graveyarddetective
@gravedetective
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I'm a longtime student of funerary architecture photographing headstones/memorials that tell a story. Our Social History is written on those stones fa8cfe51
Lancashire
Joined July 2011
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Green Man on gravestone to John Marsden Alker who died 1858 aged 1 year 5 months - Chorley Cemetery, Lancashire:
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I don't expect anyone missed me or wondered where I have been for the last fortnight. On Sep 05, I got up and sank to the floor unable to get up. Taken to hospital by ambulance. Released yesterday afternoon. Still feel really rough but thankful I got through it.
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One of last shots today & I walked right past it as I was busy photographing large versions of memorial flower vases. Glanced back & saw this Green Man. The tendrils from his mouth have formed themselves into a large wreath with large petals inset. Such a great find! Chorley Cem:
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Winifred Wright died in March 1903 aged 1 hour. I think the shortest life I have photographed in Lancashire is 5 minutes:
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This is the view you get as you drive past the Liverpool Road Cemetery. It certainly attracted my attention:
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I saw this lovely WW1 family portrait under glass on an overgrown grave at the Wharton Lane Presbyterian Churchyard, Little Hulton, Salford. It features Elsie and John Wildman and their two children.
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Anyone notice my tweets slowly drying up, I am unwell. Had awful 6 hour shivering fit on Wed night. Various other symptoms Fri & Sat. Bringing washing in last night saw me afflicted by vertigo. Flailed about & fell on Laundry basket. Likely UTI. Sample 2 lab & anti-bios 4 a wk.
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There’s a small number of severely eroded stones scattered around Blackburn Cemetery. I wonder why it happens to some and not others?
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The detectorist of the dead aiming to digitise every body in England
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Ten years ago, I bought this postcard of a Fenland funeral. Circa 1900, it shows family members on a cart that was taking them and the deceased for burial. The clergyman posing majestically with his stick just has to be a Catholic priest. He looks to be a bit of a character:
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The first time I have seen an elephant ornament on a grave. Knaresborough Cemetery, Yorkshire:
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Jackdaw nest behind statue on tower of St Mary, Carleton-in-Craven, North Yorkshire. The large baby is on the left:
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Discharges from the horrors of the trenches, only to be killed down the pit! Tyldesley Cemetery
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Middleton's St Leonard's Church contains one of the finest collections of monumental brasses in the area, including the only brass in the UK of an English Civil War officer in full armour, Major-General Sir Ralph Assheton. His cause of death is listed as 'Witchcraft'
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One of my favourite finds during the past five years was at Overleigh Cemetery, Chester. Mabel Frances Ireland Blackburne is known as the 'Chewing Gum Girl' but she actually died of whooping cough
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Cemetery chapel - Tyldesley. It has seen better days!
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Salford’s Weaste Cemetery has had 220,000 interments since it opened. There is one particular plot where graves are particularly crammed in. To walk along the rows is a joy. Someone once asked me how many there were? Foolishly, I said I would count them. I did and reckoned 3,000+
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One of my favourite views of Lister Lane Cemetery Halifax
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#PolishAirForce
day - Polish war memorial. Many former Polish pilots buried in Carleton Cemetery. One has Polish VC
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The Dog Cemetery, Hyde Park, London in its early days:
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I saw a few of these at the bottom of grave slabs at Stand All Saints:
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Alfred Henry Piddell died of a Broken Heart in 1875. I have never seen that on a gravestone before. Weaste Cemetery.
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Sorry I've been quiet for some time. Had an abdominal scan in the local birthing centre [!] yesterday and am meeting up with a cancer surgical team on Wednesday tea time who will be looking to establish that I do or don't have cancer. Reason? Lost four stone in very short time .
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Hurt my neck looking up to photograph dozens of Carved Stone Heads, Grotesques and Gargoyles! St Mark's Worsley:
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Inside ghoulish 16th century Sicily catacombs
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Massed ranks of Victorian headstones as far as the eye can see [Preston Cemetery, Lancashire]
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My wife got a book on Knitting Birds. Here's her first two attempts - Nuthatch and Wren:
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Intricate stonework surrounding door at St Thomas the Martyr, Upholland:
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Church of England to launch a 'Google Maps for graves' within 5 years
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Played on deck with another child when a torpedo exploded beneath them. Neither seen again. Remembered on family gravestone at Duke Street Cemetery Southport:
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Detail from Stained Glass at Holy Trinity Church, Casterton, Cumbria:
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Wow, WW1 enthusiasts! Found album with 148 postcards of war hospitals, wounded troops, nurses and hospital ships etc
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The McKay memorial. Five sons died across three wars – Boer, WW1 and WW2. [Macclesfield Cemetery]
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Not every day you see a wasps nest on the side of a graveyard memorials. Get a photograph I thought - Snap!. Take another I thought - Wow, was that a wasp emerging at speed from the nest entrance and heading straight for me. Spot the difference in the two photos. Yikes!
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My question is: How on earth did the Mason do that lettering? St Mary, Eccleston.
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Wow! Absolutely Wow! Emptied the contents of a decaying carrier bag and found this huge document. WW1 Navy and Army Separation Allowance register of claims for Totnes [Devon] Committee. So much information to digest - Many hundreds of soldiers and sailors listed.
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Tragedy. The three Rawcliffe children dead within a month and their Father joined them three months later – Old St John the Baptist, Pilling, Lancs.
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Oh how they must have grieved. The names of 11 Fairclough children are inscribed on this gravestone in Preston Cemetery, Lancashire, plus the father who died in 1906:
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Robert Curwen [ship owner and timber merchant] and his wife Alice died in 1891 and 1893 respectively and are buried in the family sarcophagus at Flaybrick Gardens, Birkenhead. Another Robert Curwen [a victim of the 1910 Pretoria Pit Disasaster] is also interred there.
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Winifred Wright died in 1903 aged 1 hour - Our Lady of Compassion, Formby:
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Quarrymen’s graffiti in what evolved into St James’ (Cemetery) Gardens next to Liverpool Cathedral:
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Very striking Grave Art on the Walter family grave at Preston Cemetery:
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A quick pan round Edgerton Cemetery Huddersfield West Yorkshire
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Runaway horse and cart accident? Weaste Cemetery Salford
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Tragic memorial at St Peter's Church in Heysham of two sisters who drowned in full view of their Mother who could do nothing to save them. How awful that must have been - unthinkable!
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A very striking memorial at St Saviour's, Bamber Bridge. I need an eye test [it's next Monday] so I can't make out the name:
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Huddersfield's Edgerton Cemetery is well worth a visit - see what I mean:
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The spectacular burial slab of Peers Naylor, - Engineer at St Peter's, Newton-le-Willow. He died in 1842. His Epitaph is recorded in the Notes and Queries column in the Derbyshire Courier Jan 17, 1874:
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Such decay! Almost as if the skulls are starting to show through. Our Lady & St Hubert's RC Church, Great Harwood:
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In Treasured Memory of our Darling Baby Audrey Cooper who fell asleep July 4, 1918 aged 11 months 2 weeks. Hale Cemetery, Altrincham:
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Grotesque on tower at St Mary the Virgin, Prestwich:
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Charlotte Jinkinson died in 1880 aged 69 years - Sheffield General Cemetery:
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Two birds on top of the gravestone of Joseph ‘Josey’ Young who died in 1898 aged 3 years. Is one of them mourning? Duke Street Cemetery Southport:
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Another find. There is a certain poignancy in this snap of a young girl at the graveside of - I presume - an elder brother? Frederick Charles Brown died on August 31, 1919 aged 22 years. Would he have died as a result of the Influenza epidemic, I wonder?
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And I forgot to say how much I appreciated everyone's kind words about my experience. Thanks very much. It cheered me up no end, you lovely people!
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Pte Alan Tomlinson was a Despatch Rider, hence the winged wheel on his gravestone - Christ Church, Chatburn, Lancashire:
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Weaste Cemetery. Blowed if I can find anything about the circumstances of his deat - must be an interesting story:
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St Michael & St Lawrence, Fewston, North Yorkshire - the three children who died in 1840 were victims of Typhus:
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Eleanor Rigby's grave - St Peter, Woolton, Liverpool:
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Here lie the children of Station Master Robert Smith of the Midland Railway Company and his wife, Harriet. All contracted Scarlet Fever in 1880 and were dead within a week. They were Horace Richard 9, Rowland 7, Godfrey 4 and Ralph 1 year 7 months. Undercliffe Cem, Bradford
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Door Ajar - Duke Street Cemetery, Southport - Jewish section:
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From a collection of 100 pre-WW1 postcards of the Paris Dog Cemetery that I acquired a few years ago:
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A very unusual design at St Paul’s Kersal, Salford. Sadly, the inscription has worn away:
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Two Old Contemptibles Association grave markers - Hampshire:
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Angel on the grave of Margaret Worthington who died in 1932 aged 2 years. Great Orme Cemetery:
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St Peter's graveyard, Heysham at the close of day:
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Farmer's son Robert Shuttleworth died in 1872 and is buried in St Mary the Virgin's churchyard, Thornton in Craven, West Yorkshire:
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Seen on a grave at Chorley Cemetery - note the medal ribbons:
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12th century carving of a Green Man above a pillar in St Mary's church, Kirkby Lonsdale:
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Detail on Heysham war memorial, St Peter's Church, Lancashire:
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This is the finest Stained Glass Second World War Memorial I have ever seen. The aircraft is particularly striking - St Andrew, Longton, Lancashire:
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I just love it when a story is writ large on a gravestone - St John, Whittle-lee-Wood, Lancashire:
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Don't get me started on the church that marked all its common graves with beautiful ceramic numbered crosses. They removed them all to make mowing easier and dumped them in the undergrowth. Unusually they left a handful in situ:
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Tender, indeed Kate.
Reader! Rarely is a gravestone so tender. This poor lady hanged herself (her husband attempted bigamy & ran away to sea). Suicides then were buried at the furthest reaches of the graveyard. Instead the villagers petitioned to bury her in the heart of the church
@gravedetective
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