This is one of our mysteries of the graveyard, and a tale about the power of grief and shame. Caroline Coles was not a poor woman, and her husband not without some local prestige; so where’s her grave, and where are her two children who are buried here? They might be at this plot marker …
Read more “Caroline Elizabeth Coles and her children (location unknown)”
A Todmorden couple who crossed the border to Burnley, but held on to their Todmorden links to the end. Alice Stott opens this story as the older member of the pair. She was born Alice Davies in 1827, the second youngest child of her father Peter and mother Hannah (Jackson). She grew up in the …
Four sons – four sons! – and no parents anywhere around. Unusual for these plot markers here, so what gives? What gives is…we don’t know. William Fielden, a cotton weaver and warehouseman (and grandson of Roger Bramley), married Grace Pearson at St. Peter’s in Walsden in 1865. William and Grace were both Walsden born and …
Read more “SB.3 – William, Joseph Haigh, Josiah and Jesse Fielden”
More Stephensons underneath a plot marker beneath the school, this time three young sisters and a brother, whose parents may or may not be resting with them. And there’s still a mystery at the end of it all even though we figured so much of the story out… William Stephenson – no relation to the …
Read more “S6.7 – Sarah Alice, Florence Mary, Alice Stansfield and Harry Victor Stephenson”
Another plot marker under the school – another lost plot marker – but we won’t let a plot marker go unidentified if we can help it, and while this one was initially confusing we got there in the end. Joseph Sutcliffe was Lydgate royalty of sorts; the son of Joseph and Grace (Rigg) Sutcliffe, we’ve …
Read more “S8.1 – Wilbert, Mary Elizabeth, Wilson, Sarah and Joseph Sutcliffe”
A lost plot marker – a family who left – and two brothers who never met…and perhaps a grandfather and grandmother to boot. Edmund Tattersall Stephenson had a glorious name and a dirty job; that of engine stoker. He had been born in Newchurch in 1860 to John Dewhirst Stephenson and his wife Harriet, formerly …
The Holts and Crowthers were people who loved the high windswept places, and sometimes thrived there…sometimes not. James Holt was born in Todmorden in 1814, two years after his future wife Sally Crowther. Sally was the sister of James Crowther, whose story you might have heard before, and her family were firmly ensconced on the …
Read more “38.16 – James, Sally, James, Greenwood and Sarah Holt”
Lineholme stalwarts here, with a dash of Liverpudlian for good measure. Thomas Sutcliffe was born in 1846, the first child of his parents Joseph and Grace (Rigg) of Lineholme, Lydgate today, on the Burnley side of Todmorden. Joseph was a labourer who soon became a grocer and who spent the rest of his life supplying …
Read more “38.17 – Thomas, Harriet, Willie, Joseph and Eva Sutcliffe”
Gale, Summit, what’s this now; what are these Littleborough folks doing at Christ Church? The answer is of course that they weren’t always from Littleborough…so what’s the story behind this table tomb, one of a very few in the graveyard and the only one in the public area? James Scarr was born in Todmorden in …
Read more “38.19 – James, John, Betty and Sydney Scarr, and Jane and Elizabeth Butterworth”
Love comes late to some of us, and that’s ok. It’s no less wonderful for that! William Culshaw, the senior partner, was born around 1785 in Manchester. His father James was a butcher and sadly that’s the end of our knowledge of William’s life. He became a blacksmith and seemingly never married, although this makes …