The Burial Board of Penistone
The churchyard for St John's church in Penistone had been used for burials for centuries and with an increasing local population, finding burial space had become a real problem in the mid-19th century. There are no marked graves dated before the 17th century and that might be because, in the old days, bodies were more likely to be buried away from the churchyard, most likely in a place near to the deceased's dwelling. Cremation would not become legal in the UK until 1884.
Some sources say that it would have been quite irregular to bury someone near the church, possibly through superstition or a worry that burials might provoke bad luck to the church. However, those from the highest ranks might well be interred within a church and we know of such lofty individuals being buried in cathedrals.
It is said that an Act of Parliament had made it compulsory for bodies to be interred within churchyards, perhaps to reduce disease or perhaps when proper registers were set up to record burials. Back to Penistone and the possible solutions to the burial problem. Three ideas in particular were proposed to be considered:
These were discussed in a public meeting of 22nd July 1869, but with the local Burial Board not yet formed. The first option was kiboshed because the Shrewsbury Hospital Trust which owned land below the churchyard on Church Hill and on Shrewsbury Road refused to sell the required land. Captain FW Vernon owned land below the National Girl's School (opened 1826) on Church Street (which is now St John's Community Centre and PTC Council Offices) but he also refused to sell any land for use as a cemetery. He did, however, offer £100 to build a chapel if suitable land could be obtained somewhere. The fact that these options were considered implies how few houses, if any, there were on Church Street at that time. It is likely that the Netherfield idea was not pursued any further, and we might speculate that that was a matter of either ownership or creed.
The Burial Board of the Ecclesiastic Parish of Penistone was formed on 12th May 1870 to deal with the burial problem with Rev WS Turnbull as Chairman, although different sources give different dates, such as February 1870. The seal of the Burial Board was established the Horned Penistone Ram.
A decision was taken on 5th February 1875 to provide a burial ground at Stottercliffe with Mr John Greaves instructed to plan out the grounds. And on 22nd July 1875, a plot of land already purchased at Hunshelf was chosen for a new burial ground and chapels, although its location appears to have become forgotten. In Mr Penistone's 'Bygones of Penistone' (published 1967) it is not clear what happened at Hunshelf but it seems that the villagers had contributed towards the Stottercliffe cemetery on the basis of ratable values rather than their population. This was overturned around 1966 so that their charges could be reduced. There is a hole in the 'Bygones' story which does not explain what happened at Hunshelf.
The new cemetery was an important topic in the 1879 Penistone Almanack:
'The works necessary for the formation of the Stottercliffe Cemetery have been begun during the summer. The site, which is about equidistant from Penistone and Thurlstone, has been paid for some time. The contracts are as follows: For the Chapels Messrs. C Marsh and Richard Beever for the masonwork, Messrs. Hawley for the woodwork and painting, and Mr Taylor for the plumber's work; for the road making and the drainage Mr. George Wainwright is the contractor. The Architects are Messrs. Flockton and Gibbs, of Sheffield, and Mr. John Greaves is Surveyor for the Board. Considerable progress has already been made with the various works. May we hope that the Board will make an effort by planting trees, etc., to change the otherwise very bleak appearance of Stottercliffe -many cemeteries, even in small places are models of neat and tasteful arrangements; even in the churchyard further planting of trees at the east end would be a great improvement. Ground has also been provided by the Board for a burying place in Hunshelf, but nothing further has been done at present.'
The new Stottercliff cemetery opened on 1st August 1880. Stottercliffe had been a wood through which ran the bridle stile from Penistone to Thurlstone. It had to be diverted in July 1845 when the railway opened and the wood was cleared. The ground was subsequently purchased for use as the cemetery, requiring a loan of £3,800. The area of ground was nine Acres and two Roods. Stottercliffe cemetery is a very peaceful place to stop off from a long walk; to sit on a cemetery bench and take a moment or two in quiet contemplation with the birds twittering as a backdrop.
Please note that 'Stottercliffe' is often spelled with and without the 'e' at various sources. Maps often show it as Stottercliff but the older sources use Stottercliffe and that is the name in the old Almanacks. The other tricky local name of Hartcliff is nearly always spelled without the 'e' wherever you look. Except on Facebook, of course where good spelling is seen as an elitist affectation which must be avoided at all cost.
From its opening in August 1880 to 30th September 1887, 420 interments had taken place, with 364 in consecrated and 56 in unconsecrated sections of the ground. This makes one wonder just how many bodies must have lain to rest in Penistone churchyard all the way from the 12th century.
Many of the graves would gain multiple occupancy over time, with perhaps up to three bodies interred in some. As cremation became more common in recent times, the top part became used for the smaller memorial plaques.
For the Stottercliffe burial ground, £3,800 was borrowed to allow the wood to be cleared and to convert the land into a cemetery. The works necessary for the new cemetery were begun in the summer of 1879, with the site being about halfway between Penistone and Thurlstone. The architects for the two chapels (now demolished) were Messrs Flockton and Gibbs of Sheffield. The site had been very bleak and needed trees on the west side to break the prevailing wind and make it a more pleasant place. The new Stottercliffe cemetery was consecrated and officially opened 1st August 1880 and started to be used for burials. By 30th September 1887, 420 interments had taken place, with 364 in consecrated ground and 56 in unconsecrated ground. It had two chapels which were still standing but unused in living memory.
The two chapels fell into a poor repair and became something of a playground until they were demolished in the late 1990s. It was said that one chapel was for Catholic 'residents' and the other for non-Catholics. Each had what looked like a bell tower. We can imagine that the bells would have sounded differently and that the sound would carry to both Penistone and Thurlstone. There is a small building at the bottom of the lane leading to the cemetery which, presumably, might have contained gardening tools necessary for upkeep of the cemetery and spades for digging graves. It might also have been used to prepare bodies in the old days. In a sneak-peek when its door was broken, it contained a marble table and a sink.
In recent times the railway track became the 'Trans-Pennine Trail' (see this page) for walkers, cyclists and horse-riders, making Stottercliff an even more peaceful place. In the 2,000s, the main cemetery was running out of space and a new extension was built in 2007 and consecrated by Tony Robinson, the Bishop of Pontefract. See the section below.
Memorial to the Lost Infants and Babies
In October 2021, a message appeared on facebook from local resident Richard Galliford OBE which stood out by revealing that, from when Stottercliff cemetery opened in 1880 until the 1970s, more than 700 babies had been buried in unmarked graves, with many of them having been stillborn. It could have been nearer to 1,000. This news was something of a revelation to the local public, most of whom had never heard about these burials. How could so many small lost lives be unknown to the community.
Steve Lavender's 'Story From the Stones No.11' also arrived in October 2021 and fills out the background to this revelation. Richard's message needed publicity and was posted on this website's homepage:
'Forgotten Babies Babies Memorial Fund - From Richard Galliford (slightly abridged).
'A campaign has been launched for a memorial to be put in Stottercliff Cemetery to mark the final resting place of more than 700 babies of various ages and stillborn dating from the 1880s to 1980. There are no stones to recognise that they ever existed and our aim is to place a suitable memorial, which would be non-religious and non-denominational, to ensure that they are no longer forgotten. All permissions have been granted and supported. Barnsley Council's Bereavement Services have committed to looking after the memorial once in place. It is now over to our Penistone community to support this for a memorial to all those little souls. They will no longer be forgotten but will be part of our local history. A Just Giving page has been set up (by David Greenhough) for this purpose. Thank you. I would like to thank the following: Peter Shields for providing a wealth of information, Steve Lavender writing wonderful stories of past locals, Hannah Kitchen BMBC, David Greenhough BMBC, Jeff Bowman of BMBC Bereavement Services and Anthony Devonport, Head of BMBC Bereavement Services.'
The proposed memorial was also included in Penistone Town Council's meeting Agenda for Monday 20th September 2021 (Item 14.2 - To discuss the Stottercliffe Cemetery memorial - Cllr W Chadburn.). It is interesting that BMBC permission had been approved and that BMBC Bereavement Services agreed maintain its upkeep if and when the memorial was erected. This campaign was in particular promoted by BMBC Cllrs Greenhough and Kitchin who helped raise the necessary funds. The new Memorial stone would be set up at the lower end of the cemetery where the small bodies were buried, to the right of the road leading up the hill.
On Facebook, more moving words arrived from Richard, describing that his stillborn sister would have been buried here:
Overgrown and forgotten, a piece of land full of sadness.
This bit of seemingly insignificant land at the bottom the cemetery, arriving from the Manchester road entrance, is the home of untold numbers of still born babies. My sister, stillborn in 1949 is somewhere there. My dad told me about a year after my mother's death in 1985. He took me to this site and told me that I had sister buried there. His friend in the burial business told him that his stillborn daughter had been been buried in an unmarked grave, as they all were from the Penistone area at that time. As he told this story to me some 36 years after his and mum's loss I could see the sadness in him. In those days the stillborn baby was taken away, wrapped in a towel, without my mum seeing her daughter. It was taken straight to this area and buried.
I recently obtained a stillborn certificate of my sister. It recognised that a baby, although dead on arrival into this world, did actually exist. My research to BMBC registrar office confirmed that no records were kept at that time but it was known that this little bit of land was to be the resting place for all stillborn babies in our area. I can’t imagine the despair that my parents went through and can only try to understand how difficult it was for dad to tell me about it. Since I was told this story by my dad, I have always walk by and looked at this piece of land with deep sadness. A sister with no name, alive in the womb, but dead on arrival, who became a nobody. One day it may be ploughed over and built on. A nobody graveyard for an unknown numbers of stillborn, and a place of no significance to anyone.
According to a Barnsley Chronicle article of 17th September 2021, Richard had raised the matter of the forgotten babies with the Penistone BMBC councillors. A meeting between Richard, BMBC Penistone West councillors, burial researchers and representative from Penistone church resulted in the start of a quest to fund a suitable memorial to the forgotten babies and a public fund-raising campaign which appears to have been taken up by the community. Cllr Hannah Kitching remarked that unmarked burials for babies and those who did not survive infancy had been common until the late 1970s. It was often the case that families could not afford burials for children who died.
Research into the burial records was started by various people which included Peter Shields, an expert on this sort of thing. Peter's own daughter had been buried in Wombwell in a similar way to the forgotten babies here, in an unmarked grave.
The Memorial Completed
Over time, enough money was raised and work started in an area at the bottom of the cemetery, where the road begins its climb. This was approximately where the little bodies had been buried.
The ground was cleared and a memorial stone mounted on its concrete plinth. To each side are solid bench seats, as shown in this (clickable) picture, to be used as an area to sit and reflect on the many forgotten lives, now remembered. The features are of granite as a memorial for many years to come.
The Unveiling Ceremony
The memorial was inaugurated in a small but dignified unveiling ceremony in the pouring rain at 11am, Tuesday 15th November 2022. Perhaps something of a surprise was the addition of two fine marble bench seats to the memorial. The two bench seat inscriptions read:
This picture below shows Richard Galliford and BMBC Cllr Hannah Kitchin doing the honours after giving their speeches, with Father David Hopkin's contribution in the form of a prayer.
The Inscriprion
'Found and never forgotten. The 1,000 and more children who were lost and lay unmarked in this cemetery.
'As long as the sun shines, the wind blows, the rain falls, you are now known and no longer lost'
Richard's Speech:
"Thank you all for coming to our unveiling. Today is a very important and significant day. Because we have at last managed to bring justice to over 1000 babies and children buried here in this cemetery without markers and who were buried without ceremony. Buried here we include children who were still born, those who died at birth and those who died shortly into their life up to ten years of age. This memorial is dedicated to all of them, and to show that they are no longer forgotten anymore, and that our community recognise their existence as being part of the our history and heritage of families that live here now or in the past. We now know who they are, but not all their locations.
"Today we are able to assist families who think they may have a child relative buried here, and this helps to bring relief and closure as we can now confirm their existence. Children buried here are sometimes buried in multiple layers in the same grave or with the kind compassionate permission of another family allowing the child to be buried with their own deceased family member. The story of my stillborn sister told to me by my father in 1985, 46 years after the birth, would be familiar to many other parents who had to deal with their enormous loss and the added shame of not having a proper burial, a chance to say goodbye, and not knowing where their child was buried. That story, which I recalled on our local social media speaking about my father’s own sadness in which I quite clearly saw the pain and shame in him, even after all those years, and the land here where this wonderful memorial now sits, then over grown and with no recognition of the awful story that lies hidden beneath, resonated with a past memory of those with a similar heard family story, but it also touched the heart of many more in our community.
"It was not long after the post on social media that I was contacted by Peter Shields, a man who has devoted a great deal of his life to finding lost babies and children, after going through a similar experience himself as a parent. He let it be known that there may be many more babies and children lying here. Never did I think that this number we now know would be so many.
"Our community made very clear that something should be done, and today we can proudly see that justice has been done in this beautify memorial we now see before us. We hope people visiting the memorial will be happy with what they see, and will find it a place of thought, a place of reflection on what lies here. I hope also that will help bring closure to some families, which has recently been expressed to me by a family with deep gratitude. Today we now have a full list of unmarked babies and children buried here, and with records now in the Penistone Archives.
"My thanks go out to all those individuals within our community, along with the organisations such as the Penistone Legion, Penistone Roundtable, Penistone town council, the Ward Alliance, and the Hazlehead Wind Farm Community Fund. Your help made this memorial possible. My thanks to Hannah Kitching, David Greenhough, for helping in setting up the just giving fund and helping me find the route to funding this memorial. To Stacey Gilbert and Steve Lavender for their support and advice on along the way. Thanks too to the Barnsley Bereavement Services for their help and advice in getting this project completed. Last but not least, my sincere thanks goes to Peter Shields. His dedication and work have led to many thousands of babies and children being discovered and therefore giving many families and relatives knowledge, peace and closure when found. Thank you."
The speeches were well-received. In spite of the cold and wet conditions of the day, a good turnout of perhaps 30 people supported the event in a sea of umbrellas. Their number also included the current Penistone Mayor, Cllr Neville Shiggins in his Chain of Office, Stephen Lavender, and Cllr Jonathan Cutts.
This story has also become Story Number 11 in Steve Lavender's 'Stories from the Stones' series. My thanks to Richard for the text of his speech.
The Last Journey
It's a surprisingly busy place being close to the Trans-pennine trail and local people often visit it, or use it as a short cut to Thurlstone Road, or walk their dogs here. It is a good place for quiet reflection and there are some bench seats for visitors to sit quietly and take in the tranquility. In the gravestones view below, we might contemplate those who took their last and one-way journey down this leaf-strewn path. It can at times be a sombre place with a sea of tears.
In these pictures, we can see the top cemetery wall pathway with the Trans-Pennine Trail (the former Woodhead railway line) down to its left. It is a pleasant walk to Stottercliff lane which emerges on the Thurlstone road near the Prospect and the Z-bend. Around 2018 to 2021, an area behind the cemetery wall was being used by a group of young people, who arranged stones in a circle around a makeshift fire area and the wall would increasingly be damaged over time until it was a complete eyesore. A team of builders commissioned by BMBC made good the drystone wall repair and left a gap in the wall to make access easier. the repair to the wall was to such a high standard that it was described as 'invisible mending.'
The cemetery is well-kept by Barnsley council. The oldest memorials are of Yorkshire stone and the newer ones usually black or white polished granite, often with a feature such as a rose or cross etched in. None of these graves date before 1880 and most have an occupancy of two or even three bodies. Some of the oldest ones have angelic figures and carved ornate crosses. There is a good collection of familiar local names buried here.
Consecration of the New Cemetery Extension
The graveyard was becoming too full. The population of Penistone has greatly increased in recent years along with a great increase in the number of houses. Consequently, Stottercliff Cemetery was close to its capacity and a new burial ground was needed. This was provided on a plot of land just above the Stottercliff cemetery, over the old concrete railway bridge. Of course its official opening required a ceremony for official and spiritual purposes.
The official opening and blessing of a new cemetery ground is a special and rather rare ceremony. This one took place at 2pm on the cold but sunny afternoon of Tuesday 6th March 2007. Bishop of Pontefract Tony Robinson attended to the consecration in accordance with established procedure, officially witnessed by the Registrar and Penistone Rector, Fr David Hopkin, Penistone Mayor Cllr Nora Collett, Town Clerk Elizabeth Sedgewick, assorted councillors and some local people, including Yours Truly.
After an opening address by The Director of Regulatory Services, Ken Eastwood, Barnsley Mayor Cllr Margaret Morgan cut the tape to open the extension. Local historian the late Neville Roebuck paid great attention to what was really a historic ceremony. The previous one in our area was around a hundred and thirty years earlier, in Stottercliff cemetery itself. The Deed of Consecration was read out and the Bishop walked the boundary of the extension to scatter holy water before him. Tea and biscuits were laid on afterwards in the Community Centre.
War Graves
The picture pane below shows the huge difference between how we regard our wartime heroes compared with the Dutch people. Penistone's Stottercliff cemetery has eleven war graves in all; five of which stand alone and others which are in family plots. Over time they were falling into a poor condition with nobody to look after them.
Joe Pinguey raised some local interest in the condition of these war graves and volunteers were able to tidy them up, using building materials which had been very kindly donated by Naylor Myers (see their website article). By September 2010, the graves shown in the top row of this picture were now much tidier, as in the before and after pictures below the pane. The Barnsley Chronicle article below explains it all.
Alec Gillespie and Derek Whitworth are shown below at one of the renovated graves after a dedication ceremony there on Armistice Day 2010. My thanks to the Barnsley Chronicle for their kind permission to use scans of their picture and article below. The newspaper scan has fared badly here but the no doubt excellent original picture was taken by Wes Hobson.
CMGC Funding
The Commonwealth Graves Commission looks after war graves in foreign places but can also allocate a small sum towards the upkeep of war graves in this country. In the case of High Hoyland, it is only £7.50 for one grave. A modest sum could be raised from CMGC for the upkeep of these graves if a volunteer group would form a formal association in accordance with CMGC rules.
Burial Records
According to 'Diocesi Eboracensi', Penistone church registers start from 1644, with some defective marriage entries for 1750 - 1745 and 1786 - 1812. These old records can be found at the West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield and their coverage is:
Transcripts of various Penistone Church marriage registers (list) can also be purchased from Barnsley Family History Society.
The Burial Board of the Ecclesiastic Parish of Penistone was formed in February 1870. After Stottercliffe Cemetery was opened in 1880, all further burials in the Penistone area took place there and no further burials were permitted in the churchyard. Burial records for Stottercliffe Cemetery can be found at Ardsley Crematorium, Barnsley, which covers the whole borough.
Genealogists can consult the larger branches of 'The Church of the Latter Day Saints' (Mormons) such as in Huddersfield, to study their church records on microfische. The peculiar advantage of the Mormons is that they claim to be able to convert ancestors retrospectively and this has led them to collect vast repositories of church records from all over the world. Genealogy researchers might also like to visit Free Genealogy UK (including the FreeBMD project), which aims to put records of Births, Marriages and Deaths in the public domain, free of charge.
For War Memorials, Barnsley and District War Memorials has some interesting information. A 'Blogspot' from the same people has references to individual graves, such as that for Albert Webster in 2015, although it is not clear how to search it. Please also see Steve Lavender's Stories from the Stones which make a study of graves in the churchyard.
Seneca(3BC - 65AD): 'While we are postponing, life speeds by.'