being cheap and easy, but the next door school, of around the same vintage, may have objected.

The wooden fence is much more recent, perhaps intended to hide the goings on out-back from today's squeamish eyes.

I must have walked by this wall thousands of times, at the very least a thousand times, so odd that I have not noticed the slate before.

PS: a lot of the garden walls of the Cambridge of my childhood favoured glass. Given the very large number of public houses in the town at that time, maybe regular student binges meant that there was a good supply of broken bottle glass. Mostly swept away now.