Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

Definitely needing some direction here if anyone can help,please ?.

Further to my previous post re Ellison/Roberts I have made some considerable discoveries but hit 'the wall' again. Can anyone recommend how to decipher a burial record (common grave,I suspect) at Walton Park Parochial cemetery ?

http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii18 ... b06f6d.jpg

I have recently visited the site and after getting over the immediate shock at the state of it, I discovered from the lady who runs the City farm that something like 50,000+ "assisted burials” took place there and most came from Brownlow Hill and Walton workhouses. She also mentioned that there appears to be no rhyme or reason as to what locations the dead were buried, so no chance of a guess by which years etc.
I have the proof of my GrandMother being interred there in October 1918 which co-incides with the infamous 'Spanish Flu' pandemic.
However, the register entry does not give a compass direction or any other specifics to pin down the rough location,just a 12/- price tag and a ledger reference #, which I assume is to do with the accounting of payments by the parish.
After the church closed in the mid 60's there remained a dedicated man who was apparently the font of all memory regarding the layout but he died some considerable time ago. I am told that there was also a local lady who used to assist in this kind of task and could be approached,but again,she sadly has passed away last November and there is no-one now able to help without an in depth set of compass/path references at least.

Walking around and searching was not an option for many reasons,not least of which is that with it being springtime the farm animals are breeding in the very fields where the dead are buried and it would not be wise to even try.
In parts its also a metre deep in stinging nettles.

I cant make sense at all of the LRO 'on line' search facility as each click seems to reveal less and less point, that is IF you dont get a 404 message straight away. So many dead links these days ?
I must be missing something I think ?

I have seen many blogs and posts regarding people searching for ancestors at this site but not many successes, so if my description of its current state helps to make people aware then this post will not have been in vain.
The staff at the farm are quite helpful but they do have a farm to run and that is their primary concern obviously.

I couldn't get an online view, however were you referring to the letters & numbers before the left column?
I took them to mean grave registration no 4791, path K grave 45. 12 shillings.

May well be wrong, do wait for another opinion.

Wendy
8438

I have tried to make it a little larger but sorry I don't know the meaning of the numbers and letters, Wendy's best guess might be correct, except that I think the letter is N not K (there is a K in the next line down which doesn't match).

Last September a gentleman posted on the Rootschat forum some details about making contact with him about Walton Cemetery, I wonder if he is any more informed than the ladies you have spoken with, every avenue is worth a try anyway.
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.ph ... msg4637812

If you come across any dead links on one of our boards, please send me full details so that I can either amend or delete.

Thank You both for your responses. Both are well received and the link you included could well prove rewarding Mary. I will endeavour to contact Kevi for some advice re the LRO records as stated.
I am sure it would be useful for some if some kind of map or past/present overlay for the site were clearly available but with the council selling off parts of it for housing development recently I am left horrified.
As stated earlier, the staff are very helpful, it is just unfortunate that this time of year brings a new generation of animals to the fields and the parents quite rightly are fiercely protective of them. Worth considering for anyone attempting to visit, even with all the information to hand ?
Will report back with any progress I make. Thanks again.

My advice would be to make contact a week or two before you want to visit, that way it gives them sometime to check any records and the layout and try to identify where you want to go before you get there, at least it will save a lot of your time.

I know some people are against having animals in a cemetery, but especially in villages, I have seen successes in keeping it neat and tidy whereas it would have been overgrown, sometimes a small area being cordoned off especially for lambs so they don't stray.

Couldn't agree more Mary. Their problem,as is the case with most community projects and council run things these days, is one of funding. They are spread pretty thin on the ground in trying to keep the place afloat and luxuries like internet access and the likes are the stuff of dreams for them. Worth remembering if they can help in any way ?.

MaryA wrote
"Last September a gentleman posted on the Rootschat forum some details about making contact with him about Walton Cemetery, I wonder if he is any more informed than the ladies you have spoken with, every avenue is worth a try anyway.
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.ph ... msg4637812"

Tried following the facebook link he suggests on that post but I'm afraid its a dead'n Mary !
No response from the telephone number given either, oh well ! Shame?

VicMar.

Your link does not work (just returns a 404 error).

Here is a link that I found:

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.ph ... msg4578023

Don't worry, it's because he copied from my post. It works in the original and takes you to the same page Pegasus.

Sorry if it wasnt clear in my previous post but its the facebook page that he mentions thats dead not the rootschat message! The main city farm pages are still there just not the ones of interest to us ?
One of the subsequent posters on the same thread who looked to be of interest, a Joan Borrowscale has also disappeared by the looks of it "Last activity = Dec 2012".
Going to try and get to the central library today (Tuesday) and see if I can turn anything up.

It was great to meet you this afternoon Vic, I love putting a face to a name.

UPDATE 2014.
After many lines of enquiry re: J Borrowscale, I have to conclude that she was the lady referred to by the 'farm' manager as being "very knowledgable" but was "not well" and "had not been seen for many months".
I have to conclude also, that as she was quite a keen geneaology researcher and had a very active profile at 'roots' and a few other sites, she has not logged in since 2012 and thus leads me to suspect that she may be deceased herself as a consequence of her being "unwell"?.
So sad that we lose a like minded person from our community but also that her knowledge of the cemetery is perhaps lost to us forever ?

Vic, there is a lady on site "Maria" who has worked there for 33 years. She has a bit of a diagram which she says that her sister put together from some Council plans many, many years ago. Whenever she gets some information she identifies the area on this plan, the difficulty is knowing, when a grave says a particular section, whether it might be "South" or "East".

One of my plans in the summer is to take the grave numbers from the two photographs of military headstones that I took the other week, and ask her to mark the sections on her plan. Daggers also says that he believes there are approximately 20+ military graves so possibly others can be identified and they may help with the areas.

Anything that reveals the dark secrets of this site would be more than appreciated Mary. I just cant understand why,given the lack of official records due to the blitz or whatever, no knowledge of its layout has been committed to records before it was lost completely ? And if it was,where are they ?
That ,I find, points to far more, long term irreverence on the part of the powers that be, than the practical solution of turning it into a community farm.

Maria, I think,is the lady I spoke with and who lives on the site and runs the farm, she did mention to me that she had a drawing "somewhere" and would send me a copy or let me know when I could see it or call and collect a copy but am still awaiting notice of same,and has still not surfaced after 3 visits now,I live in hope ?

I also have tentatively sought information as to where these 'council plans' may be residing but again, have so far drawn a blank. I am hoping that I may discover any local history buffs in Walton who may have first hand knowledge of the movement/history to convert the site to a farm and work from there.

Any info to help identify the graves of those whose records survive has to be welcome,there are so many people affected by the lack of it, Good luck Mary.

OK the story as Maria told it was that the records were all held in St Nicholas's and then were lost when it was bombed. Later in the 1960's Liverpool Council decided to upkeep some (perhaps most) of the Liverpool Cemeteries, but decided to merely abandon two, one of which was Walton Parochial and the other was Deane Road (Jewish) Cemetery, which is I believe currently being looked after by "Friends of".

She also said that her sister who had acquired the copy plans, they were not grave/burial plans as such, perhaps OS maps or something of that nature and it was about 30 years ago. It does indeed exist as I have seen it and took a couple of photographs but difficult to get either very clear, the whole thing, or anything much of use, and there are only a couple of areas marked.

Daggers mentioned that there are a number of military graves there, I only came across two of them, but then I wasn't in a position on my visit to venture down the paths through gates/over stiles to get to others, but as I found both of those on the CWGC site, with grave references marked, so it COULD be possible to identify areas with the help of more of these entries. It is going to wait until a visit in much dryer weather can be undertaken.

The problem is going to be that from what I could see there are headstones lining the pathways but behind these are general areas, many of them, with no headstones or markings whatsoever. I think this is the problem when people are looking for their ancestor - especially one who may have died in the Walton Workhouse/Infirmary - they are very likely to be in one of the general areas. If it was possible to assume that say, General area C would be behind a row of graves with reference C#, then that will be the nearest identification that could be obtained. May be enough for people, I have a picture of a field in Ford, somewhere within it is buried my Great Grandfather, that's enough for me as I know there is no headstone.

It can be a bit confusing with the Walton district having the Liverpool Parochial Cemetery if you are looking at the burial entries for Walton Park don't forget if it says Workhouse it doesn't mean Walton or West Derby Workhouse it means Liverpool Workhouse at Brownlow Hill. The maps were probably at St Nicholas because it was the Liverpool Parish Church the cemetery being Liverpool's rather than Walton's.

Blue

On the contrary Blue, if you follow this link to the register that does exist,the addresses are very specific and not in the least ambiguous for a pleasant change.

http://interactive.ancestry.co.uk/2198/ ... turnRecord

you can see that the workhouses were actually identified as being of Walton or Liverpool.
There are also entries from the City Hospital North and the Childrens infirmary.

Mary,your "field in Ford" is pretty much how I feel. Sadly however,I will realistically have to settle for all of the fields that used to make up the cemetery area,including the mini estate of semi-detached houses that you pass on the way into the site ?.
One day we might find the answer,with luck.

There are a lot of entries that just say Workhouse we've discussed this subject on here before. I remember an entry saying Workhouse and it was thought to be Walton but was actually Liverpool as were all the entries that said Workhouse. I know there are other entries that do identify the particular Workhouse but this is not the case for all entries. Walton became part of Liverpool in 1895 so later records would need to be more specific about which Workhouse the deceased was living in when they died.


Blue

Some maps on Old Maps UK give a general layout of the cemetery but obviously as they are street maps no indication of the different sections. I was surprised to see that Hornby Close has been built on part of the cemetery:-

http://www.old-maps.co.uk


Blue

I have managed to download a list of 24 military graves, they all have a reference of some sort.

If these headstones can be found - wait until Spring - then a little more about the areas might be identified. No promises