This plot marker has the initials AMJ on the front, and GG on the back. We don’t know who GG is, but we can work out who AMJ was. Alice Maria Blakey was born on December 23rd 1854, an early Christmas present for Thomas and Sarah (Marshall) Blakey of Charles Street, Shade. Thomas was a …
On the back of the stone wall at the rear of the graveyard is a slate plaque, placed relatively recently, commemorating Thomas Greenwood the “Mechanic of Millwood”, which was put there to replace a supposedly lost gravestone in that area. When we arrived and cleared those final two rows, we found quite a few gravestones …
Read more “57.54 – Betty, Mary Ann and Thomas Greenwood (previously unmarked)”
This is another of our graves that was missed last time around, and that is linked to other graves within the yard. Who were these people? Elizabeth Ann Helliwell was born in 1863 to William and Hannah (Normington) Helliwell of Square, Walsden. Her baptism at St. Peter’s was on September 24th of that year and …
This previously unmarked ledger announces the beginning and end of a very short little life – that of Grace Whitaker, who from her stone we know was buried here in late 1852 aged 18 months. Like little Sarah Taylor, her parents went to great expense to mark her grave, but then never ended up here …
This is one of the stones we liberated from a few inches of soil behind the Garden of Rest. It doesn’t tell much of a story, but do you always need there to be a story? James Nuttall was born in 1770 or thereabouts and grew up in the Stansfield ward area of the larger …
Read more “57.50 – James, Mally, Isaac and Elizabeth Nuttall (previously unmarked)”
The SA. and SB. indicators are for rows of graves which are on the school side of the fence, but are not under the extension itself. Some of these are still visible and readable from the school side and some are hidden in some way or other through overgrowth. The plot marker for this grave …
This is another one of the plot markers under the school which we feel confident in identifying – or, at least, half identifying. R. G. we have a strong hunch about, and we think was the owner of the plot. N. O. we can definitely identify as Nathan Ogden. Nathan died of natural causes in …
Plot markers can be difficult things to work out – sometimes the initials are of the plot owner, sometimes of the person buried there. Christ Church’s fairly regular grid pattern allows us to occasionally make an educated guess, and in the case of the mysterious W.H.G. under the school, we can guess that it’s William …
You know when sometimes you just…know? Well, we didn’t. We had no idea there were two stones side by side here. John Holt Jr. was, according to the lost sexton’s book, buried in the same plot as little Sarah Taylor just below John and Mary Ann. Actually though he was on the side of his …
Read more “40.38 and 40.39 – John, Mary Ann, and John Holt Jr.”
This grave originally had a notation on it saying that the existing stone – a sidestone lying flush with the ground – was for James William, and the missing one was for Mary Ann Jackson; but when we got there and had a prod, we found not Mary Ann, but John. Who were this family? …
Read more “35.12 – John, James William and Mary Ann Jackson”