Recent Events in 2024
Now we need you – get baking and collecting!
Save the date – Christmas Fair is coming!
Our Easter Club activities
We were sad to see Alison leave us – but we gave her a good send off!
Our quiz night – fiercely competed !!
The view from the ground and the air.
There are few who know more about the inscriptions on the memorial stones in St Michael’s Church, Caerwys, than Janette Fenney.
Janette was a volunteer recorder for the Clwyd Family History Society’s project to record and index the inscriptions in the churchyard. The research started in 2004, and the index was published in 2009.
Janette worked under the guidance of Carolyn Watts, who did much to enthuse and train volunteers in parishes in North East Wales. Janette remembers her time as a volunteer very clearly. She came to the churchyard to record the inscriptions whenever she could. She spent five years as a volunteer on the work.
Recording was not always straightforward. Many of the older inscriptions were in antique script, which was sometimes hard to decipher. Use of abbreviations was common. Some inscriptions had been partly worn away or cracked. Many were Welsh language inscriptions.
‘We were not allowed to disturb the turf or to clean the stones too vigorously. We found that the best way to read the inscriptions was to sprinkle them with talcum powder. After a while you became better at making sense of the inscriptions. It helped to learn common abbreviations, and to identify family groups.’
One of Janette’s best friends, Hilda Powell, died during the period of the research. Janette made sure that Hilda’s inscription was included before the record went to press.
The outcome of the project was an invaluable index of the inscriptions on all the visible memorial stones in the churchyard. If you are looking for the grave of a relative you can check the surname index, and if it is recorded, you get a word-for word description of the inscription. You also get an index number which gives you the location of the stone on a plan of the churchyard.
It is a unique resource, which has helped people from near and far trace the resting-place of their ancestors. A copy is kept in the vestry of the church, and can be accessed by contacting Roland Ward (warden1@stmichaels-caerwys.org.uk), or it can be purchased via the Clwyd Family History Society website, www.clwydfhs.org.uk.
Detailed though it is, the publication can’t be a complete record of burials. Many graves were marked with wooden crosses or plinths, which have disappeared with the passage of time. Some burials were in unmarked graves. The turf of the churchyard has covered many memorials. Having said that, it is a priceless resource for family researchers and for local historians.
What do memorial stones tell us? They tell us about extended families and the life spans of their members in the days before antibiotics and anaesthetics. They reveal the staggeringly high rate of infant mortality before the 1950’s.. Each stone has a story to tell.
Among the oldest stones are the memorial stones that the Victorians rescued from the churchyard and erected in the western corner of the north nave. The Gwyean Fach stone dates from the 1300’s. There is also a slab in two pieces on which the remnants of a very fine and very ancient cross head are carved.
If you were buried in a grave with a carved memorial stone before the late 1700’s, you were almost certainly from a wealthy family. By the 1800’s stone or slate memorial stones were the norm. Often several generations are commemorated on one stone.
Towards the end of her time as a volunteer, Janette found a stone memorial almost covered with turf. Carefully, she lifted the turf, and recorded the inscription. She realised that the stone was part of a pathway, but she was not allowed to pull the turf back to reveal it.
It was that pathway that Brian and Tricia Vaughan uncovered 13 years later, a photograph of which appeared in the last issue. There is no plan to expose more gravestones hidden under the turf. They are best left. Enough has been revealed, however, to show what a rich heritage we have there, which we must conserve and respect.
In the last week Zac Savva has brought his commercial drone to the churchyard to take some trial aerial photographs. The definition and contrast are excellent, and the photographs will help us to identify any more pathways hidden under turf. A video prepared by Zac is now on the church website under ‘Views of the Church’, www.stmichaels-caerwys.org.uk.
A Cherished Place
Can you put a date to the old photo of the west side of the St Michael’s Church churchyard shown below?
Some clues:
There was no church clock (1913) The church entrance was where the vestry is now. There was no west porch. Both the porch and the vestry were built in 1904.
There is a glimpse on the right of the building of the large buttresses that held up the east wall of the church before the renovation in 1896.
The photograph has to have been taken before 1896, and my guess is that it is from the 1880’s.
The churchyard then was very different to what it is now. The grass was long. It was probably scythed twice a year, and perhaps sheep were left to graze there at times. The churchyard accommodated a number of large trees and bushes. There are some prominent headstones and family monuments with railings around them. Most memorials are below the long grass, however, and there are some headstones resting against the west wall, having previously fallen down.
It was a far cry from the mown and manicured churchyard that it is now.
In Caerwys, the memorial stones that survive from before the 1900’s are in slate, stone or marble. The larger stones were designed to stand upright. There is often as much of the stone below the surface as appears above, and they are very secure, even if they do lean with the movement of soil over time.
The smaller stones were designed either to go on a plinth or to lie flat. Over time, the church has laid insecure stones down, and has formed pathways and borders in the churchyard from laid memorial stones.
In modern times, memorials are fixed upright on cement foundations, and the grass around them is mowed regularly. They will remain visible and cared for, hopefully for generations. Visitors often comment on how well relatives look after the graves.
The turf of the churchyard has covered many older memorials. The churchyard turf very slowly but inexorably grows across stones which are laid flat. Many have disappeared below a carpet of turf. It’s a natural process of reclamation as time passes and as memories fade.
In 2018 two Wardens of St Michael’s Church, Brian and Tricia Vaughan, and Peter Dooley, Deputy Town Mayor have been restoring parts of the churchyard and have revealed memorial stones previously lost under turf or ivy.
Earlier this year, Brian and Tricia were weeding around memorial stones in the eastern part of the churchyard, when they came across what looked as if it could be a pathway of stones from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The stones were covered in turf. Carefully, they lifted the turf, removed it, and cleaned the stones.
They are there for all to see, and include some of the earliest surviving stone memorials in that part of the churchyard, dating from the 1700’s.
At the same time, Peter Dooley has been working hard in the churchyard to reveal and clean memorial stones which have been on the point of encroachment by the turf. They are by the main path. Where the stones have split or sunk, Peter has raised them and re-set them, so that they are real features of interest as you walk through the churchyard. Peter has also refurbished the doors of the lychgates and repaired worn concrete paths.
Where are the earliest stones? The earliest memorial stones are not in the churchyard at all. Any guesses? More information in the next issue of the Caerwys Chronicle. We know a lot about the memorial stones because of the work that the volunteers of the Clwyd Family History Society did from 2001 to record the inscriptions. Their story will be told in the next edition of the Caerwys Chronicle.
Brian, Tricia and Peter are carrying on with their work in the churchyard. With the help of Rob Kendrick, contractor, and church members they have cleared an area on the north side of the churchyard hidden behind large bushes of laurel and holly. They have removed ivy from the churchyard walls.
On the far side of the eastern edge of the churchyard, Tim Biddle has tended the natural meadow. He has planted wildflower seeds and plugs and has made sure that the meadow has been mown at the right times. It will blossom as a wildflower meadow in the spring.
Ven John Lomas, Rector, commented in the Harvest Service that, ‘the churchyard has never looked better’. Visitors say that it is a churchyard that is cherished, by relatives, by the church congregation, and by the people of Caerwys. It reflects a community that cares.
RW
