Monday April 1^st 2019

Last week three of us went to Kettlewell to survey the tiny little burial ground attached to the former Wesleyan Chapel. The chapel was closed down the 1980s and converted into residential, but happily the gravestones have been left standing. 

This is now someone’s back garden so we were very privileged to be allowed to carry out the survey. It took less than a day – just 8 gravestones are standing.

We carried out some RTI photography on 2 of the memorials – but a third illegible stone was far too badly eroded for it to be worthwhile.

It was a perfect day for RTI – a cloudy, fairly dull, dry, still day. 

One of the memorials has an interesting crenelated crest, while the others are fairly standard examples of Late Victorian memorials. The badly eroded memorial was obviously of a low gothic design, while the others are simple, modest designs with minimal decoration – three of them bearing a band of the same style of an abstract rosette.

The dates of the memorials range from 1862 to 1914. It must be assumed that even taking into account the un-marked burials – only about another 8 - most of the chapel congregation may have been buried at the parish church.

Jane Lunnon