Following on from this story, this grave reveals more secrets – this time, its connection to the parish church and to many other graves in the yard! We last left this grave with the death of Ruth Hargreaves in February 1876, who died with her niece Sarah by her side. On Ruth’s death Sarah’s adopted …
Read more “37.8 – Sarah, John, Mary Elizabeth, Annie and Ruth Alice Greenwood, and Harold Ashworth”
This is a story already half-told, at a grave further back in the yard – a now-flattened ledger commemorating Susanna (Marshall) Barker and some of her children. That stone also remembers the three children of John and Mary (Smith) Barker, who are buried here. A first wife who looks after her replacement’s children in death; …
This unusual tomb, one of only two in the graveyard, holds a parent and child – vicar and singer – two figures whose time in this town was relatively brief but who were essential parts of people’s lives here. William Augustus Conway was born in West Derby near Liverpool in 1821, one of the children …
Read more “37.11 – William Augustus and Maria Louise Salusbury Conway”
Another story about a Lord family dairy farmer – but we aren’t yet sure if William was related to John. Given it’s Todmorden, he probably was! William Lord was born on August 5th 1842 to Samuel and Hannah (Stansfield) Lord, who are buried at 39.0 not too far away. He was their first baby, born …
Read more “37.15 – Sarah, Edwin, Edgar, Hannah, William and Arthur Lord”
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 …
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 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)”
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”
A story that encompasses the church, the school, and the graveyard itself; what more could we want? This grave story is only a half-told one though, because the latter two inhabitants died lately enough that there will be memories out there of them beyond the public record – and we want to hear them! So …
Read more “38.35 – John Thomas, Bertha, Alice and Arthur Cryer”
This grave holds a father and son, and moreover, a father who was part of this church and graveyard’s history – unlike other clerical graves, it might escape your notice entirely if you were idly walking through, as on the face of it it’s just another flat lancet. Even when it was upright only the …