This was when the parish church yard got its last makeover.
But it will have been in the early 1980s and involved clearing away many of the old gravestones, and landscaping the area including picking out the footprint of the old church, which had stood on the site since 1800 and replaced an earlier chapel which dated back to around 1512.
I can’t exactly remember the old cluttered grave yard or when the makeover happened but the picture will date from the early 1980s soon after it had been completed, when the trees and bushes had yet to grow.
Location; Chorlton
Picture; the churchyard, 1981 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
I can’t exactly remember the old cluttered grave yard or when the makeover happened but the picture will date from the early 1980s soon after it had been completed, when the trees and bushes had yet to grow.
Location; Chorlton
Picture; the churchyard, 1981 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
Makeover? Vandalised, it just needed a good clean up rather than destroying the history of the village like that, those gravestone would have cost a fortune back in the day. We played in there as kids and I remember them doing that, we had some interaction with the archaeologists doing the church bit, they also removed the sandstone wall cappings that had graffiti back to the 1700's.
ReplyDeleteI used to wag school climbing into the belfry and using it a a little spy hole. I think the rearrangement was carried out around 1983/4 . I was a little concerned because the Green and the Horse and Jockey have such significance in my family, my Great Grandfather was a foreman at one of the farms off Chorlton Green and my Gran was born in a cottage that now forms part of the pub.
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