Angels and Mourning Figures

A selection of Angels and Mourning Figures at the Liverpool Road (Birkdale) Cemetery in Southport.

A Most Striking Memorial

One of the most striking memorials at Liverpool Road (Birkdale) Cemetery, Southport is this one. I have yet to discover its significance but notice as I posted this, the name Sarah appears on the left arm of the cross. I must take a further look at the memorial. It most certainly is a staggering piece of art.

A Victim of Stabbing

This impressive stone lies in the churchyard of St Mary Magdalene's Parish Church in Clitheroe, Lancashire. Part way down its length, it records the death of an Innkeeper who was the victim of a brutal stabbing. The inscription states:

Likewise of William Southworth . . . of Waddington, Innkeeper, who suddenly expired having been stabb'd [sic] by a Neighbour in a Moment of ungovernable Passion, leaving a Wife and Eight Children to lament his untimely Death, on the 16th Day of May1833.

This Stone recording his untimely Death
is erected by his Wife, Elzabeth.

I have not long to stay before I too shall be
going there. then come and pray my children over me.

Sadly, for Elizabeth, it would be a while before she joined her husband as she lived on until March 17, 1868, dying aged 78 years . . .

I have yet to find details of the murder.

Grave Art

Looking at some of the grave art and symbolism in Lancashire's Accrington Cemetery, I came across three examples of Angels that I had not seen before:

The London Necropolis - Brookwood

Here are two vintage postcards showing views of Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. The first shows four views of an immaculately maintained cemetery. It was sent to a Mrs Foot at Station House, Dartford, Kent  in October 1912 by the recipient's sister who thought it suitable as a 'birthday' card! [I have also posted a more recent image of the Pelham-Clinton memorial featured in the bottom left photograph to show how the scene has changed . . . The second shows St. Cyprian's Avenue in the grounds of Brookwood Cemetery.

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According to the author of London's Necropolis, John M Clarke the Pelham-Clinton memorial  is probably the most important in the cemetery. The statue group depicts a grief-stricken man crouching over the corpse of a woman,with one hand cupped behind her head. Above them, her angelic form soars heavenward, wings outspread and her face turned back with an expression of great  sympathy.

The sculpture is called Into the Way of Peace and commemorates Matilda Jane Pelham Clinton (1825-1892) who was married to Lord Edward Pelham-Clinton. She served in Queen Victoria's private household. A bronze inscription plaque was stolen some years ago. Her husband was the only non-Royal to attend Victoria's funeral in 1901. John Clarke records that the new King asked Pelham-Clinton to scatter earth on the late Queen's coffin.caption

The Great Faversham Explosion

I have been looking through a collection of several hundred postcards of cemeteries, graveyards, memorials and funeral scenes that I had collected together over the past 30 years. They are contained in two large albums and total just short of 1,000 individual items. I was pleased to find the postcard published here which shows the mass grave of the victims of the worst explosion in the history of the British explosives industry.

On the reverse is a letter from William to his sweetheart Emily who lived at 11 South Road, Faversham. He told her:

"This is a photo of the grave where they buried some of the men killed down the Gun Cotton. My chum Harry Anderson, who you used to see me with before I kept company with you, was killed."

According to Wikipedia, at 2.20 pm on Sunday April 2, 1916, a huge explosion ripped through a gunpowder mill at Uplees, near Faversham, when a store of 200 tons of TNT was detonated after some empty sacks caught fire.

Being a Sunday, no women were at work. One hundred and fifteen men and boys, including all members of the Works Fire Brigade, were killed. The bodies of seven victims were never found and 108 corpses were buried in a mass grave at Faversham Cemetery on April 6.

The factory was in a remote spot in the middle of open marshes, next to the Thames coastline. The explosion was heard as far away as Norwich and Great Yarmouth. In Southend-on-Sea, domestic windows were blown out and two plate-glass shop windows were shattered.

William's Postcard

The Mass Grave as it is Today

Published under Creative Commons, courtesy of Pam Fray

Hand reaches Over

I've not come across this sort of grave topping before. I found it slightly unnerving to see a disembodied hand, clutching a wreath, draped over the top of a headstone. It was very striking, to say the least. There was one other in the Great Harwood Cemetery in Lancashire but not so well-preserved.

Lamb of God 2

A second Lamb of God memorial in Blackpool's Layton Cemetery. Sadly, the lamb's head has been damaged.

Lamb of God

This impressive memorial in Blackpool's Layton Cemetery commemorates Amy, the daughter of Frederick and Emma Maria Nickson who died 10 June 1882 aged four years and ten months.

It also mentions her father who died in 1905 aged 59 and her brother Edward, a Veterinarian, who passed away in 1913 aged 37.

Layton Cemetery was opened in 1873 and the site encompasses 30 acres.

Memorial Wall

There is a very picturesque stone wall bordering the graveyard of the Parish Church of the Holy Ascension in Settle, Yorkshire. Part of it is constructed from fragments of graveyard kerbstones still bearing details of the departed. I wonder why? Unusually, there is no record of someone with the Christian names of Gertrude Harriet being buried in the graveyard . . .