Ian Dewhirst leads a walk round the graveyards of
Haworth
On Sunday 10
June one of the walks scheduled was the tour of Haworth graveyards with Ian
Dewhirst (a local historian and a real Yorkshire man) as our guide. About 25
people met Ian near the Sunday school entrance and we started off first with
the graveyard next to the church (which is the oldest graveyard of Haworth).
Apart from the so-called Brontë graves (The Brown tombstone and Tabitha’s
grave) we visited a number of very interesting graves, although sometimes very
difficult to decipher (a brush would have been handy sometimes!). In his
very recognizable Yorkshire accent Ian had great stories to tell at a lot of
these graves: the story of the Highwayman (James Sutcliffe), the story of the
last hand-loom weaver (Timothy Feather), the story of the man lost at sea
(Elkanah Merrell) and of the woman lost at sea (while on her way to seeking a
new life in Australia – Elisabeth Hartley), the story of the assumed Haworth
poisoner (John Sagar), the story of the honest gamekeeper (John William Moore)
and many more. There were some very beautifully carved gravestones e.g. the
gravestone with the stone infant laid with his head resting on a pillow
(Heaton), or the musical gravestones with hymns carved in stone.
With half of our
group left, we then set off on our way to the municipal Haworth graveyard (off
the Stanbury road) where Ian showed us some more interesting (newer) graves:
the grave of Lily Cove (the parachutist who crashed with her balloon in
Haworth), the grave of Anita McCluskey (a BS Council member with a quote from
Wuthering Heights on her gravestone), some beautiful war graves, some special
children’s’ graves, a murder victim’s grave, gravestones with beautiful poetry,
etc….
We then
continued our journey to the Baptist churchyards (near West Lane’s Baptist
church): a little bit hidden away, but still worthwhile visiting (one grave was
particularly remarkable in that it had a huge pint of stout on the gravestone:
old Harry “the hat” Denton liked his pint in the Old Sun! and had it carved on
his grave when he could no longer visit “The Sun”).
After
approximately three hours of rummaging on graves we finally ended this very
lively and interesting tour on West Lane where we said goodbye to our guide
Ian. Since I read the book “Ghosts and Gravestones of Haworth” by Philip Lister
I had been looking forward very much to this graveyard tour, and I must admit:
I was certainly not disappointed. We could not have wished for a better guide
than Ian. We were promised a treat and we definitely got one, and certainly one
to my liking!! I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Marina Saegerman
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