Walking the paths of the remembered …..... the new book from Michael Billington

 Mr. Billington’s new book The Churchyards & Cemeteries of Urmston, Flixton & Davyhulme, is more than just a record of gravestone, memorials and churchyards.

It combines fine scholarship, a fascinating collection of period and contemporary photographs, and is easy to read, all of which marks it out as a book to visit.

St Catherine's Church

And not just if you live or lived in Urmston, Flixton or Davyhulme, because the depth of detail about funeral practices the culture of the dead and the stories behind the gravestones make it a book that many will both enjoy and lean from.

For me it is the little additions that make it more than just a list of who died and when.

So included is a fascinating description of how in the 21st century “the use of hammer and chisel to engrave by hand has been substituted by computerisation”, while peppered through the book are short verses drawn from a collection of writers and more than a few which stretch back in time and are anonymous.

Philip Weisberg

Added to which Mr. Billington has written extensively about Urmston Jewish Cemetery, drawing on his own deep research and assisted by the Jewish Historian and Genealogist Dr Rosalyn Livishin and Dr Sharman Kadish.

As ever it is the stories he draws out that make for riveting reading, so here is a description of the war memorial commemorating the twenty-eight Jewish servicemen who died in the two world wars and is a salutary reminder in a period of rising antisemitism of the contribution they made to the protection of our country.

The window of three Worthington Wright children 

Taking to Michael about the book just before its publication he told me just how moved he was by so many of the inscriptions he encountered in all the graveyards, and particularly the awful record of child mortality.

So included in the memorials is "the stained glass window in the church of three Worthington Wright children who all died during the month of November 1858. The first two died of scarlet fever and measles and the last one just of scarlet fever".

Along with this was his determination to tell all the stories not just of the “great and the good”, but those who history has forgotten and in some cases  who history didn’t even both to notice.  Which is a nice lead into the epitaph of Robert Phillip of Kingsbridge , Devon which Michael includes 

“Here lie I at the chancel door

Here I lie because I’m poor

The farther in more you’ll pay

Here lie I as warm and they”

Leaving me just to include the publisher’s notes 

“The townships of Urmston, Flixton and Davyhulme have a rich and diverse historical heritage. This richness and diversity are reflected in how the townships honour their dead from the burial grounds themselves to the cenotaphs and stained glass windows, and plaques in the churches.

This book looks at not only the grand statement tombs of the wealthy but also the final resting places of vicars, churchwardens, sextons, choirmasters, church organists, journalists, actors, teachers, pub landlords, architects, policemen, servants and paupers”.

It costs £16.99 and is available from the author at epona publishing, www.eponarecords,com, J Parkers Garden Centre, Urmston Books, Trafford Local Studies, and Salford Museum and Art Gallery

Location; Urmston, Flixton and Davyhulme

Pictures; from the collection of Michael Billington, 2025

*Billington, Michael, The Churchyards & Cemeteries of Urmston, Flixton & Davyhulme, 2025

**ibid, page 276