Ghost In The Machine
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2014
- Messages
- 2,521
- Location
- Yorkshire
Let me know what you find. My grandad went in somewhere around that spot, around 1955.From my undertanding a grave is allowed to remain untouched for a 100 years, this may be old legislation, or out of date. It's very interesting and worth an explore when I get 5 mins.
ETA: Sorry this is so long. Am pre-coffee...
That said, the vicar is an ex-solicitor and very slippery. We asked him to see burial records as when a relative got married, they wanted a pretty church backdrop, so insisted on our old village church - and then realised they were having the future in-laws there and my mother was in an unmarked grave. (Dad had low wages and two kids to raise when our mum died). Now I know precisely where she is buried as she is the third one in from a certain wall and Dad took me there (we weren't allowed to go to the funeral) a week or so after she died. It was still a freshly dug grave and for many years it had a wooden marker with a number on it. Although we lived next to the churchyard, she was buried right the other side and over the brow of a hill so you couldn't see from our house.
I went there with my best friend, quite a lot and I consistently left flowers from our garden on it in a jam jar (very 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles) until I moved away from home, almost a decade later. ie: I knew where my mum was buried.
My brother was so heartbroken he couldn't even face going to the grave, so I'd go for both of us. I was a very loyal child!
Anyway it wasn't til years later as that part of the churchyard filled up, I realised she was buried out of date sequence. But then I knew it had snowed heavily the day they buried her, and maybe when the gravedigger came to dig the hole which in those days was the day before, the soil was too frozen at the point where she should have gone in, so he put her a bit further ahead - which left her out of sequence with the other 1971 burials. Following? It's hard to explain this.
Anyway, when relative wanted to get married there; people (not me) started getting concerned about the lack of a gravestone. So there was talk of buying one. I have 5 kids and no money so there was no way I could afford it, anyway. And to me, I knew where she was. Thing was, I was the only one left who knew where she was. I took them up and showed them but they were concerned that given her death date, she was out of sequence.
So relative made appt with snooty vicar to double check where mum was. He had no actual drawn plan, but inferred that given the date she died, she was defo buried in x spot. Now this alleged grave site was quite some distance down the line of 1971 gravestones. And I recall standing on the grave spot when it was still piled with bare earth and flowers from the funeral. I fecking well know where she is.
Vicar got quite aggressive when I told him so. He claimed "Well you wouldn't know this" but there was a lost medieval chapel and its wall ran under the part of the graveyard where I said mum was buried. So, he claimed, no-one was buried there. Thing was I remembered not only mum going in at that point, but later being surrounded by others. There are 3 unmarked graves in a row and she is one of them. But he said there are no burials there (despite having no drawn plan) because a medieval wall is there.
By some coincidence, I had a friend who was the local historian and he had shown me years before precisely where the medieval chapel had been - totally the other side of the hill (near my childhood house, in fact). I knew this vicar was lying.
I said it had been snowing the day they buried her, so presumably, very cold weather the day or so before. He looked at me like I was making it up, so I thought I'll show this bugger I have an accurate memory. I told him to check the burial record and confirm my memory that she was buried on a Thursday. He did and she was. (He didn't like that). I was only 10 but remember everything.
I found my childhood friend on FB and she confirmed the place we used to take flowers was indeed where I remembered. Someone else asked a step relative - my dad had pointed the grave out to her once, years before - she also remembered it to be where I did.
Not only would my dad not have a reason to lie about it, but he took me when the grave was freshly dug and mum's flowers still on it. I visited it constantly for nine years from the time it was newly dug to the time the wooden number marker had long rotted away and gone. How could I be wrong?
I remember the other graves going in later. And just the two next to her never got headstones. There is no medieval wall under there. People are buried there.
Thing is the vicar got inappropriately aggressive about it - as if he thought he was in a court room. I present as mild mannered and not the sort of person people get aggressive with, as a rule. There was no reason for him to go apeshit and over such a sensitive thing.
Upshot was, my mum didn't get a gravestone because the vicar was trying to get them to put it on a randomer's grave! No-one dared do it, probably, for fear of upsetting me further.
But yes, my grandma died 1939, so even she wouldn't be due for a good old christian grubbing up, yet. But you can see why, given the history, I don't want to approach this vicar and confront him with grubbing up my grandparents. They were also in an unmarked grave.
But yes, one good reason not to go in that picturesque churchyard once you're gone. Your tenancy is limited.
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