You may have encountered these Sutcliffes before – Lydgate Baptist stalwarts, we’ve already told the stories of their sons Thomas and Joseph. Joseph was the son of local grocer Robert Sutcliffe, although Robert hadn’t always been a grocer. At Joseph’s baptism at Patmos Chapel in 1816 he was described as a cotton spinner. Later though …
The eroded nature of this gravestone sent us down one or two false leads before we were able to figure out what this grave was about. “Semicircular stone, very badly eroded”, according to the TAS; then “Also of Sarah Ann, daughter of the above Richard Sutcliffe, who died Novr 24th 1878 in her 34th year” …
This little plot marker hides a big secret…in more ways than one! Read to the end for a twist in this explorer’s tale. The story begins with James Sims, who was born in 1816 in Penryn, Cornwall. Penryn is just to the east of Falmouth on the south coast and a quick look at a …
And not just them, but also George, Samuel and Mary’s third child; he may well be buried here, but like so many other “last one in”s, never had his name make it to the stone itself. The reason why is somewhat melancholy. The Sutcliffes had fairly normal lives, apart from George. Samuel was born in …
Read more “37A.23 – Abraham, Samuel, Emma and Mary Sutcliffe”
This is mainly a story about some Stephensons of Hanging Ditch and the routes they took in life – however far they travelled they always came back, and now they aren’t about to travel anywhere anytime soon… At two ends of the age spectrum are a pair of siblings, Sarah (aka Sally) and James. Sarah …
Read more “37A.26 – Mary, Benjamin and Sarah Bottomley, and James, Wright and Sarah Ann Stephenson”
Mother and daughter, together forever – thanks to descendant Leesa Harwood for this story. We love guest posts, so if you have an ancestor whose story we haven’t told yet and that you want to share, get in touch! Betty Lord was born on 30th June 1848 in Stansfield, Todmorden. Her father was John Lord …
Maybe “completely unobtainable” is better than “inaccessible” – John Wright’s location is likely here, although we can’t be sure due to a number of factors. While trying to see if he might be somewhere else we uncovered a short but fascinating story that it seemed unfair to leave off the website purely because of that …
Back in 1808… Back in 1986… Back in 2002…no, that’s not right either…back in September 2024, our Chair and Secretary went on a jaunt around Calderdale inspecting some closed non-conformist graveyards, and their final stop was Cross Lanes Baptist up the Buttress, above Hebden Bridge, to scout out some stones that linked either to Lumbutts …
Read more “43.21 – Greenwood, Henry, Mary Ellen and Sarah Baldwin (inaccessible)”
Next time you wander up Stansfield Hall Road and stop to smell the flowers, ask yourself who might have been smelling them 120 years ago…and who might have been planting them then too. This grave’s story starts in Child’s Ercall, Shropshire, in 1836 with the birth of Richard Green. Richard grew up in a household …
This family is scattered across various Todmorden graveyards, but these three are together in the same grave. There’s even a tantalising gap between names, one of our favourite gravestone mysteries. Who were the Barkers? Robert Barker was born in Walsden in 1788, five years before his future wife Martha Jackson. We know little about her …
Read more “37A.36 – Robert and Ann Barker, and Harriet Greenwood”