I like snow, not just when it first starts falling, but all of it even when it’s that slushy dirty brown stuff, although I am the first to concede that when it ices over it can be awful.
And if you want a snow scene there is no better a place than the parish church yard after a fresh fall of snow.
This picture will have been taken sometime after the makeover which tidied up the old gravestones, landscaped the area and picked out the foot print of the church.
Today it can be an attractive haven, where you can sit and relax for a while but as pleasant a place as it is, I rather wish for the old graveyard, which was full to bursting point with grave stones recording those who have lived in the township way back into the18th century.
It is true that they were in need of some care and attention but the fate of the majority was to be spirited away leaving just a handful. The rest I suspect were broken up and became hardcore in a development somewhere.
And that is a tragedy given that here were so many who had made their lives in Chorlton.
What are left are interesting enough, including the head stone of Mary Moore who was murdered on her way back from the Manchester markets, a local who died in Afghanistan and a mix of the good, the notable and the ordinary.
Not that any in the graveyard should be described as ordinary and many from the Renshaw family, and the Nixon family have a story to tell.
And then there are the bits of grave furniture like the pillar which is broken off and signifies a life cut short.
Each of the surviving stones helped when I was writing The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy and all of them continue to fascinate me for the untold stories they offer up.
In the same way I marvel at how small the parish church was which was built in 1800 to replace an older chapel and which was later enlarged.
There are only a few surviving photographs of the interior along with some descriptions dating back into the early 19th century and so far only one more recent description which was given to me by my dear friend Marjorie Holmes, who remembered it before it was closed in 1940.
That contemporary description along with the older ones and the pictures also appear in the book, but now I am endanger of slipping into a bout of outrageous self promotion, so I will stop, and instead reflect on the last picture, which was taken in 1979 when the meadows were just being developed as part of the Mersey Valley.
In its time the meadows has been a dumping ground for Corporation rubbish and for centuries was farmed as meadow land which was a form of farming which involved flooding and draining the land repeatedly for the production or “early grass”.
Location; Chorlton
Pictures; the parish graveyard and the meadows circa early 1980s from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy; Andrew Simpson, 2012, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html
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| In the graveyard, circa ealry 1980s |
This picture will have been taken sometime after the makeover which tidied up the old gravestones, landscaped the area and picked out the foot print of the church.
Today it can be an attractive haven, where you can sit and relax for a while but as pleasant a place as it is, I rather wish for the old graveyard, which was full to bursting point with grave stones recording those who have lived in the township way back into the18th century.
It is true that they were in need of some care and attention but the fate of the majority was to be spirited away leaving just a handful. The rest I suspect were broken up and became hardcore in a development somewhere.
 |
| Samuel and Elizabeth Nixon, 2011 |
What are left are interesting enough, including the head stone of Mary Moore who was murdered on her way back from the Manchester markets, a local who died in Afghanistan and a mix of the good, the notable and the ordinary.
Not that any in the graveyard should be described as ordinary and many from the Renshaw family, and the Nixon family have a story to tell.
And then there are the bits of grave furniture like the pillar which is broken off and signifies a life cut short.
 |
| In the grave yard, 2012 |
In the same way I marvel at how small the parish church was which was built in 1800 to replace an older chapel and which was later enlarged.
There are only a few surviving photographs of the interior along with some descriptions dating back into the early 19th century and so far only one more recent description which was given to me by my dear friend Marjorie Holmes, who remembered it before it was closed in 1940.
In its time the meadows has been a dumping ground for Corporation rubbish and for centuries was farmed as meadow land which was a form of farming which involved flooding and draining the land repeatedly for the production or “early grass”.
Location; Chorlton
Pictures; the parish graveyard and the meadows circa early 1980s from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy; Andrew Simpson, 2012, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html
even though the horse and jockey is not for me anymore..when it snows..wow, proper picturesque.
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