I don’t have a date for this picture of the parish church yard but it can be no later than the early 1980s.
Now this I know because early in that decade the ancient headstones some dating back to the mid 18th century were taken away and the area landscaped.
I suppose I should ask Roger Shelley who took the photograph and kindly gave me permission to use it but that would be too simple.
Instead I shall just fall back on my memory of those winters when it snowed heavily and I can think of a few.
Of course there will be someone who has access to the records and will confidently come back with a list of possible dates but in a sense that is not as important as that simple observation that this scene with the snow covering the headstones will be unfamiliar to many.
For those born in the late 1970s and after it will not even be a distant memory. That said I bet there will be many like me who would be hard pressed to remember those headstones even though we walked passed them and may even have the odd photograph tucked away somewhere.
And in a real sense the graveyard had already passed into it history having been closed in the 1880s and pronounced full.*
Sixty years later in 1940 the church which had served the township since the beginning of the 19th century closed and was demolished in 1949, bringing an end to a history of worship on this site which went back to the early 1500s.
During 1979 and again the following year Dr Angus Bateman carried out a series of archaeological digs which revealed something of the church and the lives of the community.**
All of which I think makes this picture a unique record of a piece of our history now almost as distant as the time when our people were burying their dead in the space between the green and the church.
Picture; from the collection of Roger Shelley, https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/
*The Great Burial Scandal, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-great-burial-scandal.html from the series, St Clements Church, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/St%20Clement%27s%20Church
**Digging in the parish church yard, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/digging-in-parish-church-yard.html
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| Looking north towards the green |
I suppose I should ask Roger Shelley who took the photograph and kindly gave me permission to use it but that would be too simple.
Instead I shall just fall back on my memory of those winters when it snowed heavily and I can think of a few.
Of course there will be someone who has access to the records and will confidently come back with a list of possible dates but in a sense that is not as important as that simple observation that this scene with the snow covering the headstones will be unfamiliar to many.
For those born in the late 1970s and after it will not even be a distant memory. That said I bet there will be many like me who would be hard pressed to remember those headstones even though we walked passed them and may even have the odd photograph tucked away somewhere.
And in a real sense the graveyard had already passed into it history having been closed in the 1880s and pronounced full.*
Sixty years later in 1940 the church which had served the township since the beginning of the 19th century closed and was demolished in 1949, bringing an end to a history of worship on this site which went back to the early 1500s.
All of which I think makes this picture a unique record of a piece of our history now almost as distant as the time when our people were burying their dead in the space between the green and the church.
Picture; from the collection of Roger Shelley, https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/
*The Great Burial Scandal, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-great-burial-scandal.html from the series, St Clements Church, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/St%20Clement%27s%20Church
**Digging in the parish church yard, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/digging-in-parish-church-yard.html
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