Graveyard for Sale

It all started when my partner Steve brought me a newspaper cutting from the Sheffield Telegraph.
"Is this your Mary Anne's graveyard?" he asked."It's up for sale."
"I don't think so" I said. "It can't be"
"I think it is"
"You'll be sorry" I said.

A few emails later, two newspaper articles written, some phone calls made and I am on an expedition with several others through a jungle in industrial Attercliffe. Soon, despite all the odds, I find myself staring down at the inscription on the two enormous memorial stones that cover the family vault of the Read family of Wincobank Hall.

Eight members of this extraordinary family are interred there,safe beneath those heavy stones. Apart from a baby,  all were  involved in the fight against slavery, notably Mary Anne Rawson who campaigned both on the doorstep to persuade the women of Sheffield to boycott sugar from the colonies and by writing letters to royalty, politicians and celebrities of the day, entreating them to lend their voices to the campaign.  Most did, although Wordsworth, happy in his Lakeland idyll, politely declined.

Wincobank Hall stood at the top of my road until it was demolished in 1925.  Mary Anne Rawson founded the little school which later became Upper Wincobank Chapel as well as a teacher training college in Jamaica, one of the first in the world.

You can read more if you like, in the articles I was asked to write for the Sheffield Telegraph. The links are below.  I think there will soon be a third article - what to do with an overgrown, unwanted graveyard...

http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/nostalgia/nostalgia-the-changing-face-of-wincobank-hall-1-8403171

http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/whats-on/arts/heritage-the-wonder-women-of-wincobank-hall-1-8427858

Connie

Connie Wheeliker, nee Bell

Steve and I are moving into Connie's house soon.  

So who is Connie and where did she go?

I first met Connie Wheeliker nine years ago when I was summoned to her house just ten doors down from mine. My reputation as the history hunter of High Wincobank had reached her and she wanted to hand over the baton. She showed me her old photographs and told me that her ancestors, the Bells, were from one of the oldest families in the area. 

She had been born in the house that stands at the end of my road, on the site of the gatehouse of Wincobank Hall.  

Connie's Family Album

I later returned to receive cherished treasures: her local studies file, an enormous slide projector, a map of the Ancient Parish of Ecclesfield and a photo scrapbook she had made for the Wincobank Chapel archives. 

She showed me a painting in her hallway of the the old Newman Road farm surrounded by open fields.  Until that moment I had only thought of this  the plot of land opposite her house as a scrap yard stuck in the middle of housing. It brought a whole new perspective to the evolution of the area. 

Newman Road Farm

Last Christmas, when I came back from Hawaii I found that she was in hospital.  In her final six months spent in and out of hospital I saw more of her than I had ever done.  

She loved the home where she had lived for 64 years and the garden with its birds and tenderly nurtured plants.  She did not want to leave it, but eventually conceded defeat.  After several visits to hospital she asked to be moved to the nursing home where she died a few weeks later from cancer of the colon, something she had hardly ever mentioned. 

Connie was a character, very particular but with a great sense of humour. We made a great little film of her talking with her old friend Brendan Ingle who just happens to be a trainer of world champion boxers.  They had so much to say.    https://youtu.be/AV1uF3-h2UY  If the Youtube link does not work just cut and paste it into your browser.

A downhill adventure

If you look carefully you can see Steve outside our new home.  We're not living there yet because the decorators are in, stripping the walls.  Tomorrow the electrician and the joiner, the builder, the plasterer and the heating engineer will be joining in the party. I shall take chocolate biscuits to eat amidst the dust.
Where is it?  About 100 yards downhill from my present lovely little home, still in Wincobank.
So here's to a new adventure, a new chapter.

The house has a sweet garden, and beyond the green gate there is a further enclosure, a grassy area which will soon be a vegetable garden bringing forth cabbages and leeks, rhubarb and delicious strawberries, beans, onions and potatoes.

This was Connie's garden.   She loved her garden. She fed the many birds, tended the plants and I can imagine her still sitting in the swing seat enjoying the summer sunshine.

Lizzy and Seth like our new home.  They will love the garden and when they visit they will be able to play in the little camp that we will make at the back of the vegetable garden in the deep hedge, with a secret gate through to the woodland beyond.
I used to visit Connie and she would tell me about her long life.  I would tell her about little Lizzy and Seth so she saved the children's booklets from the People's Friend for me to take to Liverpool and I feel as though they almost know each other.