Many thanks to GrannyJanny for your interesting information about St Bartholomew's churchyard. Your post rekindled some personal memories of Colne Parish Church (where I was baptised and confirmed many years ago) and also encouraged me to look out a few additional local history references to the churchyard. I don't have a copy of the 'Annals of Colne' and hadn't previously heard about the gossip relating to the night-time removal of bodies, which may or may not have been based on fact!
Gravestones would definitely have had to be moved and bones disturbed on at least two occasions in the 19th century. 1) As described on page 99 of 'The History of Colne' (edited by Dorothy Harrison, and published in 1988 by the Pendle Heritage Centre): "The growth in Colne's population and possibly a greater dedication by its ministers led to further 19th century alterations. An organ and choir gallery were added in 1833, blocking the Tower arch. These were removed in 1857 and a new Northern aisle was created with an organ chamber. Austin and Paley removed this Northern aisle in 1889 and created a double one." 2) When Church Street (the main road through Colne) was widened by about 9ft in about 1890, as described in the caption to a photograph of the larger churchyard taken soon after 1866 (on page 4 of 'Colne as it Was', a book of photographs selected and introduced by Wilfred Spencer, and published in 1971 by Hendon Publishing Company.) Interestingly, this photograph shows all the gravestones to the front of the church lying flat.
I assume that the very wide 'path' comprised of flattened gravestones in front of the church, which I remember from my childhood, was constructed soon after the road was widened. One of the gravestones, which I discovered in the 1990s, is that of one of my 3x great grandfathers, James Holt (died 1845) and his two wives, Martha (died 1820, from whom I am descended) and Judith (died 1849). As GrannyJanny has written, all we can be sure of is that at one time these ancestors were somewhere in the churchyard.
Interestingly, when my husband and I looked around the graveyard in the 1990s he also found relatives who had been buried there (despite coming originally from Yorkshire). They were Franklands, stonemasons engaged in the building of the Leeds Liverpool canal. This Frankland gravestone had also been moved and was found standing erect behind the church, against the western boundary wall.
Dorothy Harrison's book (on page 100) also casts further light on the old charnel house: "Repairs to the museum recently revealed the old charnel house, buried behind it in 1830, to remove temptation from the Grammar School boys (they had been helping themselves to thigh and skull bones with which they played skittles to the scandal of the neighbourhood)." I think it is probably safe to assume that the Colne Parish Church charnel house dated from medieval times, when it was very common to bury bodies only temporarily and then remove the bones from the ground after some years for permanent storage in a charnel house or the church crypt.
I had found out previously that one of my great great grandfathers, Edward Midgley, was buried in Colne Cemetery in 1867, causing me to check when the cemetery opened. Apparently it was in 1860 not 1870. This bit of research led me to a website that I had previously not discovered: CEMSEARCH-uk. For a payment of £2 or £6, depending on the query, they will email a printout of the inscriptions of all the graves for a particular surname in a particular Lancashire cemetery. The service was extremely efficient and prompt (less than half an hour in my case). Should anyone need it, you can also get a free 14-day trial to Ancestry.co.uk by following a link from their website.
Ruth
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