Bygone Burnley: Burnley Cemetery, with historian Roger Frosdt MBE, 27-1-25
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00:00Today we're by Burnley Cemetery and behind me is the original entrance to the cemetery.
00:07Burnley had one major cemetery for many years and that was the one around St Peter's Church.
00:15There were others but by the middle years of the 19th century Burnley was too big for only one cemetery
00:25and the town started looking for someone else to construct a cemetery.
00:31Burnley didn't become a borough until 1861 and the Improvement Commissioners
00:37who were part of the local government in Burnley up to 1861 found this site
00:44and in 1856 they purchased it, built the archway as the entrance into the cemetery
00:54and we're going to have a look also at the original cemetery keeper's house which is still standing.
01:02One of the first graves you come to isn't to an individual but it's to the Burnley men who fought in a series of wars in the 19th century.
01:12The Crimea was one of those wars and of course a Burnley man played a very prominent part in that role
01:21and this is General Scarlet who is buried at Clividshire.
01:25He was the general who led the charge of the Heavy Brigade, in other words the charge that we actually won.
01:33We lost the charge of the Light Brigade but General Scarlet led that attempt
01:39and became famous and a friend of Queen Victoria.
01:43The other 19th century wars are the Napoleonic Wars and lots of Burnley men fought in the Napoleonic Wars
01:51and were among those who came back after the Battle of Waterloo expecting prosperity and the country to thank them
02:01but they came back to just about the worst economic depression the country had ever known.
02:09In the 19th century Burnley along with lots of towns because of its religious connections was a very well-known centre of music
02:22and the father of Burnley musicians was Thomas Healy and this is his memorial.
02:30At the top of the memorial there are musical instruments carved out of stone
02:36but Thomas's son, also Thomas Healy, was the first person to sing for Queen Victoria in the Albert Memorial in London.
02:50He was the first performer to perform there, a fact often forgotten but should be remembered.
02:59This is the grave of the founder of the Massey Brewing Empire and it was an empire because Massey's was a big brewery for Lancashire.
03:12The brewery had been started in 1750. It wasn't known as Massey's to start off with.
03:19They bought it in the late 1820s and reopened it in 1830 and it remained Massey's until it was taken over in the 1960s.
03:31Now the Massey who founded the business is Lord Massey who is commemorated here.
03:40He died in 1877. He was a very elderly man when he died. He wasn't a lord. Lord was his Christian name. His mother, her surname was Lord.
03:53In those days it was very common to name a boy in the family after his mother's maiden name but he benefited here because he was Mr Lord Massey.
04:10Now he didn't have very many children of his own but the family remained in charge of the business until the 20th century and under his head is that of Edward Stocks Massey
04:28who left a fortune to Burnley. In 1910 I think it was £100,000 which when his wife died would come to Burnley because he had no children.
04:43He came to Burnley and there still is the Stocks Massey bequest which meets every year to disperse thousands of pounds to what was Edward Stocks Massey's life interest.
04:59He was interested in music and culture particularly music and the fund goes to the Municipal Orchestra, the Municipal Choir and other artistic organisations in the town.
05:16In this the oldest part of the graveyard that goes back to the latter 19th century there are lots of interesting graves but we just picked one out. It's not a terribly large grave but it's an artistic one.
05:31It is a grave which you don't bypass. On the bottom of the cross there is the name of William Angelo Waddington who was a partner in his father William Waddington's business of architects.
05:48Some of the great buildings, churches, chapels, the grammar school for example in Burnley, the old grammar school on what was Bank Parade were all designed by the Waddingtons and their bequest to the town were some of the best buildings in Burnley.