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Can anyone tell me if St Andrews Church is still open and is there a graveyard there Thanks.

St Andrews church is still open but I don't think there is a graveyard. Speaking of which, I will add St Andrews to the list for transcribing. One of my Sutcliffes married there!

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Mel

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Thanks Mel that would be good I have a lot of Bradshaws at that church Father&Mother Grandfather,GT Grandfather all married there and even me and my sister baptized at St Andrews
Sues

Was there ever a graveyard I wonder? The church has very little land...I think it's used as a sort of roundabout!

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Mel

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You are right Mel it is now on sort of a roundabout along with the Duke of York pub, part of the road system splits them up.

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Gloria

I'd be dangerous with a brain.

I managed to find a picture I had of St Andrew's Church

http://www.briercliffesociety.co.uk/Photo%20Archive/Religious%20Buildings/St%20Andrews%20Burnley.htm

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Mel

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I don't suppose this is of much interest to anyone but me........ my grandfather, the Rev William Henry Cooper, was the Vicar of St Andrew's from 1917 to 1931; in the 50s, two of my cousins were marrried there (and my uncle's funeral was held there in the 90s). There's another picture of the church in the GENUKI church database, which confirms it has no graveyard and gives a foundation date of 1864.

Charon

How interesting! I'm trying to think now if your Grandfather married any of my lot.

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Mel

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Charon, my dad attended St. Andrew's day school from about 1913 to 1920, so he probably knew your grandfather. I don't know if my dad attended the church, but the minister would be a familiar presence to the school scholars, as they were known.

Joan

Joan,

it really brings the past to life to hear of people who probably knew our ancestors in their prime. I suppose it's too late now to ask your father if he has any memories of my grandfather: how I wish I'd started to take an interest in my forebears twenty or thirty years sooner!

Thank you

Charon

Don't we all!

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Mel

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Charon, I wish I could ask my father questions, and my grandmothers and my aunts......... My dad died a few years ago but I should think he knew your grandfather fairly well. He often mentioned Church-related activities which he took part in as a boy and young man, and it was probably St. Andrews. Church and Sunday School were very important in the lives of Burnley people then.

Joan

Joan,

thanks again. My grandfather the Vicar was born in the Isle of White: I recently got in touch with a second cousin once removed still living there, whose father remembered visiting him when he was Vicar of All Saints, Higher Walton (near Preston) in World War II. My grandfather told him he was looking for a teacher for the Church school in Higher Walton. Also, in a letter written just before he died in 1946, my grandfather told my parents that he still regularly received news of the IOW from one of his sisters-in-law there.

Starting late means that little glimpses like these, what's in the Census, a few photographs of special family occasions, and odd half-remembered recollections of what other relatives said about him, are all I know about my grandfather's life, even though he died only 60 years ago.

But I'm afraid I'm straying some way from Briercliffe!

Charon