If you go down to the graveyard today …. You’re sure of a big surprise* …..

 Well, “a big surprise” may be overstating the experience but yesterday I came across these stone setts.

Those mysterious stones, 2026

It’s an odd discovery given that I have alternatively walked through and sat in the old parish graveyard for over four decades.

They appear just to the north and west of the entrance to the old parish church.

Often, they are hidden under a mix of mud and leaf detritus, and I suppose are not that interesting, especially when set against the stone inscriptions of the surviving gravestones.

Once before the 1980s make over there were 362 of them ranging from austere and plain slabs to grand monumental records of lives lived out in Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

But with the landscaping of the graveyard came a decision to dispose of most of them, leaving just a handful dotted around the gardens.  The fate of the majority is unclear, but I suspect they ended up as hard core in some motorway.

And with their departure was lost the records of so many of our residents who lived here in the 18th and 19 centuries. Apart from the scandal of destroying the memories of people whose relatives had invested time, money and emotion in recording their lives, there is that simple observation that so much of our history has been lost.

But setting that aside there is the mystery of this stretch of stones.

I wondered how long they had been there, and whether they were original dating from the 19th century into earlier.

I will have walked through the place long before the makeover, but I can’t remember seeing them.

And I suppose they may have been part of the landscaping especially as they appear to include a feature which looks to have been a space for a tree, now long since gone.

Gravestones and inscriptions, 1976

A similar pattern of stones appears around the memorial to PC Cook that policeman who was shot in the line of duty. His death was commemorated by an elaborate monument which was removed and is now in Preston, leaving the present stone slab which is faced with the same sets.

Looking back at the plan of the original 362 gravestone, our mystery spot was inhabited by four headstones of which only one has survived the cull.  This is to John, Margaret, James and John Renshaw who were interred between 121 and 1844.  

The Renshaw family, 2010

Alas those commemorating the Guy, Rogers, Lobley, Horsefield  and Heywood families no longer exist, and with them go the stories of Ann Guy who died aged 81Gertrude “infant daughter of William Henry and Georgina Rogers 8 months, 14days and great granddaughter f the above” and "Louisa Mary [also] daughter of William Henry and Georgina Rogers” who died at 15 months in the August of 1869.  Or Thomas who was the “son of Thomas and Elizabeth Gilmore” who died on July 21st 1870, just 2 months old.

Now set against these lost stories of grief, my stone sets don’t amount to much, but it would be fun to know who thought they should be placed here close to the church entrance.

There is a scheme of planting dating from April 1977 from Recreational Services Department of Manchester City Council which suggests that our spot was for either Lonicera Pileata “an unpretentious ever green plant” or Cytisus praecox a “flowering deciduous shrub”.

But which ever it was it has long gone along with the gravestones that occupied its place.

Location; Chorlton graveyard

Pictures; Chorlton graveyard, 2026, 2010 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the plan of the churchyard, Register Of Grave Descriptions, St Clement’s Old Churchyard, Chorlton Green,1976, RG 37/99, City Engineer and Surveyor, Town Hall, Manchester

*Teddy Bears Picnic,  Jimmy Kennedy, 1932