Category Archives: Family history

Overleigh Cemetery Self-Guided Geodiversity Tour

Overleigh Cemetery, Chester #2 – The living, the dead and the visitor

People

Graves represent people, the living and the dead, both entangled in the complexities of funerary rites.

The bereaved

A funeral at Overleigh Old Cemetery. Detail of 19th century engraving of Overleigh Cemetery. Source: Wikipedia

Although this post is about a burial ground and its graves, funerary traditions and practices are all as much, if not infinitely more, about the living. The need to recognize and commemorate loss, not merely at the funeral but prior to it and after it are essential to people, even today when the traumas associated with death tend to be handled in more internalized ways than in the pre-war periods.

Gravestone of Geoffrey Mascie Taylor, died 1879. If anyone has any idea what the symbol represents at the top of the gravestone, please let me know.

During the Victorian period there was an elaborate process of marking a death, a tradition of precise convention and ritual, expressed both within the family and communally. When someone dies the living are left behind to handle a loss as best they can, and cemeteries and memorials are only one one part of that process. The end to end process from death to mourning is all a part of the Victorian experience of bereavement. Visiting and tending the grave, bringing flowers for the deceased, was part of this process, in which women had a key role, and demonstrating bereavement in public essentially brought the grave into the domestic sphere. Several of the books listed in the references, go into some detail about the Victorian expressions of mourning, and books by James Stevens Curl in 1972 and Judith Flanders in her recent overview provide great insights, but if you want a much shorter book with a still very comprehensive and well written overview, Helen Frisby’s Traditions of Death and Burial offers an excellent overview of Victorian and later bereavement ceremonies.

John Owens JP, died 1853, age 72. “A Merciful Man Whose /
Righteousness Shall / Not Be Forgotten.” There are no additional inscriptions on this impressive headstone

In the Victorian period it has been argued that the lead-up to a funeral, the funeral itself and its aftermath were all components of an intention to promote social status, wealth and the knowledge of and participation in deeply embedded social conventions that specified in detail how death should be handled and how mourning should take place. The Industrial Revolution had created a new type of middle class, many of whom were making livings based on manufacturing and commerce, as well as roles in the growing legal, medical, administrative, banking, and similar sectors. Even though there were more opportunities for social mobility, and the ability for individuals to define themselves in new terms, the aristocracy still provided a model for those with social ambitions. Conspicuous displays of personal and family identity and wealth had become fundamentally important in this need to establish a dignified and self-important identity at a location between the upper and working classes. It was also important for the lower middle classes to distinguish themselves from those who were less financially robust, doing what was perceived as more menial work, defining themselves as socially distinct from the working class. Hierarchy, with all its subtleties during the Victorian period, was important, deeply-felt, and complex, and much of this is reflected in funerary rituals.

More recently it has also been recognized that elaborate Victorian and early Edwardian funerary ceremonies were not merely social devices but reflected the great trauma associated with loss in a world where medicine was in its infancy and where where the middle class was defining itself within often smaller families than previously. Sickness and death could be both frequent by comparison to today, and was often profoundly distressing. At the same time, sanitation and health were slowly improving in the second half of the century, meaning that once childbirth and infancy had been survived, people physically lasted longer than they had done in the past, building relationships but more frequently succumbing to old-age problems, becoming invalids who were cared for within the home. National and community diseases were frequent, some of them long-lasting, and the role of women in nursing their relatives became increasingly important where professional standards of nursing were, just as much as the professionalization of medicine, in their earliest incarnation. Middle class family ties, and the Victorian and Edwardian sense of moral responsibility to relatives, ensured that sickness was a very frequent component of family life.

TThe monumental grave shrine of Henry Raikes, died 1854, aged 72, Chancellor of the Chester Diocese and one of the founders of the Chester “Ragged Schools.” Overleigh Old Cemetery..

Relatively recent research has also suggested that working class people felt no less strongly about the loss of their partners, siblings and children. Many working class families were crowded into insanitary areas all over in Britain, and notable areas have been identified in Chester, forcing people into much closer proximity, and this promoted the transmission of sickness and disease with a consequent cost in terms of poor health. Sickness was handled within families, which caused many problems in household management, where women frequently worked for a living, often in domestic capacities. This resulted in the occasional recourse to a new breed of hospitals as well as a frequently dubious type of pre-professional paid nursing care. The ease of disease transmission meant that those living so close together and in such insanitary conditions were most at risk of epidemics, and the mortality rate was much higher than in middle class households. There were clubs into which people could pay a subscription to save up for funerals, just as there were clubs to save up for Christmas, and there are several pauper graves at Overleigh. But for some the costs were too high, so many graves were unmarked, and the grief of some families was never recorded meaning that these losses are not captured.

The monument for Joseph Randles, died 1917, aged 65-66. Note the partially veiled urn, which will be mentioned later.

It is easy to forget that until the NHS was established in 1948, most people still died at home rather than in hospitals, hospices or nursing homes, and that families housed the deceased, until burial, within their homes, and those deceased, laid out in front parlours in their coffins, were visited by friends and families. The introduction of the funerary Chapel of Rest in the later Victorian period helped to reduce the time when the deceased remained in the house, but it was still a common part of a death that the dead remained amongst the living until the funeral well into the 20th century.

The focus on ceremony and ritual altered over time, with a considerable change of direction from the elaborate ceremonies of the Victorians to the minimalist approaches taken today. This does not mean a growth of indifference to death, but it does indicate changes within society. The beginnings of this are to be found in the Edwardian period, particularly during and after the First World War, when the nation’s horses that traditionally pulled hearses were required for the war effort. Funerals became even less demonstrative after World War 2. This will be discussed a little more in Part 3.

On this Armstrong family cenotaph and headstone in the Overleigh New Cemetery, three sons predeceased their parents aged 32 in 1917, 22 in 1918, and 39 in 1927, the first two of them at war, all of which must have been a shocking loss. Their parents are commemorated here too.

In the cemetery itself, the most obvious incorporation of gravestones into the world of the living is the highly visible custom of flowers and other gifts having been left in front of a headstone. Fresh flowers in particular give the sense of a grave being regularly tended but artificial flowers and other items also serve to mark the continued attention to a grave by those who wish to indicate their recognition and care. My father, who was born in 1936 and grew up on the Wirral, says that when he was a small boy he was taken regularly to the graves of his relatives in Liverpool, where there was a flower shop outside the gates, and flowers were purchased, a visit was made to family graves, and a picnic was enjoyed nearby. It was a visit of celebration, continuity and memory, a positive occasion.

The other most obvious indication of a gravestone continuing to have a role is the presence of multiple inscriptions on many memorials, as individual family members are lost and the living are compelled to update the inscriptions. Many of these gravestones capture this passage of time and accumulated loss very effectively, telling long narratives of family loss, sometimes covering several decades, and suggesting multi-generational involvement with funerary activities and commemoration, the sense of a continuum between the past, the present and the potential future.

The Deceased

The deceased may seem to be passive and inanimate, but they have voices in at least three ways. First, they may have had input into their own graves, including its location, its design and its use as a single plot or a family plot. In this sense they are very much agents of their own burials. Second, the very process of memorialization, whether by family or friends, gives the departed an enduring presence that lasts into the modern world, a very material presence. Some of those who died may also have obituaries to be found in newspaper archives, and accounts of inquests into their deaths, filling out a much richer picture of former lives, and those who were in positions of influence will have had much more information captured in official documents and even preserved journals. In this way they can contribute very significantly to modern research projects, as much as that may have surprised them. Third, they occupy the living landscape of cemeteries, spaces that occupy often new places in modern life and that are valued today. At Overleigh I have seen people walking from one end to the other pause to read an inscription, and dog walkers wandering around, pausing to take note of a particular grave. The dead area still amongst the living, even when they are not even slightly connected today with their ancestors. Those who care for their graves, and tours that bring visitors, all do their essential bit to keep the deceased amongst the living.

Art Deco style headstone of Ralph Esplin, died 1935, aged 67

It has been the experience of cemeteries since the beginning of the 17th century in Britain that graves are tended for perhaps three generations after which they fall out of use, as families move away or simply move on. Genealogy makes some of them briefly relevant, but the funerary landscape is a strange mixture of the abandoned and the perpetuated. Local authorities and Friends societies contribute to the task of caring for abandoned graves, but this is a very different relationship from those that are still visited by family members. In Victorian cemeteries, there is always a rather strange dynamic between the historical sections and those that are still the essence of loss, bereavement and and ongoing engagement.

The deceased in the early periods of the cemetery capture something of Chester’s evolving social, economic and cultural endeavors, as it attempted to secure its future and create a stable and prosperous community. Those who are represented in the cemetery are largely those who were either already successful in establishing themselves within this community or were making the attempt to improve themselves and gain status; the unmarked pauper and cholera graves are amongst the hidden histories of Overleigh and of Chester itself. There is time-depth here too, as we can track changes from 1848, when the Old cemetery was established, through the Edwardian period and both World Wars, and the changes during the post-war period up until the present day. I have been learning how much work it takes to see beyond the sea of graves and to read history captured in the cemetery landscape and monuments, and it is all there to be found, the world of the dead contributing to an understanding of the transforming past and how society’s views on death and commemoration changed. Parts 3 and 4 will go into this in more detail.
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Visiting Overleigh for the first time – what to look out for

The central monument, in rose granite, is a truncated obelisk, indicating a life cut short and usually associated with the loss of younger people, although not invariably. In this case, Harry MacCabe who died aged 26.

I have started here with the most obvious way of getting to grips with a cemetery – how things look when you walk through for the first time. This is about shapes, materials and the visual cues that you can pick up at first glance to give an indication of what the casual visitor may want to focus on during a first visit.

The majority of monuments at Overleigh are vertical, unlike the variety seen in local churchyards that include a variety of other horizontal and chest-type forms, as discussed in connection with the churchyard at Gresford, some 10 miles south of Chester. The example below shows one of the horizontal representations, which are less numerous, although of course by being less visible are more likely to be overlooked.

Although I discuss Overleigh as a site that helps us to connect with history, it is important to remember that both Old and New parts of Overleigh are still in use for new interments and cremation memorials, and that families and friends are still regular visitors to visit their departed and tend their plots. All visits by those of us who are not connected with family or friends interred in the cemetery need to explore with respect and care for those other visitors who are at the cemetery for the purpose of connecting with the departed.

The horizontal gravestone of Major Richard Cecil Davies is one of the relatively few gravestones that are not vertical. Some, of course, have fallen over and are now just as horizontal as this one, but this was always intended to lie over the grave and face upwards. These are always vulnerable to being taken over by grass and weeds, and need an eye kept on them.

Themes and symbols

Author James Curl (1975) found this advert in an 1860s guide to Highgate Cemetery in London, showing a range of grave monuments available for purchase. Most of these have equivalents at Overleigh.

How were headstones and monuments chosen? From the 1830s onward stonemasons had catalogues from which headstones could be chosen, just as there are today. Today there are also catalogues from which to choose, many of them online and offering a wide range of alternatives. At the same time, some families might prefer a grave that is similar to that of other family members, and some might want to emulate styles admired in a local cemetery. The imagery on the graves during the Victorian and Edwardian periods formed a rich language of meaning that is understood by all, including the illiterate. Sometimes the imagery used on a gravestone may say as much if not more about the emotional relationship between the living and the deceased than the text inscription, including the hopes that the living had for their dearly departed.

Headstone of George Henry, with a lily, the symbol of mourning, purity and peace

When you are walking around, you will notice that certain themes are recurring in the designs of the gravestones in both halves of the cemetery. These represent specific choices that people have made and the ideas that they wish to communicate. These can either be sculptural memorials or more modest headstones that incorporate carved imagery. Sometimes headstones just include text, and sometimes there is just a kerb with no headstone which usually lacks imagery, but the symbolic medium is often an important part of the message that a gravestone communicates, imparting a different type of information from the text, often rather more subtle and conceptual than what is written, sometimes capturing emotions and ideas rather more effectively than words. There is a usually a minimalist formality in what is written, but this does not extend to imagery and symbols, which can be far more expressive. The themes and symbols mentioned below are just examples that I have found in Overleigh Cemetery.

The memorial to Private Arthur Walton, died 1918 aged 27.

In the memorial to Private Arthur Walton shown left, the overall language of the iconography, seems to reflect the concepts of Christianity and the life of Jesus in response to the loss of a much-loved son in the First World War. The crown can symbolize victory but is also the emblem of Jesus and Christian immortality. Beneath it, the Biblical quote “He died that we might live” refers to Jesus, but might also refer to the sacrifice of Arthur Walton himself. The heart is a symbol of everlasting love of Christ and also of the charity espoused by St Paul, but also captures personal love. The grapes and vine-leaves are usually related to themes connected with Jesus including the blood of Christ, the Last Supper and the Holy Sacrament. Overall the iconography of the grave is probably one of personal sacrifice and its association with Christian values and the sacrifice of Christ himself, whilst at the same time demonstrating very deep personal loss. As well as being very moving, this is a good example of how the imagery can contribute to the overall narrative of a headstone or memorial.

Hester Ann Clemence, died 1914, aged 62, with other members of the family commemorated on the pedestal steps beneath the floral Celtic style cross. The steps often represent the steps representing Christ’s climb to Calvary. All of the creativity and suggestion of emotion in the monument is in the design; the inscription is minimalist. Although the encircled cross was originally associated with Irish graves, it became popular throughout Britain during the 19th century.

Of the overtly Christian-themed grave markers the dominant shapes are the crosses that re-appear for the first time since the Reformation during the 19th century, symbols both of Christ’s sacrifice and of resurrection, and proliferate at Overleigh, from the very simple to the seriously elaborate. Crosses carved with decorated themes are widespread through the cemetery. Although there had been very few crosses before the Victorian period, due to fear of association with papism. A popular choice at Overleigh was the so-called Celtic cross, with Celtic-style designs covering the surface. A popular variant has the top of the cross contained within a stone circle. Although originally associated with Irish and Scottish graves, after 1890s in particular, when a Celtic cross was chosen by the celebrated art critic John Ruskin for his own memorial in Coniston, it became popular for burials of all religious persuasion. A cross on a set of steps is often intended to represent the steps the Christ climbed to Calvary, but they might also simply be chosen for their monumental impact. Flowers on a cross are indicative of immortality. There are quite a few angels, messengers of God and the guardians of the dead who also transport the soul to heaven. The letters IHS often occur on graves in both urban and rural cemeteries and represent a Christogram, the three letters of the name of Jesus in Greek (iota, eta, sigma).

The truncated obelisk erected in memory of Francis Aylmer Frost. This photograph was taken by Christine Kemp when this area was not the overgrown jungle that it is now (you can see another photograph of this column, as it is today just below. Copyright Christine Kemp.

Many emblems are appropriated from earlier periods. Pagan themes include the many Egyptian-style obelisks (more about which you can read on my post about the Barnston memorial in Farndon). A splendid fluted truncated Doric column, a not uncommon cemetery icon but in this particular case perhaps a nod to Chester’s Roman past, is located just inside the River Lane gate to the Old Cemetery, its truncation indicating a life cut short, and generally indicating someone who died young, although in this case Francis Aylmer Frost was 68; another truncated column was dedicated to Harry MacCabe who was 26. It is not the only one in the Old and New cemeteries, but it is by far the most impressive, shown at far left in the image below. Its base is so badly overgrown with viciously thorny brambles that I couldn’t begin to find an engraving without losing half my hands and arms, and so remain ignorant as to who it commemorated. I need some garden shears next time!

Truncated column; weeping woman; angel; Celtic crosses, temple-style gravestone. Click to enlarge

Floral themes on the grave of Thomas George Crocombe, died 1913 aged 20, the eldest of 9 children. Overleigh Old Cemetery.

Flowers are a popular carved theme on headstones. Some have specific associations, such as the lily, standing for purity and a return to innocence; the rose, which indicates love (different coloured roses mean slightly different things), lilies of the valley, with connotations of innocence and renewal; daffodils that, flowering in spring, represent rebirth; and daisies, which symbolize innocence and were a popular choice for child graves. A sprig of wheat often indicated someone who had lived to a good age. Ivy, ironically, is representative of life everlasting and due to its enduring character. It is often show winding its way around cross headstones; today rampant ivy is one of the greatest causes of damage to graves in cemeteries and churchyards. The most popular of birds shown on graves were doves, symbolizing either the Holy Spirit guiding the deceased to heaven, or general values of spirituality, hope and peace. There are several at Overleigh.

Detail of the headstone of Harriett Garner and other family members with clasped hand motif. in this case it perhaps suggests father and daughter. Harriett’s father, who gave evidence at the inquest into her suicide, was certainly very distressed by the loss of his daughter. They are usually quite common in cemeteries, I have noticed only a few at Overleigh.

An urn is a very well represented motif, quite often topping a headstone as a sculptural component, and indicating the soul of the deceased; when draped with a veil they may indicate the soul departing or represent grief of mourners. Angels are popular sculptural elements at Overleigh, indicating the soul of the deceased being accompanied to heaven. Much less frequently shown than angels, but popular in many cemeteries, are images is that of a weeping woman, representing the loss of a person and the mourning of the bereaved. Small statues of children often indicate the grave of a young child. Clasped hands, common at some cemeteries but apparently not as well represented at Overleigh, indicate unity and may suggest the bonds of husband and wife, or of friendship or the hope to be reunited with loved ones; some have been carved to show the clothing and character of the hands as distinctly male or female. An anchor may show that the deceased was professionally connected with the sea, but may also represent hope; a variation is the anchor with a woman, the embodiment of hope, although I have not seen an example of the latter at Overleigh. Books may have many meanings – sometimes they are associated with the Bible of the clergy or the work of scholars, whilst others may mean knowledge or wisdom, or may simply represent chapters in life.

On the left, the headstone of Arthur Davies. The text wrapped around the anchor reads “Hope is the Anchor of the Soul.” The inscription contains other commemorations. The headstone of Florence Taylor Battersby and other family members in the middle, topped with a dove. The grave at far right shows the Christogram IHS, an abbreviation of the name of Jesus in Greek and Latin. Click to enlarge

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The child grave of Violet Patterson, died 1929, as well as other members of her family, one of whom, Edward Andrew Patterson, who died and was cremated in 2007, is inscribed on one page of the book. This is one of the longer enduring of the graves at Overleigh, in use for 78 years.

A book included on a gravestone may indicate any of a number of ideas. Prosaically, the grave’s owner might be involved in the printing, publishing or book-selling trades. Alternatively they might be a scholar or, if the book is intended to be a Bible, a cleric or someone particularly devout. In cemeteries one side of an open book often has the name of the husband or wife, whilst the other side remains blank until the other partner has also died, when the blank page can be completed. Sometimes the blank page is left incomplete, possibly because the former partner has remarried or moved out of the area, or has left no provision for the disposal of his or her remains.

There are also more modern emblems and themes that people have incorporated into grave carvings. In the Overleigh New Cemetery in particular there are Art Deco, Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau themes. Although often contained within crosses, the Art Nouveau decorations seem otherwise celebratory of life. The combination of Christian crosses with modern themes perhaps positions religion within a modern context where there is no need to refer back to much older historical values in order legitimize Christian beliefs. One of them, dedicated to Anna Maria Meredith, has a Biblical quote on it (fourth from the left, a most unusual headstone, although there is a second example in the cemetery). The memorial to Frederick Coplestone, third from left, shows St Francis of Assisi. It will be discussed further in Part 4.

Click to enlarge

Memorial in the cremation Garden of Reflection showing a locomotive. Roy Douggie, died 2010 aged 77, and his wife Beryl, died 2016, aged 79. That sycamore is going to need weeding out if it is not going to do permanent damage!

As can be seen on more modern gravestones and memorials, most of which can be seen in the Garden of Reflection in Overleigh Old Cemetery and at the very far end of Overleigh New Cemetery and even more dramatically at the post-war cemetery at Blacon, gravestone types and materials have become standardized, and the rich visual language of symbols and icons employed became much less varied over time, and are now often eliminated entirely, although secular themes are sometimes chosen instead. In modern cemeteries, regulations about the nature of grave markers limit potential for developing new monumental statements, but the decline in religious involvement in everyday life is also a part of this trend. The language of religious imagery to convey complex values (semiotics) now takes a back seat, even where commemoration is required, with modern secular images often chosen instead of Christian ones. There are exceptions, and Roman Catholic memorials can still be quite elaborate. Today modern gravestones and memorials can be less about choosing the perfect message for eternity than creating an appropriate personal message and style for the here and now, which is an attractive feature of many modern memorials.
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There are many more symbols and themes on gravestones than those covered in my brief overview above, some quite common at cemeteries, some unique, and it is worth looking out for some interesting examples.
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Inscriptions

Alice Maud Gwynne, died 1921 at the age of 42 which bears the inscription “There’s no pain in the homeland,” the monument topped with an urn

Inscriptions can be presented using various different fonts, sizes and colours all on the same monument, which creates a sense of texture. Inscriptions are often filled with colour to make the text stand out from the background stone and make it easier to read. Lead lettering was occasionally inset into stone to achieve the same impact. The different styles of text create a great deal of variety in the visual impact of the cemetery.

Headstones in Overleigh tend to be fairly minimalist in terms of the information they provide, many simply naming family members and providing a date of birth and death, perhaps a note about the role of the deceased, particularly where this was a high status position. Most contain some sort of affectionate phrase or such as “In loving memory of,” “in affectionate remembrance of,” “beloved wife,” “dear husband,” etc. Others may contain a little more information. Some may state the town or village name of the village, or even the property, where the deceased was resident.

The commemoration to 9 year old Walter Crocombe, his mother Sarah, 68, her husband George, 88, and their 4 year old grandson Eric.

Multiple dedications following the initial interment help to give a sense of the family context of both the first and and subsequent family members, and the longer they were in use, the more resonance they had for the family as successive generations interacted with the monument not merely to a single person but to a family commitment and tradition. The child grave of Violet Patterson, died 1929, includes dedications to other members of her family, and was in use for 78 years, with the latest inscription dedicated to a family member who died and was cremated in 2007.

Only war graves tend to give details of how death happened, such as “killed in action” or “killed in flying accident,” although there are never any details. A great many refer to the deceased having fallen asleep, a euphemism for having died that skirts around and sometimes deliberately disguises how the death occurred. Occasionally a grave will refer to the suffering of an individual, although I have seen fewer at Overleigh than in churchyards. The commemoration of Sarah Crocombe at Overleigh reads “Her pain was great / She murmured not / But hung on to / Our Saviour’s cross.” The monument to Alice Maud Gwynne comments “There’s no pain in the homeland,” which implies that she may have experienced some suffering towards the end of her life.

The memorial to Josephine Enid Whitlow in Overleigh New Cemetery (thanks Chris!) who died in 1938.

For obvious reasons, child graves can be more expressive than others about personal feelings of grief and loss. The grave of 2-3 year old Josephine Enid Whitlow in Overleigh New Cemetery, for example, shown towards the top of this post, has a statue of a small child labled “JOSIE” (Josephine Enid Whitlow) accompanied by the the inscription “Jesus Walked Down The Path One Day / And Glanced At Josie On His Way / Come With Me He Softly Said / And On His Bosom Laid Her Head.” She died in an isolation hospital in 1938. The grave of the Crocombe family shown above records the loss of 9 year old Walter: “Little Walter was our darling / Pride of all the hearts at home / But the breezes floating lightly / Came and whispered Walter come.”

A few graves have Latin inscriptions. Latin is often used on Roman Catholic graves, and the letters RIP often indicate a Catholic grave, standing for the words “requiescat in pace,” meaning “rest in peace”, part of a prayer for the dead. A nice little gravestone commemorating Thomas Hutchins, near the entrance on Overleigh Road has the legend “stabat mater dolorosa” inscribed along the line of the arch, meaning “the sorrowful mother was standing,” a reference to the Virgin Mary’s vigil during the crucifixion. It is one of a number that ask the reader to pray for the soul of the deceased.

The small, relatively isolated gravestone of Thomas Hutchins, died 1879, aged 39–40

Perhaps the most minimalist of all the inscriptions, in terms of information imparted, is this curious woodland-style headstone topped with a downward-facing dove, shown below: “With Sweet Thoughts of Phyllis from Mother and Father and Aubrey.” Given the lack of any useful information it is not surprising that there is no information on the entry for it on the Find A Grave website, but the headstone has charm, and the lack of data is really intriguing, because this was not an inexpensive monument. Chris tells me that her last name was Elias. There must have been a story here, but how to find it would need some extensive research that would require access to the original stonemason’s records.

“With Sweet Thoughts of Phyllis from Mother and Father and Aubrey,” Overleigh New Cemetery

Although it might be expected that headstones would give a wealth of information, this is rarely the case at Overleigh, although names, dates of birth and death and place names are a good place to begin with additional research.

There are several books and websites that list some of the most common cemetery themes and symbols, which are very helpful for decoding some gravestones and memorials.
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Visually personalized headstones

Memorial to Richard Price, Dee salmon fisher, who died in 1960 aged 59. Overleigh Old Cemetery

Personally commissioned scenes, where they are shown, are very specific. One of the most evocative is the gravestone that has a white marble section showing the Grosvenor Bridge, flanking trees on the river banks and a solitary, empty rowing boat moored in the middle of the river. It is dedicated to Richard Price, salmon fisherman, who died in 1960 aged 59. Salmon fishing on the Dee has its own history, well worth exploring, and Richard Price was one of the last to make a living from it. With Art Deco style wings either side, and an urn within the kerb, which could have been added at any time but appears to be in the same stone as the rest of the monument, it is an attractive and very personal dedication, becoming a little overgrown. Richard’s wife Rose, who died in 1987 aged 81, is also commemorated on the stone.

One of the more startling graves when seen from a distance, but completely charming and evocative when seen up close, is the full-colour section of a headstone to Vincent John Hedley, with a scene showing a fly-fisherman in a river or estuary with a rural scene, a rustic bridge, flying geese, an evergreen woodland, a bare hillside and a sunset or sunrise. It seems probable that Vincent John Hedley was a keen fly fisherman.

Vincent John Hedley, died 1997, aged 70. Overleigh Old Cemetery

Small section of an elaborate grave to Annie Myfanwy Roberts, died 1986, aged 73-74, showing photographs of family members.

A very well-tended grave in Overleigh New Cemetery is extremely monumental in its scope and intention, and includes photographs of the deceased, far more elaborate than the Anglican tradition but in keeping with the idea of the personalized scenes above that include visual as well as textual references to the personal. Whereas the two headstones above show evocative and nuanced scenes that suggest how lives were lived, the photographs of lost people show nothing of the lives that the people lived but are instant reminders of the faces of the departed, instantly emotive for the living, indicating a different way of thinking about and representing those who have been lost and are grieved for.

Materials

Although the most obvious thing about a grave is its shape, together with its ornamental elements, the choice of materials is also an essential part of the design of a monument, and helps to determine its appearance. As Historic England pointed out in their report Paradise Preserved, “the rich variety of stone within cemeteries represents a valued resource for the understanding and appreciation of geology.” The good news is that in 2012 Cheshire RIGS and the Northwest Geodiversity Partnership produced a five-page leaflet, Walking Through the Past: Overleigh Cemetery Geodiversity that describes some of the geological background to stone types used on gravestones at Overleigh Old Cemetery, which you can download as a PDF by clicking here.

Some of the many different stone types at Overleigh

Local red sandstone was a popular choice, the same material used to build Chester Cathedral. Yellow sandstone, presumably much of which came from the Cefn quarries in northeast Wales, is finer-grained and often easier to sculpt, but is very vulnerable to pollution and, as a result, de-lamination. Pale limestone and granite are available from British sources, and are scattered throughout the cemetery. Limestone is a sedimentary stone like the sandstones, and relatively soft and easy to sculpt, whereas granite is an igneous rock, very hard and enduring, often with a very attractive flecked texture, but far more difficult to shape. Imports from overseas include marble and various exotic granites, which are higher-status materials with smooth surfaces that lend themselves well to sculptural memorials. Rose granite, so beloved of the ancient Egyptians, is well represented, usually polished to a high gloss. The majority of modern headstones are in highly polished black granite. Local schools would probably welcome a geology trail through the cemetery.

Cross made of a composite of two different materials, with pieces of stone inserted rather coarsely into what looks like concrete and was probably a low-cost solution to a burial memorial.

As the 19th century rolled into the 20th century and transportation costs declined, imported stones became more common, particularly marbles and coloured granites. Closer to home, reconstituted (powdered and reformed) stone became a lower cost alternative to real stone, a common type of which was called coade stone. At first this resulted in an increased diversity of materials, forms and styles, but as the 20th century advanced, the whole business of burials became far more standardized. This is not a reflection of falling standards, but it is an indication of cultural change in general, where Anglican Christianity in particular is of less importance in Britain and where society tends to internalize loss rather than expressing it.

The only grave marker that I have spotted so far that is neither stone nor pseudo-stone is a single metal cross in Overleigh New Cemetery, shown just below, although I am sure that there must be others.

Lead lettering on the fallen headstone of Harriet Benson, died 1909 aged 63

Some graves have inscriptions formed of lead letters, which makes them stand out to ensure that they are easy to read, but they have a very poor survival rate, with letters falling out, and only the pin-holes where they were affixed surviving. This can be sufficient to work out the original inscription, but makes some of the the headstones look rather derelict. In the example shown left, the lettering under the missing lead can still be made out, but this is rarely the case.

Combined, these different materials, with their very contrasting textures and colours, offer a far more diverse visual fare than the modern cemetery areas in both Overleigh and elsewhere, which are usually glossy black granite. They help to contribute to the sense of individuality and personal expression in the cemetery.

Black-painted metal memorial to Frederick, aged 66-77, and Alice Wynne, John Meacock and Robert and Alice Taylor.

Memorabilia and gifts

Bird on a plinth at the foot of Harriett Garner‘s grave

A gravestone was a fixed point, although not invulnerable, whilst gift of flowers, immortelles and other objects are the ore transient but personal markers of ongoing memories or the establishment of new connections between people and graves. As well as demonstrating a personal connection between the living and the dead, the offerings of all types help to keep the sense that the cemetery is still a place of relevance, where narratives continue to be written and rewritten, sometimes only in people’s individual minds, and sometimes shared amongst families and even amongst sections of specific communities.

In the next section, below, is a photograph of Mabel Francis Ireland-Blackburn, showing a three year old child lying in a bed. It is surrounded by modern memorabilia, including flowers (fresh and everlasting) and a variety of toys and other items.

Although it does not attract the same devotion as Mabel, the grave of the suicide Harriett Garner features a charming little bird, probably a robin, on a thoughtful makeshift stand accompanying the grave. It gives the grave a personal touch, something more intimate than the headstone itself, suggesting a sense of ongoing empathy and regret.

War grave of Marjorie Anne Tucker, Women’s Royal Air Force, died 1918 aged 32, with a textile wreath placed by the members of Handbridge Women’s Institute

In the baby cemetery area and the cremation Garden of Reflection in Overleigh Old Cemetery and in the area of recent graves in Overleigh New Cemetery there are many graves with personal memorabilia and gifts from the living to the departed, and these speak to the realities of grief and the importance of reinforcing memory through small gifts and commemorations.

Examples that are cared for by today’s cemetery regulars

Not all graves are appreciated exclusively by their families and descendants. Others have become interesting or even important to people who otherwise have no connections to the deceased. Some graves have attained something of a celebrity status, either because of their visual appeal or because of the reputation or story of their owners, and are particularly cared for by local people as well as by the Friends of Overleigh Cemetery. These graves form a sense of how modern minds can connect on a personal and private level with graves with which they have no familial connection.

Grimsby News, September 11th 1908, reporting the coffin of William Biddulph Cross (The British Newspaper Archive)

The nicely shaped but otherwise unremarkable headstone of electrical engineer William Biddulph Cross, who died in 1908, conceals an amusing story of a coffin made entirely of matchboxes, thousands of them, by William himself over a ten year period, a fact mentioned on the gravestone: “WILLIAM BIDDULPH CROSS / Who Passed Away September 5th 1908 / Aged 85 Years / Known By His Galvanic Cures / And The Maker Of His Own Coffin.” The “galvanic cures” refer to a somewhat scary electrical therapy device thought to be a cure-all for numerous ailments. You can read more about the device and the theory behind it on the National Archives website. The coffin became something of a local tourist attraction in its own right before William was laid to rest, and was widely reported in newspapers all over Britain. The newspaper paragraph to the right, for example, was reported in the Grimsby News. It has been suggested that the electrical fittings were for lighting, but interment before death was a fear throughout the entire Victorian period, and there are some examples of coffins being fitted with devices to allow those who had been mistakenly certified dead to be given a means of raising the alarm, and perhaps this is an alternative explanation. The grave also commemorates six other members of the family who died between 1870 and 1904. It is something of a puzzle to me as to why William BIddulph Cross was the first of these to be named but the last to die.

Mabel Francis Ireland-Blackburn, died 1869. Overleigh Old Cemetery

A particularly notable example is “chewing-gum girl,” which is a rather frightful name for a clearly much-loved grave, explained in Part 4. The grave is a very good example of a modern phenomenon where people feel a strong connection to a grave in the past and demonstrate their sense of affinity and empathy by visiting the grave and leaving items to keep the deceased company. The three year old girl, Mabel Francis Ireland-Blackburn, is represented in stone as a child lying in a bed, and is today surrounded by flowers (cut and artificial), small stone statuettes, toys, a teddy bear by her head, and other small gifts. She died of whooping cough, but was reputed to have suffocated on chewing-gum, becoming a warning anecdote told by parents to their children, in the form of a poem, of the dangers of following in her footsteps. Child grave memorials are discussed more in Part 4. The visual impact of this grave, with the sleeping or dead girl lying in her small bed, propped up on a pillow, is clearly the impetus for the gifts, demonstrating the power of the sculptural funerary image, but also the connection that adults feel for deceased children.

Whilst some graves attract particular attention and are well cared for, The Friends of Overleigh Cemetery are trying to look after the cemetery as a whole, tackling individual problems as they identify them and attempting to rescue stones that can be freed from vegetation without doing them damage.

Cemeteries and the bereaved today

The only new interments in the Old Cemetery are baby burials, segregated with respect and sorrow in a separate garden of their own, or where rights are retained to be interred in a family plot. The attractive cremation Garden of Reflection, with its hedges emulating ripples on the former lake, is also still in use, and it is possible that it will be extended. Both are clearly distinguished from the majority of graves of the previous two centuries by virtue of the fresh flowers and other gifts that are regularly provided. In the New Cemetery, the buildings are no longer in use for funerary activities, and the older part of the cemetery to a great extent resembles many parts of the Old Cemetery, but walk beyond these features and you will find yourself in a far more modern cemetery area, which is clearly frequently visited by family and friends. This is the newer style lawn cemetery where a compromise has been sought between the needs of relatives and the problems of maintenance. This will be discussed in Part 3.

Modern cemeteries issue rules and guidelines about the size and type of grave and grave marking permitted, in order to ensure that cemeteries are as easy to maintain as possible, whilst at the same time providing the bereaved with a place to visit and connect with their lost loved ones. This is a very difficult balance to strike, and local authorities who find themselves with the costly task of maintaining old cemeteries as well as modern ones, have the unenviable task of finding cost-effective ways of caring for these important sites of both past and present commemoration and memorialization. This is discussed further in Part 5.

Part 2 Final Thoughts

Yellow sandstone headstone of George Hamilton, son of Alexander and Mary, suffering from rather surrealistic de-lamination that looks like melting ice-cream, as well as a colonization of lichen. (Overleigh New Cemetery)

A graveyard is less about a place of the dead than a place of commemoration, the formation of individual, family and collective memories and the ongoing reinvention of ideas about how to deal with death. Those who have gone before us are still part of our lives, still form part of our physical landscape and can contribute to our inner ideas about mortality and the future. It is possible to get to know the dead than it is the living via their gravestones, their epitaphs and their stories. Individually these are interesting but collectively they combine with other buildings and institutions to contribute to our understanding of the Victorian period and changing funerary traditions thereafter. These changing fashions in funerary practice from the mid-19th century to the present day will be discussed in part 3.

Cemeteries have visitors who come to see particular graves, either due to regular tending of the grave and communion with the deceased, or to find a grave as part of genealogical research, or as for general or more formal interest into social history, art history and archaeological interest in death and memory.

Many of these graves, suffering from de-laminating or eroded inscriptions, and the invasion of ivy, as well as fallen headstones, highlight the importance not only of maintenance activities but of recording as many of the details on gravestones as possible in online, freely available databases.

Gothic style memorial to Thomas Ernest Hales, died 1906 aged 69. In the background are obelisks in rose granite, made popular when the antiquities of Egypt were first published

Cemeteries are fascinating places, and although modern sections are certainly rather understated and somber because of the signs of recent loss and sadness, older sections are very positive keepers of social history and human endeavor, reflecting choices and decisions by both the living and the deceased, in a wonderful arboretum of multiple tree species. These grave monuments lend themselves to close inspection and appreciation not just of the materials, shapes and symbols, but of the stories that they capture about past lives and how we learn about a city’s past through both the material and conceptual cues that cemeteries retain. The information on headstones can be a good place to start with an investigation in archives. This type of information gives a sense both of the communal identity of a provincial town, and the individual identities that make up that community. Of course, those who could not afford graves or were buried in communal graves that were the result of epidemics, are lost from this commemoration of the individual.

As before, my many thanks to Christine Kemp (Friends of Overleigh Cemetery) for all her practical help, her encyclopedic knowledge, and for checking over my facts. Any/all mistakes are my own. Do give me a yell if you find any.

I have quadruple-checked for typos etc, but some always get past me, for which my apologies.

References for all five parts are on a separate page on the blog here.

Overleigh Cemetery, Chester #1 – Introduction to its background and establishment

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The Celtic cross style headstone of Robert Walter Russell (d.1909) and his wife Louisa Alma (d.1936) is on the left; the grave of Jane Whitley (d.1912), with its elaborate angel, topped with a cross and provided with a kerb and footstone (which is where the dedication is to be found), is on the right, erected by her husband Captain W.T Whitley, late Royal Artillery, who joined her there in 1936.

I have been to dozens of archaeological and historical burial sites, from prehistory onward, including famous monumental 19th century cemeteries in London, Paris and Havana, but the easiest by far to visit for someone based near Chester are local parish churchyards and the later dedicated Overleigh Old and New Cemeteries built during the Victorian period. Ironically, I know much more about the burial traditions of ancient Egypt than I do about those on my own doorstep. Up until now I have been repairing the gaps in my knowledge by visiting parish churchyards, but Overleigh Cemetery represents a different type of experience altogether, part graveyard and part public green space. Overleigh reflects the growth of urban populations in towns and cities “which massed people on a hitherto unimaginable scale” (Julie Rugg, 2008) and put unmanageable pressure on urban parish churchyards. It also demonstrates both a new idealism in the 19th century, the belief in the development of civic resources for the benefit of the general public, as well as the growing awareness of how disease was spread, the dangers of insanitary conditions, and the need for new approaches to public health. The Victorian cemetery introduced into suburban environments the down-scaled aesthetics of 18th century estate parkland, often with their associated Classical architectural features, made popular by landscape designers like Capability Brown. This touches on the complexities of the Victorian cemetery of which Overleigh was a smaller provincial form albeit clearly influenced by more elaborate examples.

Friends Of Overleigh Cemetery Facebook Page

Before I go any further, many thanks are due to Christine Kemp for her marvellous help when I started this mini-project. It would have taken me at least twice as long without her, probably a lot longer, and I would have made errors that she has put right, so I am in her debt. Chris has contributed 1000s of grave descriptions from this and other local cemeteries to findagrave.com, and is a founder member of the Friends of Overleigh Cemetery.

Where the findagrave.com website has an entry for a grave owner, I have added the hyperlink to the photographs used on this page for anyone who wants to read the inscriptions or find out more.

Overleigh Old Cemetery with its wonderful tree life, part cemetery and part arboretum

There will be five parts to this piece about Overleigh. Part 1 starts with a very brisk and short overview of Chester in the 19th Century and goes on to look at the establishment, in that context, of Overleigh Old Cemetery and Overleigh New Cemetery, followed by a short introduction to the objectives of research activities that can be carried out using cemetery material (discussed more in other parts) and some final comments. At the end it also lists the sources for the entire five-part series, which will be added to as the series is posted.

Part 1: Introduction to the background and the establishment of Overleigh Cemetery
Part 2: The living, the dead and the visitor at Overleigh,
Part 3: Shifting ideas – the move away from monumental cemeteries towards cremations and lawn cemeteries
Part 4: The research potential of cemeteries; and Overleigh case studies
Part 5: The Overleigh Old and New Cemetery today and in the future
—-

Chester in the 19th century

Overleigh Old Cemetery opened in 1850, and the New Cemetery opened in 1879. To put this into some sort of context, here’s a very short gallop through Chester in the mid-19th century.

Chester Tramways Company Horsecar no.4 at Saltney. Source: Tramway Systems of the British Isles

Chester had been connected to the greater canal network in 1736, linking Chester with the Mersey, and was connected to the rail network by 1840, with today’s station opening in 1848. The Grosvenor Bridge opened in 1832, taking the pressure off the Old Dee Bridge. A horse-drawn tram was introduced in 1879 to link the railway station to Chester Castle and the racecourse. This was replaced by an electric service in 1903 after Chester built an electricity plant in 1896, which also allowed the 1817 gas lighting to be replaced. Improved communications brought more prosperity, and from the 1830s to the beginning of the 20th century, Chester had become an affluent town with a growing population. To accommodate this rapidly growing population the city suburbs expanded to the south of the river, with Middle Class suburbs developing at Curzon Park and Queen’s Park, with a new suspension bridge built in 1852 (the current one replaced it in 1923) to connect the latter to the town.

Chester Town Hall of 1869. Photograph by Jeff Buck, CC BY-SA 2.0

Signs of prosperity were everywhere. Commerce in the markets, shops and local trades thrived in the mid 19th century, and the sense of confidence and ambition was reflected in the expansion of the 18th century Bluecoat Hospital School, the building of the new Town Hall of 1869, the restoration of old buildings, and the establishment of new buildings, many in the style of earlier medieval half-timbering, as well as churches, including those for Dissenters. With its extensive retail, its race course, its regatta and its medley of fascinating architecture, Chester was becoming a popular destination for visitors, and a series of hotels were built to support the growing tourist industry.

Although the Industrial Revolution did not revolutionize Chester in the same way that it did in other towns and cities, it left its mark, although in a rather piecemeal fashion. As with most towns of the period it had light industry concentrated around the canal basin, as well as over the river in Saltney, and a declining shipbuilding industry. Industries included new steam mills, a lead works, an anchor and chain works, three oil refineries and a chemical works amongst other enterprises. Craft trades included tailoring, shoe-making, milliners, dressmaking, bookbinders, cabinet makers, jewelers and goldsmiths, amongst others. In both town and suburban houses domestic service was an important source of employment for the less well off, as was gardening. In line with the Victorian interest in civic works and promoting education and health, the Grosvenor Park opened in 1867 and the Grosvenor Museum in 1885.

Louise Rayner’s (1832–1924) painting of Eastgate Street and The Cross looking towards Watergate Street. Source: Wikipedia

Although the face of Chester seen by most people was a gracious attractive and prosperous one, there was also a lot of poverty. For those who were not quite on the breadline, but could not afford expensive accommodation a solution was provided by lodging houses of variable quality and pricing, which were growing in number to cater for both temporary visitors and more long-term residents. Far more troubling, there were also slum areas known as “the courts,” which housed the city’s poor. The St John’s parish became particularly notorious but these too were expanding, extending into the Boughton, Newtown and Hoole areas. As agriculture made increasing use of labour-saving techniques, former agricultural labourers and their families moved to urban centres to find work. At the same time, the appalling Irish Famine of 1845-52 drove starving people out of Ireland, and a large influx of impoverished Irish refugees, including entire families, expanded the poorest quarters of Chester and were a source of considerable concern to the authorities. Although charity and church schools took in some of the poorer children, the most impoverished and vulnerable, sometimes the children of criminals and certainly in danger of becoming criminals themselves, were not at first provided for but the problem was acknowledged and three free schools for impoverished children known as “ragged schools” were built, of which more in Part 4.

According to John Herson there was an economic decline after 1870, during which population numbers fell, and Chester became more focused on its retail and service industries and the development of its tourism. I recommend his chapter in Roger Swift’s Victorian Chester for more information about his discussion of the three phases of Chester’s Victorian past (see Sources at the end).

A solution to overflowing churchyards

Population in Chester and suburbs by year in 19th Century Chester. Source of data: John Herson 1996, Table 1.1, p.14

Polymath and diarist John Evelyn and architect Christopher Wren had both proposed out-of-town cemeteries in the 17th century, but their suggestions had fallen on deaf ears. An exception was the famous Dissenter cemetery at Bunhill Fields, established from a sense of spiritual necessity.

The rising population that lead the living to move to new areas around Chester, was also a problem for churchyards. The condition of Chester’s city churchyards was very poor, in common with other cities and towns throughout the country, and as the population expanded the situation in churchyards became somewhat desperate, and the new cemeteries were a necessity. John Herson’s chapter in Roger Swift’s Victorian England provides a table of population figures for Chester and its suburbs from 1821 to 1911, and this shows that the population was rising rapidly. Rising populations and the concentration of people in towns had lead to parish church cemeteries becoming problematic all over Britain. This was infinitely worse in big-city urban environments where manufacturing industries had become major employers, where the lack of churchyard capacity led to some truly dreadful, squalid scenes representing appalling health risks, but even in a county town like Chester the problem was very real and churchyards there too were struggling to meet demand.

George Alfred Walker’s “Gatherings from Graveyards“

Complaints were growing about the unsanitary condition of full intramural graveyards, and the risks that this represented. Typhoid, typhus, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, measles, influenza and cholera, were all infectious diseases that were common in Victorian England, and the establishment of new graveyards for minimizing risk was becoming increasingly important as the links between health and sanitation were established. Jacqueline Perry says that between 1841 and 1847 the annual average was 700 burials in Chester alone.

Those arguing for a new cemetery in Chester as a response to this problem were able to point to other specialized graveyards in Britain and overseas. Bigger city cemeteries had been established earlier in the 19th century in Paris (in 1804 Père La Chaise was the first municipal cemetery in western Europe), Liverpool (Liverpool Low Hill opened in 1825 and St James’s Cemetery opened in 1829). In 1830 George Carden, after years of campaigning, organized a meeting to discuss how to improve the burial situation in London and Kensal Green opened in 1833, which initiated “The Magnificent Seven” ring of London cemeteries. Glasgow’s remarkable Necropolis followed in 1833.

In 1839 surgeon George Alfred Walker published his Gatherings from Graveyards (including the subtitle And a detail of dangerous and fatal results produced by the unwise and revolting custom of inhuming the dead in midst of the living), which drew uncompromising attention to some of the horrors of churchyards, encouraging burial reform and the wider adoption of the out-of-town cemetery. I have provided a link to an online copy of this book in the Sources, but it is absolutely not for the faint-hearted. Although this trend was challenged by the Church of England, which derived an income from burial fees, the need was acute, and parish churches were compensated for their loss of income. Most of these new cemeteries were commercial, charging for burials and paying dividends to investors from their profits.

Mourning clothes were a major investment in the Victorian funeral ceremonies. Source: Wikipedia

There was also clearly a psychological need for new cemeteries with neatly defined and delineated plots for individuals and families, and the space to commemorate and mourn loved ones. As James Stevens Curl explains: “It could never be said that the Victorians buried their dead without ceremony. Apart from the immediate family, all the distant relatives would be present . . . Friends, business associated, acquaintances would all appear . . . A dozen or sometimes more coaches therefore followed the hearse.” The acts of observance and the rituals associated with death in the Victorian period, and the traditions associated with the bereavement that followed interment were elaborate, encoded and important to Victorian religious beliefs and social conventions. These beliefs and conventions were part of a deeply felt attitude to death and how it should be handled. They were also opportunities to display wealth and status for those who had it. The new landscape-style cemeteries offered the opportunity to carry out these various rituals at each stage of bereavement after loss with dignity and ceremony.

Following the new cemeteries and the success of the concept, cemetery design became a recognized field of endeavor for landscape designers and architects, and the best known cemetery designer, although by no means the first or even the best, was probably John Claudius Loudon, who consulted on a number of projects before publishing his 1843 On the Laying Out, Planting and Managing of Cemeteries, which became an important source of practical advice and creative ideas for many private enterprises. Loudon’s intentions are captured in these two statements from the beginning of his book:

Cemetery design for a hilly location by Thomas Loudon, 1834, showing a similarly sinuous arrangement as Overleigh, but with the building centred at the heart of the cemetery. Source: Loudon 1843

The main object of a burial-ground is, the disposal of the remains of the dead in such a manner as that their decomposition, and return to the earth from which they sprung, shall not prove injurious to the living; either by affecting their health, or shocking their feelings, opinions, or prejudices.

A secondary object is, or ought to be, the improvement of the moral sentiments and general taste of all classes, and more especially of the great masses of society.

The means by which Loudon proposed to address his “secondary object” was by introducing a sense of serenity, providing fresh air and a sense of nature, and encouraging contemplation. At the time disease was thought to be conveyed by “miasmas” or vapours, not entirely unsurprising given how bad cesspits, uncovered drains and overfilled graveyards smelled, and trees were thought to assist with the absorption of miasmas, helping to promote good health and prevent the spread of disease. Often his designs were based on a grid, like the 1879 Overleigh New Cemetery, but his above design for cemeteries on hills and slopes, like the Overleigh Old Cemetery was more forgiving.

Sculptural monument on a plinth dedicated to land agent and surveyor Henry Shaw Whalley, d.1904

After the 1850s commercial cemeteries were not the standard way of establishing new cemeteries. The Metropolitan Interments Act allowed for burial grounds to be purchased by a civic authorities, which was itself replaced by a new Act of Parliament in 1852 when Burial Boards were established, after which publicly funded cemeteries became the norm.

One of the results of the new cemeteries, with individual plots dedicated to single individuals or to families, was that graves became part of the domestic sphere of families, part of their personal real estate. In an elaborate cemetery this might include personal family mausolea and vaults, but at a more modest provincial cemetery like Overleigh, it usually consisted of a sculptural element or a headstone with a kerb and sometimes a footstone, although at Overleigh footstones are unusual (all the elements are in the grave shown at the top of the page, on the right). This created a clearly defined space in which family and friends could commemorate their dead with gifts of flowers and sometimes additional memorabilia. The main sculpture or headstone, usually of stone but occasionally of metal, was itself a medium for expression, combining shapes, symbolic and sentimental imagery, and text to express ideas about both the dead and their relationship to the living. The kerbs were usually visited and the dead were gifted fresh flowers or immortelles (more permanent artificial flowers presented in suitable vessels or frames, sometimes under a glass dome).

Overleigh Old Cemetery

Grosvenor Bridge entrance to Overleigh Old Cemetery

Overleigh Old Cemetery, very convenient for Chester residents without intruding on the town itself, lies just across the Grosvenor Bridge, its northern border running along the south bank of the river Dee. It has gateways from the Grosvenor Bridge, Overleigh Road and River Lane which converge on the monument of, cenotaph to William Makepeace Thackeray, a Chester doctor and benefactor. Although this is the oldest of the two halves of the cemetery, it is still in use today for new cremation memorials in its maze-like hedged memorial area (actually designed to look like ripples on the lake that once occupied the space), as well as an enclosed area for interments and cremated ashes of babies, which is inevitably particularly sorrowful. Overleigh Old Cemetery is often used as a short-cut from the Grosvenor Bridge to the walkway along the Dee, and presumably as its designer Thomas Penson originally intended, always has the feeling of a public park as much as a cemetery, although up until late August 2024, there has been nowhere to sit. A bench supplied by the Friends of Overleigh Cemetery has helped to bring the cemetery further into the public domain.

First page of the The Chester Cemetery Act in 1848

The cemetery was established by The Chester Cemetery Act in 1848. Chester’s City Surveyor, Mr Whally had held a public inquiry at the Town Hall to discuss the urgent need of a new extramural cemetery. Overleigh was established by a private company named the Chester General Cemetery Company, which was formed by an Act of Parliament on 22nd July 1848. According to Historic England, the cemetery site was owned by the Marquis of Westminster who exchanged it for a shareholding in the company. The cost of the cemetery was estimated at £5000 but the company blew its budget and in 1849 work was forced to stop for seven months until new shareholders could be found. The thinking behind it was, much like the Grosvenor Park and the museum, as much a matter of civic pride as it was a practicality. However, unlike the park or the museum, the cemetery was intended to turn a profit, and was essentially a retail operation, selling or renting burial plots, paying for its own maintenance and offering a return on shareholder investment, and providing a valuable service to residents at the same time.

Crypt Chambers, Eastgate Street. Source: Wikipedia

Overleigh Old Cemetery was designed by Thomas Mainwaring Penson (1818–1864), the surveyor and architect responsible for, amongst other Chester buildings, the 1858 Crypt Chambers and the 1868 Grosvenor Hotel, both on Eastgate Street. The original layout of Overleigh Old Cemetery is preserved in an engraving from sometime after it opened, shown below, probably in the later 1850s.

Following the model already established in Paris, Belfast, Glasgow, Liverpool and London, this was a garden- or landscape-type cemetery, planned to emulate a large garden or small park. When compared with some of the vast architectural entrances to the great Victorian cemeteries of Liverpool, Glasgow, London and elsewhere (see, for example, Kensal Green or, in a different style, the Glasgow Necropolis) the gates at Overleigh are a mere nod to a transitional zone between the busy outside world and the quiet necropolis within, with modest pillars and iron gates, shown above. The buildings that were once just inside each gate, the entrance lodges, will have given more of sense of entry and exit than the entrances retain today. Something of that effect can be seen over the road at Overleigh New Cemetery where the lodge building survives. The funeral cortege would stop here to be formally received and recorded before proceeding to the burial site.

Overleigh Cemetery. Source: Wikipedia

The cemetery was landscaped with sinuous wide driveways winding down the hill towards a lake, laid out over an area of some 12 acres. In the engraving to the right there are six buildings, none of which survive today. I have no information about why they were taken down, but assume that they had fallen out of use and were becoming a problem to maintain. Two of them are lodges at the Grosvenor Bridge and River Lane gates of the cemetery, used by cemetery superintendents and officials, and housing cemetery records. One of the lodges was apparently removed in 1967. Chris has a plan of the cemetery dating to 1875 that identifies the church-like buildings at the top and the one by the lake as mortuary chapels (the one by the lake was for Dissenters), whilst the building behind the temple-style monument to Robert Turner was the Chaplain’s house. It may have had rather good views over the bridge and the river. The tiny building at centre left was probably a grounds-man’s hut, used for storing tools.

The headstone of Harriett Garner (d.1905) and other family members. Harriett was a suicide, but because the inquest found her to be temporarily insane, and therefore innocent of crime, she was allowed to be buried in a consecrated grave

The 1847 Cemeteries Clause Act (section 36) stated that a new cemetery contain both consecrated and unconsecrated land and there were usually two chapels, one Anglican and one for Dissenters. The provision for non-Anglican graves had become particularly important because of the Nonconformist movement, which had grown from strength to strength. Non-denominational chapels of rest, where the deceased could be laid before interment, were a characteristic feature of the new cemeteries. The idea of including unconsecrated land was to ensure that a cemetery should exclude no-one, including suicides who were declared sane at the time of their deaths (those judged to be insane when they committed suicide were considered to be innocent), unbaptized children and those of non-Anglican religions. Chris showed me where, indicated by marker stones, there is a section for Roman Catholics and another for Dissenters, whilst pauper graves, some of which surprisingly have headstones, are dotted throughout the cemetery. For those short of funds, there were burial club schemes, a little like life assurance today, where people could pay in a regular amount to save up for a proper ceremony and gravestone.

Plantings to give the garden cemetery its Arcadian feel included both deciduous and evergreen trees. The use of deciduous trees was counter to Loudon’s advice, as in his view they grew too fast, became too big, dropped leaves that had to be cleared up, and looked ugly with bare branches in the winter, but at Overleigh the combination provides a marvelous mixture of colours, textures and shapes for most of the year. The trees are worth a study in their own right, including some very unusual specimen varieties. The now truly massive and splendid redwoods and traditional yew trees, both of them evergreen and long-lasting, often represent the hope for eternal life, and the sheer variety of specimen deciduous trees is remarkable and if anyone out there happens to be a tree expert and would like to help me out with some identifications, I would be grateful!

The William Thackeray cenotaph that sits at the conjunction of the cemetery drives. A huge beech tree stands behind it, and in front of it is a big horse chestnut; the trees in Overleigh are one of its most appealing features

The lake was eventually filled in, a very nice feature but presumably something of a problem to maintain and probably a risk to children and of course was using up land that could be used for more graves. Partially in its place is a cremation area made of concentric hedging to emulate the ripples on the former lake. The cremation memorial will be discussed in part 3. The rustic bridge to the right of the lake on the engraving remains in situ, although the land either side of it is being used as a dumping ground for clearance works, which will eventually biodegrade and build up the soil level around the arch bases, which is a real shame.

The William Thackeray monument, at the confluence of the Old Cemetery drives has already been mentioned, but in the engraving above, the tall, slender temple-style monument shown at top right of the image, which commemorated brewer and wine merchant Robert Turner, who was Sheriff of Chester in 1848. The plinth now sits directly over the base, with the fallen pillars at its side. The engravings are on the floor of the base, which would once have been visible by walking into the monument and looking down, one for Robert Turner and one for his wife, which are shown on the findagrave.com website (by Chris Kemp). There’s a certain amount of irony in its demise, as over the course of the Victorian period the brewery industry also went into a state of terminal decline. Work was done by Blackwells Stonecraft to prevent it sliding down the slope in 2022.

Robert Turner’s grave (d.1852) as it now appears in the oldest part of Overleigh Old Cemetery. Christine Kemp has posted a fascinating photograph of it under repair in 2022 on the findagrave website at https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/195750339/robert_hugh-turner/photo#view-photo=247132692

The pillars at the base of the monument, which once formed the temple

Overleigh New Cemetery

Overleigh New Cemetery, with the Greek Orthodox church, formerly a cemetery chapel, in the background

Overleigh New Cemetery, established in 1879, lies to the south of the Old Cemetery, with the Duke’s Drive running along its southern boundary, accessible via its entrance on Overleigh Road, opposite the entrance to the Old Cemetery, which gives some sense of continuity, and this too is still in use. Overleigh New Cemetery, established in 1879, is a more obviously lower budget incarnation, all on the flat, its driveways laid out on a grid that divides the cemetery into raised rectangles. Loudon’s book had layouts very like this in his 1843 book, although they weren’t amongst his more imaginative designs. They did, however, have the essential idea that Loudon proposed of trees and shrubs to create a healthy and contemplative experience, and these are largely missing from Overleigh New Cemetery, except around the very edges. By virtue of the fact that it does not serve as a route to anywhere else, and is essentially a cul-de-sac, it is more peaceful than the Old Cemetery but has less of a feeling of community.

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The section of Overleigh New Cemetery dedicated to the Commonwealth War Grave commission memorials

There is a small and beautifully maintained section dedicated to Commonwealth War Grave Commission graves, and managed by the Commonwealth War Grave Commission itself, is an important reminder of the sacrifices that were made, although graves dedicated to those who lost their lives in combat are also dotted through both the Old and New cemeteries. These are planted with evergreen and flowering shrubs, and carry just the right balance of dignity, solemnity and floral tribute. It was decided, when they were originally designed that there should be no distinction between graves of different rank so the headstones are all made according to a standardized template, differentiated by the regimental crest and or badge, the ranks and of course the names of the deceased.

One of the chapels in Overleigh New Cemetery, a Designated Heritage Asset in the Cheshire West and Cheshire “Chester Characterisation Study”

There are four buildings in the New Overleigh Cemetery. The largest is the West Chapel, now Saint Barbara’s Orthodox Church. Historic England states that it was built in the style of John Douglas in the early 20th Century. Chester Council made it available to the Greek Orthodox church in the 1980s and it opened its doors to congregations in 1987. It attracts a congregation from a very wide area and prevents the site feeling entirely field-like. Also assisting in this sense of place rather than space is a lodge that sits near the Overleigh Road entrance but is now apparently used as a private residence. The small chapel, now used as a base for cemetery workers, is a lovely little thing with a few nice decorative features inside and out and some understated stained glass consisting of small square panels in quiet colours. It was nicely thought through when it was built, and is now a Designated Heritage Asset.

The other building, recently fenced off presumably due to the sorry state of repair, making it look like a complete eyesore, is the former grave-digger’s hut, a charming brick-built building, described as “an important historical feature” in the Handbridge Neighbourhood Plan. It is clearly in urgent need of help.

The grave-diggers’ hut, fenced off.

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Headstone of Frederick Coplestone, d.1932 and members of his family by sculptor Eric Gill, showing St Francis of Assisi (Grade 2* listed)

When you first enter the New Cemetery, the initial impression given by the repeated lines of headstones is that the cemetery is less obviously interesting than the variety of shapes and sizes over the road. This is, however, partly an illusion caused by the grid-like horizontal layout. Closer inspection of the older sections, nearest to Overleigh Road, demonstrates that these too offer an enormous amount of variety that provides insights into personal preferences and choices, and certain very specific affiliations. The graves here, many of them more recent than those at the Old Cemetery, offer a rather different sense of style and character, of different experiments with more personalized design and symbol as new trends emerged. There are, for example, some interesting Art Nouveau and Art Deco examples that I have not noticed in the Old Cemetery.—-

As you head to the extremities furthest from the road, you will see less of these mainly earlier 20th century monuments and find yourself confronted with the more modern emblems of British commemoration of the dead. These are generally smaller and plainer, often with flowers or other memorabilia, and reflect a changing attitude to memorializing the dead. The further on you go, the more you find yourself in the sort of “lawn cemetery” concept that is becoming increasingly popular for public cemeteries, with small memorials. Although this is much less aesthetically engaging than the older cemeteries, it does reflect an interesting change in mortuary practices that will be discussed further in parts 4 and 5.

Looking towards the far end of Overleigh New Cemetery, where new graves are still added

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Family Research

Overleigh Old Cemetery

It does not take a great deal of imagination to see that a cemetery like Overleigh contains an enormous amount of information about people who have lived and died in and near Chester. Most of this information comes from words on gravestones, although some general comments can be made about the imagery employed and the design of the grave monuments themselves. There is as much fashion as there is tradition, all mingled together. Classical elements, Gothic Revival, Art Deco, Art Nouveau are all here, and in Overleigh New Cemetery the differences between Anglican and Roman Catholic graves are often particularly striking. One way of learning more about the cemetery as a whole is by taking the Stories in Stone walking tour with one of Chester’s excellent Green Badge Guides, which takes visitors on a tour of the main features and some particularly interesting graves.

Grave of William Pinches (d.1929), Overleigh New Cemetery

The most common motivation for conducting research at cemeteries is to find the grave of an ancestor or loved one, whilst others find real interest in the individual stories told by gravestones via design, symbol and inscription. Although Overleigh is so large that it may all seem like a challenge to make sense of it all, if you know the name of the grave’s owner, the findagrave.com website is an excellent database containing details of the grave and its owner, where known, together with any interesting stories that might be connected with either the grave or the owner. Chris Kemp alone has been responsible for researching and adding literally thousands of graves in Overleigh and elsewhere in the Chester area since she began to record them over 12 years ago. There are other online databases that do something similar, but findagrave.com is probably the most accessible resource for Overleigh. Note that findagrave.com divides the cemetery into the Old Cemetery and the New Cemetery for search purposes. Chris points out that until 1879 when the Overleigh New Cemetery was built, the Overleigh Old Cemetery was at that time known and referred to in documents as the “new cemetery.”

The Cheshire Archives and Local Studies service has some excellent online resources, and as well as their Overleigh Cemetery 1850-1950 database (it’s not the most user-friendly interface, so do watch the video about how to use it here), there are many other sources of local information about individuals, institutions and business in their online Archive Collections, including parish records, the electoral register, business directories, court sessions and poor law and workhouse records.

Amongst many other activities, Chris Kemp receives emails from people looking for graves from outside the area, and sometimes overseas, and tracks down the graves for them, a valuable and time-consuming task, as she receives at least half a dozen every week, which she hunts down every Saturday, and which demonstrate how much the cemetery, on both sides of the road, continues to contribute to people’s investigations of their past and their sense of a link with their family history.
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Part 1 Final Comments

Many of the first out-of-town cemeteries were conceived of as memorial parklands that were designed to balance the natural and the man-made, to harmonize different needs and priorities. Although at Overleigh each of the two halves of the cemetery has a different personality, both combine monument and commemoration within a designed space where the dead and the living can peacefully coexist. The graves themselves, some of them impressive, others very modest, never reach the heady heights of London’s “Magnificent Seven” with their extravagant mausolea and world-famous names, but in the details, the variations and subtleties, and of course in the engravings, there is a very real sense for visitors of mingling with the lives of Chester residents and getting to know something about the population at large.

Detail from the headstone of Margaret Roberts (d.1900), Overleigh Old Cemetery

The gravestone is, just as much as items given pride of place in the home and passed between generations, both an object and a commodity. It was manufactured, chosen, customized, purchased and curated. Even within its own funerary landscape, the funerary monument had a role within the home, in that it formed part of a personal experience of the world, a form of mental mapping that includes places beyond the front door but are endowed with a personal value. They become part of a much wider family and social landscape than their physical location in a cemetery. This means that there is a social and cultural history component to be researched in large cemeteries that offers a different type of record from documentary resources. I will talk more about the role of cemetery research in social and cultural history in Part 4.

Overleigh Old Cemetery

Overleigh is a place where relatives can visit their loved ones or carry out genealogical research into their ancestors and where social history can be investigated. At the same time it needs to be respected and to be recognized as a vulnerable piece of local heritage. One of the most important questions about any monument or object is what happens when it is no longer valuable to someone, when the useful life for which it was intended comes to an end. At this point, so many bad decisions have been made in Britain about the value of buildings and objects to social and cultural history, and there is a need to ensure that cemeteries like Overleigh continue to both support and inform the living. This will be discussed further in part 5.

Part 2, only part-written at the moment, will look at how the living and the deceased are both incorporated into a common language of the necropolis, and how gravestones are used to express complex ideas about the dead.
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With sincere thanks again to Christine Kemp for giving me a guided tour of both parts of Overleigh Cemetery at the beginning of August 2024, and then guiding me to find specific graves and helping me to understand different aspects of the cemeteries when I met her again at the end of August, and for offering ongoing help. In this and the following parts, she has been a splendid source of information, fact-checking and guidance. Any errors are, of course, all my own work!

Sources:

Charles Edward Armitage, d.1930, Overleigh New Cemetery

The books and papers and websites used in all the parts are listed in their own page. Splitting them up over the various parts does not make much sense because so many of them are used time and time again and listing the sources in one place makes it easier for anyone wanting to print off the full list.

The list of references for this post has become ridiculously long, so instead of listing them here on the page I have copied them onto their own page on the blog at
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/walking/overleigh/

The rustic bridge that was part of the original Penson design

Shocklach motte and bailey castle(s) at Castletown

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Two sites with one name

Shocklach East is on private land, but its north side can be viewed from the north over a short fence. The image has been stitched together from three photographs, hence the slightly odd appearance.

The name Castletown seems rather glamourous for what today is a wholly rural, agricultural landscape. Castletown is located south of Crewe-by-Farndon and north of the village of Shocklach and west of the Castletown Farm on a peaceful country road. On the Ordnance Survey map, which I was studying when working on the post about the 1854 Chester to Worthenbury toll road, there are some interesting details that merited further investigation. Where the small Castletown bridge crosses a small stream, that eventually flows into the Dee, there are two fairly large sites shown flanking the road. Collectively, even though they are near to Castletown, they are known as Shocklach Castle, although they actually make up two separate castle sites.

Map showing the sites at Shocklach either side of the Crewe-by-Farndon road as it crosses Castletown Bridge. Source: Public Map Viewer

A visit to the two-part site marked on the map means looking from the side of the road. The site is not on a public footpath but is very close to the road, and some of the earthworks are clearly visible. As you can see on the above map, the site to the west can be seen from the Crewe to Shocklach road, whereas the one on the other side of the road is best seen from the lane that heads west to Castletown Farm. For the purposes of this post, I have referred to these sites as Shocklach East and Shocklach West.

Click to see a bigger image. The location of the Castletown / Shocklach mottes, south of Crewe by Farndon and to the north of Shocklach. Source: Public Map Viewer

The Shocklach site is a scheduled monument, which means that it is protected by the state. It is recorded as Shocklach Motte and Bailey Castle by the government quango responsible for scheduled archaeological and historic monuments, Historic England. Its listing code is 1012620, and it was first scheduled in November 1926. The listing covers both Shocklach East and West. It is well worth repeating Historic England‘s “Reasons for Designation:”

Shocklach Castle is of particular importance as one of a group of early post-Conquest (c.1100) mottes forming a defensive system aimed at curbing constant Welsh raids on the rich farming areas of south Cheshire. Additionally the site lies within an area containing the most important concentration of medieval monuments in Cheshire. These monuments include two shrunken medieval hamlets, a defended green lane, a Norman chapel, well preserved ridge and furrow, a ford across the River Dee, and a complex of communally owned watermeadows. The monument is situated in a dingle thought to have been one of the ancient trackways utilised by the Welsh in their frequent raids into southern Cheshire.

It is difficult to imagine this sleepy road and its flanking fields having a strong military presence. From the early 12th century onwards, however, the motte and bailey site sat on the edge of a settlement whose people were centred on successful economic activities including cultivation and probably livestock management, albeit fearful of attack from Wales.

Archaeological investigation at Shocklach West during the 1980s by the University of Chester (in those days called University College Chester) revealed a lot more than can be seen today. As above, the site consists of two sets of earthworks, one to the west of the road, covered in trees, and one to the east, which is free of vegetation. The two sites are scheduled together under one registration number, but it should not be forgotten that they are two separate entities, each of which needs to be understood in its own right. Rachel Swallow, who excavated the site, talks about the confusion caused by the presence of two separate entities, one each side of the road:

There is a general, and historic, confusion about the function and purpose of the two monuments at Castletown. The Ordnance Survey (OS) 25 inch maps of 1879 and 1911 clearly mark the monument to the east as a ‘castle’ and ‘moat’, with that to the west of Castletown Bridge as a ‘moat’. The survey of 1964 reinterprets the mound to the west as a ‘motte’, with the earthworks 30 metres to the east marked as a ‘moat’, but not as the site of a castle. In the early nineteenth century, Ormerod stated that the earthworks to the east appear unconnected with those he seemed to believe were of the Norman fortress to the west.

In the discussion below, the two will be dealt with separately first, before looking at how they might related to one another, but first a little look at what motte and bailey castles actually are.

Background – what is a motte and bailey castle?

Miniature from illuminated Chronicle of Matthew Paris (1236-1259), from BL MS Cotton Claudius D. vi, f.9, showing Henry I of England enthroned. Held and digitised by the British Library. Source: Wikipedia

Motte castles are medieval fortifications introduced into Britain by the Normans, made up of a defensive structure built on an artificial mound. The bailey was a small group of buildings fenced and sometimes moated, attached to and protected by the motte castle. By the time that the Shocklach motte and bailey castle was built, either towards the end of the reign of William the Conqueror or at the beginning of the reign of Henry I, there were political and territorial disputes, particularly within Wales and along the Welsh-English borders. One of the manifestations of this ongoing disruption was frequent cross-border raids to secure territories and resources.

Armed dispute over territory and resources has a long heritage in Britain. From the mid 4thmillennium BC there are the first signs of violence related to competition for resources, and it is likely that livestock raiding was an ongoing problem from that point forward. It has been suggested, for example, that protection of livestock and of grain, as well as of people, could have been a primary role of fortified Iron Age hillforts.

When William the Conqueror arrived in 1066, he began to replace the existing aristocracy with those that he had brought with him, men that he could trust to support him to take control and enforce peace. English names were quickly replaced by Norman ones in records and by Domesday, merely 20 years after the conquest, only 8 percent of landholdings were held in English names. The Normans built castles to help them to govern and to demonstrate their power. Castles, initially turf and timber, sprang up everywhere, later replaced by bigger stone structures. As Crane observes: “early Norman castles had more in common with Roman marching forts than with tribal hillforts. They could be built with astonishing speed, they were virtually impregnable and their construction had more to di with military expediency than with cultural bonding.”

Dorling Kindersley reconstruction of a small motte and bailey castle showing the main features. Fortifications could be very small. Source: Dorling Kindersley Find Out website.

In a motte and bailey arrangement a fortification sits on a natural or artificial mound with an accompanying settlement in a walled/fenced area at its foot, sometimes surrounded by a moat or ditch. Where the mound was specially built, it could be made of earth, rubble, or both. A palisade, or fortified fence, surrounded the apex of the mound, on which some sort of tall fortified structure was built, providing views over the surrounding countryside to watch for any oncoming attack. Most are now covered in grass and sometimes trees. Where a bailey is also present a palisaded enclosure at the base of the motte, and connected to it, often contained buildings for people, livestock, and grain and water storage, and may surrounded by a bank as well. These have often vanished from sight today. Where water was locally available, these defences could also include moats (which in the soggy Cheshire area, might have doubled up as useful drainage ditches).

Cardiff Castle’s shell keep. Source: Wikipedia

Motte and bailey castles are found in all areas where human population is found, including towns, villages and rural areas. Although they are generally characterized as being located on high ground, in good strategic positions that are highly visible from the surrounding area, this is more difficult to arrange on the flat expanses and floodplains of Cheshire. Historic England says that there are over 600 motte castles and motte-and-bailey castles are recorded in England, of which around 100-150 are motte castles without accompany baileys.

Although the best known examples were multi-purpose bases combining the functions of elite residences, administrative centres, strongholds for the protection of economic resources and the material objects that made up personal wealth, and, when needed, a garrison for military activity, there are many much smaller versions, particularly in rural areas, that worked as secondary support to bigger castles and served mainly as watch-posts with small garrisons attached. Ruined sites and modern artistic reconstructions based on excavations indicate that these might be very modest affairs, with a motte might support a fortification that was little more than an elaborate, defendable shed overlooking a small enclosed gathering of buildings into which people and livestock could retreat, as the excellent reconstruction above from the Dorling Kindersley Find Out website suggests. They became more elaborate as time went on, evolving into the shell keep, the successor to the the motte and bailey castle. An example is the shell keep on a motte at Cardiff Castle, shown above the left, which shows how truly impressive they could become.

The Castle Sites

Aerial view of Shocklach East in the early 1980s the shadows highlighting some of the earthworks, together with ridge and furrow fields. Source: Williams, R. 1983, plate 2, page 60

The earliest motte and bailey site at Castletown, known as the Shocklach castle, is thought to have been originally built by the Barons of Malpas sometime around 1100, the year in which Henry I acceded to the English throne, in a co-ordinated effort initiated by William the Conqueror and built on by William Rufus to demonstrate English power and to protect the region from frequent Welsh raids. In the early Medieval period, Malpas, Shocklach and Castletown lay in Anglo-Saxon Mercia, but after the Conquest they quickly came under the control of Norman Chester.

The names and lives of the individual barons at this time are by no means clear, and the line of succession is particularly confusing. Cotgreave’s 2008 research has ruled out a number of earlier proposals, but in spite of his efforts he has been unable to provide a definitive story of the 12th-13th Century Barons of Malpas. The barony of Malpas had covered a huge chunk of southern Cheshire at Domesday in 1086, when it was under the lordship of Robert fitzHugh, and consisted of some 43 townships, but it was divided into two halves (moieties) at some point after Domesday, possibly due to the lack of descendent in the direct line. Part of the barony was apparently granted to Gruffydd ab Owain at around the time that Shocklach was built, potentially “one of the Welshmen on whom Henry I lavished grants in 1102 as bribes for support against the early of Shrewsbury.” Redistribution of baronial lands was common when kings rewarded loyalty with property. However, the land seems to have then passed into the hands of two other families, the Patrics and the Belwards. For anyone wanting to follow the story further, see Cotgreave’s paper (in Sources, below).

Distribution of castle sites under the control of Chester. Source: Swallow 2013-14.

Although Shocklach was held by the Malpas manor, it was occupied by families, who owed service to Malpas. Rachel Swallow, who excavated Shocklach West, describes how between 1208 and 1229, it was granted to David de Malpas (1185-1252) whose daughter was married to Rhodri ap Gruffudd of Gwynedd (c.1230-1315), probably a diplomatic alliance to reduce hostilities between Cheshire and Gwynedd. He apparently had no right to his wife’s lands and Shocklach passed to new families (Sutton and St Pierre) as moieties (i.e. the land was halved for sharing).

Whichever family built the first Shocklach motte-and-bailey castle, it was one of a number built along either side of the river Dee to protect English farms and resources against the Welsh. Shocklach was only one location in a string of defensive sites. Looking at the local Ordnance Survey maps, there are motte and bailey castles and, often separately, moats all around this area. The map above, from Rachel Swallow’s excavation report, shows the distribution of all the local ones, forming, depending on how you look at it, either two very rough lines north to south (running either side of the River Dee) or one zig-zagging line that spans and incorporates the Dee.

Whatever else we take away from the artists’ motte-and-bailey reconstructions, like the Dorling Kindersley one above, when we consider the sheer volume of these structures on OS maps of the area, the overall impression is that defence of even small settlements was an everyday component of life, made particularly important by proximity to the Anglo-Welsh border.

Shocklach East

Shocklach East. Source: Swallow 2013-14

Shocklach East is most clearly visible from the lane that leads to Castletown Farm. It consists of a D-shaped moat or ditch (which is now filled with trees and shrubs) that protected a motte, which remains free of tree cover. The motte-and-bailey earthworks to the east at Shocklach are heavily eroded but are nontheless better preserved than those to the west, on the other hand, are larger and lower than those to the west,

The motte is in the southeast ern section of the site and is today c.4-5m high (measured from the base of the ditch). This is not visible from the road. It is oval-shaped, and surrounded by a low bank.

The ditch is on three sides, occasionally referred to as a moat, with a causeway that gives access to the main enclosure on the northeastern side.

Swallow says that the D-shaped bailey to the south is typical of the area, with kidney-shaped bailey and similar to that of Pulford castle. It measures c. 70 x 78m internally, and it too is surrounded partially by a ditch to the north a by a stream valley to the south. Suring the survey, it was recorded that the ditch was up to 2.7m deep. Although now dry, the ditch would have been joined to the stream to form a small moat.

This motte and bailey castle was not physically attached to the Shocklach West site, which is a full 30m away.

Shocklach West

Behind this dense hedge is Shocklach West. I did my best to lean through the mass, but absolutely nothing was visible through the wilderness of vegetation.

The Shocklach West motte has not been excavated and, indeed, it would be difficult to see how it could be done efficiently. It is completely hidden from view by trees that have been established over large section of the land, and the roots will be playing havoc with the underlying contexts, rearranging any structural remains and moving around objects. I did my absolute best to get some sort of view through the shrubs, but there is nothing at all visible at the time of writing (mid-September) due to the dense tangle of shrubs and weeds around the trees. A return visit in winter after the leaves have fallen and the weeds have died down may reveal more of the outline of the motte.

This view, taken from near to Shocklach West, shows the sort of view that the structure on the top of the motte would have had.

Like most rural motte and bailey castles, only the most labour-intensive features have survived. The motte is around 5-6m high, which is quite sizeable after centuries of erosive forces, and there are remains of a silted ditch on south, southwest and eastern sides, beyond which there is an outer bank. On the north and west sides, the bend in the stream forms another line of defence. The size is consistent with other motte and bailey sites in the Welsh Marshes dating from the 11th and 12th centuries, spanning both Saxon and Norman periods.

The site is located on a hill with superb views over the Dee valley to the west with the Welsh foothills in the distance, and across fields to the east.

Another view taken from near to Shocklach West, showing the sort of view that the structure on the top of the motte would have had, across the surrounding woodland towards the Welsh foothills.

Two Castles, two stories?

Both castles benefitted from a potable water source provided by the stream, and may have been positioned partly in relation to the road that passed between them. Both were located on good agricultural land, indicating that they had something to protect, and were fairly evenly spaced from other castles that dotted the Dee valley. Medieval hamlets in the Castletown area may have been served by one or both of the castles.

View from Castletown to the east

Swallow offers a number of suggestions for why two castles were required so close together, which take into account that no excavations have taken place at one site, and little dating material was found at the other, making it uncertain if the two sites were precisely contemporaneous or if one preceded the other. Here are some of the options that she discusses:

The castles could have been used together to protect the road that passed between them, a major route between north and south along the border.
After the paired mottes were built contemporaneously, a bailey might have been added to the east later, in a lower position that was strategically less valuable than the motte to the west. Some objects found at the site lend support to this interpretation, as does the fact that the eastern bailey seems to post-date some medieval ridge and furrow fields.
The pair has similarities to another pair of mottes in East Chelborough, Dorset, where a second motte replaces the first.
Documentary sources refer to dual lordship and moieties, and it is possible that the monuments were held by different interests, perhaps representing Caldecott and Shocklach. Swallow suggests, for example, that the motte to the west could like within Church Shocklach township, rather than Caldecott or Castletown.
A toll gate recorded in the route between the two sites suggests that this was a popular route for travellers and traders. Twin castles, or an earlier and later castle may have been established to ensure that territories on either side of the road both benefited from toll income. Although the site may have been established initially for military purposes, commercial interests may have become important too.

See Swallow’s paper, which is available online, for more details.

Contemporary sites at Castletown

There are other sites in the Castletown area near Shocklach East and West, which are also scheduled.

The first consists of the remains of a village or large hamlet, some farm buildings and a ridge and furrow field system. Like the two castles, these have been included under one listing by Historic England, with the identification number 1016588. These include at least six tofts (house platforms) and crofts (small farming enclosures) that make up the remains of hamlets to the north and south of Castletown Farm. As well as the surviving components of buildings there are visible remains of ridge and furrow cultivation that lie to the east of the hamlets. Although these remains are divided, this is only because the later Castletown Farm was built over other parts of the former settlement.

Later history of Castletown

Swallow mentions that Castletown Bridge, which carries the road across the stream between the two castles, “was probably the site of the medieval toll gate, catching people and animals entering Cheshire from Wales to the south and west, as Shocklach castle guarded the only road into Cheshire at this point.” Documentation suggests that a toll gate was present there
from at least 1290. Swallow suggests that Shocklach castle had a defensive function until at least the latter part of the fourteenth century and probably became the site of a fortified manor house, mentioned in 1499, when the notorious judge Lord Dudley claimed rights to Shocklach, “and to have a toll for himself and William Brereton.” Passing into the hands of the the Breretons, it then passed to the Hills and the Drakes.

Conclusion

Although today Shocklach sits in a peaceful area that consists mainly of farms and large fields divided by hedgerows, it is clear that from the early 12th Century, the twin mottes at Shocklach were important components in a wide line motte-and-bailey castles that made up much of the defence of the border between England and Wales. Then too there were small hamlets and farms. Although these lay on territory that was under dispute and where livestock and stored cereals may have been seen as easy pickings, they were supported by the presence of the castles. Other nearby sites that are relevant are a Medieval field system at Castletown Farm and the local Shocklach Church, which retains a Norman arch. The latter will be discussed on another post when I can gain access to the interior. Between them these and other Medieval sites along the Dee valley the Castletown sites preserve part of the story of life along the Welsh-Cheshire border at this time.

Visiting:
You can pull over on the edge of the relatively quiet road (pull well over in case of agricultural vehicles), but the site, on both sides of the road, is on private property so you cannot actually walk on or around the site. You can only view it from the roads. Before leaf-fall, Shocklach West is completely hidden by vegetation, but the north side of Shocklach East can be seen over a short fence. I wouldn’t recommend it for a walk, because it is not on a public footpath, there is no pavement, the verges, where available, are narrow and uneven and the road is very bendy and rather narrow, not ideal for avoiding any traffic, most of which travels at some speed.

Sources:

Books and papers:

Cotgreave, P. 2008. The Barony of Malpas in the twelfth century. Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (2008), 157, (1), 1–32.
www.hslc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/157-2-Cotgreave.pdf

Reynolds, S. and White, G. 1997-98. A Survey of Pulford Castle. Chester History XXXVII, p.23-25

Pryor, F. 2010. The Making of the British Landscape. How We Have Transformed the Land, from Prehistory to Today. Allen Lane

Swallow, R. 2013-14. Two For One: the Archaeological Survey of Shocklach, Castle, Cheshire. Cheshire History Journal, No.53, 2013-4
https://www.academia.edu/4577267/Two_for_One_The_Archaeological_Survey_of_Shocklach_Castle_Cheshire_in_Cheshire_History_Journal_No_53_2013_4_Cheshire_Local_History_Association_2013_

Williams, R. 1983. Church Shocklach, Castletown: the “moated” site. Cheshire Archaeological Bulletin 9, p.59–60
http://www.cheshirearchaeology.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/CAB-Vol-9.pdf

Williams, R. 1983. Castletown. A Deserted Hamlet? Cheshire Archaeological Bulletin 9, p.61
http://www.cheshirearchaeology.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/CAB-Vol-9.pdf

Websites:

Ancient and Scheduled Monuments

https://ancientmonuments.uk/114798-medieval-settlement-and-part-of-field-system-at-castletown-farm-shocklach-oviatt-and-district

Historic England
Shocklach motte and bailey castle, list entry 1012620
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1012620
Medieval settlement and part of field system at Castletown Farm
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1016588
Church of St Edith
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1228322

Archaeology and Metal Detecting Magazine
Shocklach: Its History and Archaeology. By Dave Sadler 5th September 2021
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Churton residents in 19th and early 20th Century directories

Cowdroy’s Directory of Cheshire 1789

N/A. Churton (Churton by Aldford / Churton by Farndon) is not included. Nor are Aldford or Farndon.

It is, however, an utterly fascinating read it its own right, which as usual contains a history of Cheshire (for f read s): “THE magnitude and importance of this county will not be difputed, when the reader is told that its circumference is more than ‘200’ miles: To give an idea of its form, Speed has not unaptly compared it to the right wing of an eagle, ftretched forth from the furtheft point of Wirral hundred, and touching, with her firft feather, upon the confines of Yorkfhjre. – In the unhappy days of civil contention when England felt all the: horrors; of internefine feuds and domestic warfare (in the garb of religion) ftlalked over the face of the kingdom, this county was not without its share of the general calamity.”

Pigot’s Directory of Cheshire 1822-3

N/A. Churton (Churton by Aldford / Churton by Farndon) is not included. Nor are Aldford or Farndon.

Post Office Directory of Cheshire 1857

p.8
Aldford is a parish, comprising the townships of ALDFORD and CHURTON, and CHURTON HEATH, or BRUERA, BUERTON, and EDGERLEY.
CHURTON-BY-ALDFORD is a township, 2 miles southwest, with 251 inhabitants and an area of 572 acres

p.116-117
CHURTON-BY-FARNDON is a township and small village, partly in the parish of Famdon and partly in that of Aldford, distant 7 miles south-by-east from Chester and 1½ north Farndon; it consists principally of one long straggling street. The remains of an ancient cross mark the boundary of the two parishes. The population, in 1851, was 148; the acreage, about 430. Major Barnston is lord of the manor; and he, and the Marquis of Westminster, and C. Galley, Esq. of Churton, are the chief landowners.

Private residents

Calley John, esq. Churton lodge
Parker Mr. William

Commercial

Baker James, farmer
Baker Moses, beer retailer
Barlow Geo, shoemaker & shopkeeper
Brown Mary (Mrs.), farmer
Clubbe George, wheelwright
Harrison Charles, shopkeeper
Huxley Joseph, farmer
Lawrence Peter, farmer
Letsom William, Red Lion
Nevell James, shoemaker
Parker John, farmer
Thomas William, blacksmith

Letters through Chester

Morris & Co.’s Directory of Cheshire 1864

p.45.
CHURTON-by-ALDFORD, is a township in Aldford parish, Great Boughton union containing, by the census of 1861, 217, inhabitants, and 572 acres; in the hundred of Broxton, South Cheshire, 7 miles south from Chester, adjoining Cllurton-by-Farndon, of which manor it forms a part. The Primitive Methodists have a chapel here. The Marquis of Westminster is lord of the manor.

Clergy and Gentry

Finley Hugh, Esq., The Lodge
Grace Mrs. Ann
Shankling Mr. Thomas

Trades and Professions.

Baker James, farmer,
Baker Moses, beer retailer
Ball Thomas, farmer
Brown George, farmer
Clubbe William, joiner
Logan Mr., Inland Revenue officer
Nevitt James, shopkeeper
Parker William, jun., farmer, The Grange
Thomas William, blacksmith
Warburton Samuel, baker and shopkeeper

The grave of Churton resident James Nevitt’s wife Mary, who died at the age of 39 in 1846, in the cemetery of St John the Baptist Church, Aldford

p.53.
CHURTON-by. FARNDON is a township in the parishes of Farndon and Aldford, the boundaries of which are marked by the remains of an ancient cross; 1½ miles north from Farndon, and 7 miles south-east from Chester, in Great Boughton union; containing, by the census of 1861, 128 inhabitants, and 432 acres. Major Barnston is lord of the manor.

Gentry

Parker John, Esq. Churton Hall
Parker, Mr William, Grange

Trade and Professions

Baker James, farmer
Baker Moses, beer retailer
Ball Thomas, farmer
Brown George, farmer
Clubbe George, wheelwright
Lawrence Peter, farmer
Nevitt James, shoemaker
Parker John, farmer
Thomas William, blacksmith
Williams Richard, Red Lion Inn

Letters through Chester.

Post Office Directory of Cheshire 1878

p.3. “The following is a list of Poor Law Unions . . .” Tarvin Union, (including):

Aldford
Churton-by-Aldford
Churton-by- Farndon
Farndon

p.3. “The following is a list of the hundreds, with the places contained In each:—
Hundred of Broxton (Higher division).— Aldersey, Aldford, Barton, Bickerton, Broxton, Bulkeley, Burwardsley, Caldecott, Garden, Cholmondeley, Chowley, Churton-by-Aldford, Churton-by-Farndon, Clutton, Coddington, Crewe, Egerton, Farndon, Grafton, Handley. Harthill, Horton-by-Malpas, Kingsmarsh, Stretton, and Tilston.”

p.14. Churton-By-Aldford is a township, 2 miles southwest. The Duke of Westminster is lord of the manor and principal landowner. The area is 672 acres; rateable value £935 ; the population in 1871 was 274. POST OFFICE.—Mrs. Hannah Clubb, receiver. Letters through Chester arrive at 7.30 a.m.; dispatched at 5.25 p.m. Farndon is the nearest money order office
Infant School, Miss Annie Jones, mistress

Maylor John, Churton lodge
Parker Henry, The Grange
Parker Thomas
Ball Thomas, farmer
Brown George, farmer
Hughes William ,shopkeeper
Parker John, farmer, beer retailer
Warburton Samuel, shopkeeper

p.186
FARNDON is a parish, comprising the townships of Barton, Churton-by-Farndon, Clutton, Crewe, King’s Marsh, and Farndon . . .

Churton is a township and small village, in the parishes of Farndon and Aldford, part called Churtonby-Farndon and part called Churton-by-Aldford, 7 miles south-by-east from Chester, a mile and a half north from Farndon and 5 west from Broxton railway station on the east bank of the Dee; it consists principally of one long straggling street. The remains of an ancient cross mark the boundary of the two parishes; the Primitive Methodists have a chapel here. Harry Barnston, esq. is lord of tbe manor for Churton-by-Farndon, and the Duke of Westminster of that of Churton-by-Aldford; the Duke of Westminster, Harry Barnston, esq. and John Maylor, esq. of Churton, are the chief landowners. The area is 432 acres; rateable value for Churton-by-Aldford £1,296 ; rateable value for Churton-by-Farndon £935; the population in 1871 was 123.

Letters through Chester. The nearest money order office is at Farndon INSURANCE AGENT.—Liverpool and London and Globe, Joseph Ball.

p.187

Maylor John, Churton lodge
Parker Thomas, sea. Churton house

Commercial

Ball Thomas, farmer
Brown George, farmer
Clubbe George, jun. Red Lion
Clubbe George, sen. wheelwright
Dutton John, joiner
Hawkes William, shopkeeper
Nevett James, shoe maker
Parker Henry, farmer, Grange
Parker John, farmer and beer retailer
Parker Thomas, farmer, Churton hall
Thomas William, blacksmith
Warburton Samuel, shopkeeper
Williamson Richard, farmer
Woolley Thomas, farmer

Slater’s Directory of Cheshire and Liverpool 1883

Churton by Aldford

Post Office, CHURTON-BY-ALDFORD, William Clube, Post Master.-Letters arrive from all parts (via Chester) at eleven morning, and are despatched at six evening.

Alphabetical Directory

Brown George, farmer, Churton by Aldford
Parker Henry, farmer, Churton, by Aldford
Thomas Lawrence, White Horse, Churton, by Aldford
Warburton Samuel, shopkeeper, Churton, by Aldford
Williamson Richard, farmer, Churton, by Aldford

Farmers

Ball Thomas
Brown George
Maylor John
Parker Henry
Parker Thomas
Williams Richd.

Lawrance Thomas of Churton, who died 15th December 1881, aged 23. It is impossible to know, at this time, whether this was the Lawrance Thomas who is listed as being based at the White Horse, or a father or son. At the age of 23 he seems young to have been the pub landlord.

Shopkeepers

Clube, Wm.

Taverns and Public Houses

White Horse, Lawrance Thomas

Dissenting Chapels

Methodist (primitive)

Churton by Farndon

Nobility, Gentry and Clergy

Maylor William, Esq. Churton lodge, Churton

Grocers and dealers in sundries

Warburton Samuel, Churton

Farmers

Ball Thomas
Brown George
Clubbe Thomas
Clubbe Williams
Parker Henry
Parker Thos. Junr.
Thomas Abraham
Williamson Richd.

p.216: “Farndon comprises the townships of Barton, Churton by Farndon, Clutton and Crew and Farndon township.

Kelly’s Directory of Cheshire 1902

CHURTON-BY-ALDFORD is a township, on the road from Chester to Malpas, 5 miles south from Waverton station and 5 north-west from Broxton station, both on the Shrewsbury and Crewe section of the London and North Western railway. The Duke of Westminster is lord of the manor and principal landowner. The area is 558 acres; rateable value, £928 ; the population in 1901 was 223.
Public Elementary School (infants), built in 1864 by Richard, and Marquess of Westminster, for 48 children ; average attendance, 20; Miss Mary Meredith, mistress; the school is in part supported by the Duke of Westminster
Post Office.—Joseph Smith, sub-postmaster. Letters through Chester arrive in summer at 7 a.m.; winter, 7.30 a.m. and dispatched at 6.10 p.m. Postal orders are issued here, but not paid. Farndon is the nearest money order and telegraph office, 2 miles distant.

Maylor, Mrs., Churton Lodge
Parker Thomas
Alwood John Farmer
Barlow Charles Shopkeeper
Parker James Beer Retailer
Smith Joseph Shopkeeper, Post Office
Warburton, Miss, Shopkeeper

George Clubbe died in 1841 and was buried in the cemetery of St Chad’s in Farndon. In the 1910 directory he is listed as a shopkeeper. Edward Clubbe, presumably a close relative, is listed as a farmer. The Clubbes appear in directory after directory for Churton, the earliest (from 1857) being William Clubbe, wheelwright.

CHURTON is a township and small village, on the east bank of the river Dee, in the parishes of Farndon and Aldford, of which part is called Churton-by-Farndon and the rest Churton-by-Aldford; it is 5 miles west from Broxton railway station, on the Shrewsbury and Chester section of the London and North Western railway, 7 south-by-east from Chester and a mile and a half north from Farndon. The village consists principally of one Iong straggling street. There is a Primitive Methodist chapel here, erected in 1833. Harry Barnston esq. M.P. who is lord of the manor of Churton-by-Farndon, the Duke of Westminster G.C.V.O. and Mrs. Maylor, of Churton, are the chief landowners.

The gravestone of Joseph Bartlem Edwards, who died in 1915 at age 54, and his wife Mary Elizabeth who died in 1958, age 84. The directory lists Joseph as simply Joseph B. St John the Baptist, Aldford

The area of Churton-by-Farndon is 445 acres; rateable value, £928; the population in 1901 was 126. Churton-by-Aldford township is given with Aldford.

Jackson Thomas Sibbersfield Hall

Commercial

Bellis bros farmers and fruit growers, Churton Hall and Farndon
Clubbe Edward, farmer
Clubbe George, Shopkeeper
Dutton Joshua, Joiner
Edwards Joseph B. farmer
Williamson Richard farmer
Williamson Samuel Holland farmer

Kelly’s Directory of Cheshire 1906

A sad gravestone. The children of beer retailer James and Martha Parker died in succession, Amy aged 16 in 1913, Elizabeth aged 32 in 1919 and Norman in 1922 aged 26. James and Martha themselves died in 1922 and 1928.

Public Elementary School (infants), built in 1864 by Richard, and Marquess of Westminster, for 48 children ; average attendance, 20; Miss Elizabeth Draper, mistress; the school is in part supported by the Duke of Westminster

Post Office.—Joseph Smith, sub-postmaster. Letters through Chester arrive in summer at 7 a.m.; winter, 7.30 a.m. and dispatched at 6.10 p.m. Farndon, 2 miles distant, is the nearest money order and telegraph office

McKindlay Andrew
Maylor Mrs. Churton lodge
Parker William,
Alwood John, farmer
Lawrence Thomas, shopkeeper
Lewis Edwin, farmer
Parker James, beer retailer
Powell Samuel, shopkeeper
Smith Joseph, shopkeeper. Post office

Gravestone (at St Chad’s Farndon) of Richard and Elizabeth Williamson. Richard, a farmer, is listed in the 1906 Kelly’s Directory of Cheshire.

CHURTON is a township and small village, on the east bank of the river Dee, in the parishes of Farndon and Aldford, of which part is caUed Churton-by-Farndon and the rest Churton-by-Aldford; it is 5 miles west from Broxton railway station, on the Shrewsbury and Chester section of the London and North Western railway, 7 south-by east from Chester and a mile and a half north from Farndon. The village consists principally of one long straggling street. There is a Primitive Methodist chapel here, erected in 1833. Harry Barnston esq. is lord of the manor of Churton-by-Farndon, and the Duke of Westminster, Harry Barnston esq. and Mrs. Maylor, of Churton, are the chief landowners. The area of Churton-by- Farndon is 445 acres; rateable value, £928; the population in 1901 was 126. Churton-by-Aldford township is given with Aldford.

Grossmann Alex, Sibbersfield Hall

Commercial

Bellis Bros, farmers & fruit growers, Churton Hall and at Farndon
Clubbe Edward, farmer
Clubbe George, shopkeeper
Dutton Joshua, joiner
Edwards Joseph B. farmer
Williamson Richard, farmer
Williamson Samuel Holland, Red Lion P.H

Kelly’s Directory of Cheshire 1910

CHURTON-BY-ALDFORD is a township, on the road from Chester to Malpas, 5 miles south from Waverton station and 5 north-west from Broxton station, both on the Shrewsbury and Crewe section of the London and North Western railway. The Duke of Westminster is lord of the manor and principal landowner. The area is 574 acres; rateable value, £928 ; the population in 1901 was 223.
Public Elementary School (infants), built in 1864 by Richard, and Marquess of Westminster, for 48 children ; average attendance, 26; Miss Elizabeth Draper, mistress; the school is in part supported by the Duke of Westminster
Post Office.—Joseph Smith, sub-postmaster. Letters through arrive at 7.15 a.m. ; sunday, callers only & dispatched at 7.40 p.m.; Sunday, 7.40 p.m. Farndon, 1¼ miles distant, is the nearest money order and telegraph office

Carr Austin Cooper, Kingsmead
McKindlay Andrew, Churton house
Maylor Mrs. Churton lodge
Allwood John, farmer
Lewis Annie (Mrs.), farmer
Parker James, beer retailer
Powell Margaret (Mrs.), shopkeeper
Smith Joseph, shopkeeper. Post office
Thomas Lawrence, shopkeeper
Thomas William, blacksmith

Bellis Brothers Limited, farmers and fruit growers, Churton hall; and at Farndon
Clubbe Edward, farmer
Clubbe George, shopkeeper
Dutton Joshua, joiner
Edwards Joseph B. farmer
Williamson Richard, farmer
Williamson Samuel Holland, Red Lion P.H.

Source:

Cheshire Directories. Working in Partnership. Cheshire East / Cheshire West and Chester
http://cheshiredirectories.manuscripteye.com/index.htm

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People

The bereaved

The Deceased

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Themes and symbols

Inscriptions

Visually personalized headstones

Materials

Memorabilia and gifts

Examples that are cared for by today’s cemetery regulars

Cemeteries and the bereaved today

Part 2 Final Thoughts

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Chester in the 19th century

A solution to overflowing churchyards

Overleigh Old Cemetery

Overleigh New Cemetery

** Family Research

Part 1 Final Comments

Sources:

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Two sites with one name

Background – what is a motte and bailey castle?

The Castle Sites

Shocklach East

Shocklach West

Two Castles, two stories?

Contemporary sites at Castletown

Later history of Castletown

Conclusion

Sources:

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Cowdroy’s Directory of Cheshire 1789

Pigot’s Directory of Cheshire 1822-3

Post Office Directory of Cheshire 1857

Morris & Co.’s Directory of Cheshire 1864

Post Office Directory of Cheshire 1878

Slater’s Directory of Cheshire and Liverpool 1883

Kelly’s Directory of Cheshire 1902

Kelly’s Directory of Cheshire 1906

Kelly’s Directory of Cheshire 1910

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**
Family Research