Introduction

Rothwell Holy Trinity Gravestone Inscriptions

On 16 November 2010 I started to record the inscriptions on the gravestones at Rothwell Holy Trinity Church graveyard. The reason, well nobody had ever done it completely, there was no map of the graveyard at all, so anyone wanting to find a relative’s grave wouldn’t be able to do so. The graveyard had long been abandoned by the church itself, persons weren’t buried in the graveyard anymore and the church had managed to get the local council to maintain it. Not that they did it very often, and the graveyard was in a very poor state. I had come to notice this graveyard when I saw a former Rothwell resident who had emigrated to Australia who had been asking for someone to photograph their relative’s stone in the graveyard. I went into the graveyard only knowing when the relative called Sidebottom had died and after much searching found the stone tilted on its edge looking as if it would topple over at any time.

 I also found that the graveyard had been maintained by a volunteer who had worked there for some considerable time, mowing it, clearing up the dead branches from the many trees, creating paths and tending to the gravestones. During my survey of the graveyard he and I often would work together to right the stones and dig out stones that had sunk into the ground. It was this volunteer, called Derek who knew where stones were located and when the church received enquiries from relatives he would locate the graves. Derek did not record any positions of the stones, just kept it in his head.I did ask the permission of the church council if I could survey the gravestones and record them and then send the photographs to the Yorkshire Indexers where they would be put online so everyone worldwide could see them.

http://www.yorkshireindexers.info/gallery/browseimages.php?c=90

 I did ask help from members of the local history group, the church itself and others but no one wanted to do so. I did find at the beginning that someone had recorded a section of the graveyard close to Meynell Avenue, using a spreadsheet format with photographs as well. I managed to contact this person who gladly sent me his material. At least that was one section that I did not need to record myself. I am not a surveyor by trade, do not have drawing experience at all, so cannot really draw plans. It would be good if I could label the sections and rows, but so far I haven’t done this.

So that November day I started the project, a task that would take me many years to complete and involve hundreds of photographs and many hours of anguish & frustration, digging, brushing, cleaning of stones and cutting nettles & brambles. What I intended to do was to divide the graveyard into manageable sections and then locate them in the section by way of a spreadsheet format. I soon found however that the sexton responsible for digging the graves did not have a spreadsheet to work from as the graves were often not in an easy layout. There were also many mature trees, with extensive foliage in the summer so no grass would grow, instead Himalyan balsam had taken over along with brambles & nettles, and with the trees covered in ivy which soon spread all around the gravestones. Many of the graves had sunk, maybe as the result of the clay ground or even mining subsidence, so the stones had sunk into the ground. Some of the stones had been toppled over, not by vandals but deliberately by responsible people worried that loose stones might topple on to a person and injure them. However with stones toppled over face down, it was impossible to right them so read what was written on them. See below for a typical view of the graveyard stones in summer.

 Eventually by the Autumn of 2012, which I see was my last section of photographs I stopped the project-I was fed up with it-nothing seemed to work out out at all and I was fed up battling the undergrowth. Starting again after 12 months of not doing anything was a bit daunting, but following communication from a family history researcher looking for her Crossley gravestones took me once more into the graveyard on a damp morning with the gravestones covered in water. The graveyard looked as if it had been cleared recently, there wasn’t any Balsam around, but then it was Thursday 27 November. I did take some photographs and tried to plot the positions of the gravestones but soon found that it was very difficult again. Back at home I looked at the photographs and soon realised that I would have to wait for a drier day.

The only way forward it seemed to me was to take the earlier spreadsheet and print out the plan so far, then go with the plan, and see if I could get the graves to fit. It was quite difficult as there were gravestones and then graves with no stone, then stones upside down, and making them all fit in line together very difficult. I would walk along the line of the graves, writing down the names and grave numbers in an exercise book, and then when I had completed one row, go the next but when I got to the end of that row and then walked along other axis, I did not join up the rows properly. After several attempts I found the only way was to divide the whole section into two halves, with the first half up to 17, and the next half from 18 to 29. Then working along row 18 and writing down the stone names, and marking no stones on the plan too. Then going to row 19 and doing the same; so that eventually I had a pattern. Then doing the other half, going along row 17, and then row 16. I found that some of the graves I had put in the wrong section so that when it was put right I caught then merge both halves of the graveyard together again.

Every stone has to be photographed, then the details copied into an exercise book. Back at home, using google Picasa, I crop all the photographs so I can read the inscriptions some of which are very poor. I can also check the dates on Ancestry which has the records of Rothwell burials in it.