‘Cheers’, join us for a pint

Come and join Friends of Holbeck Cemetery at Holbeck Gala this Saturday, 1st July from 12 midday to 4 pm, and have a pint of local Real ale.

This year The Friends of Holbeck Cemetery, together with Holbeck Christian Fellowship, are sponsoring the Real Ale in the Holbeck Gala Beer Tent. The Real ales will be very local to Holbeck,  have a pint or a half of :-

Leeds Brewery Midnight Bell, Leeds Best and Kirkstall Brewery’s Three Swords –all at £3 a pint or £1:50 for a half. Great taste at a great price.As well as real ales there will Lager, cider , wine and selected spirits Don’t worry if its a damp day either  there is plenty of room undercover in the beer tent. There is food available at other stalls at the Gala so you wont go hungry either. **(Other sponsors include Carlsberg  who are sponsoring the cider, Bookers, Elland Road,who are providing the wine and the L.H.A.Garage Pelican works, Wood Lane Rothwell.)

It may seem a  strange action for FOHC to sponsor beer  at Holbeck Gala ,but its quite logical  , as many of the cemetery’s ‘residents’ were connected the beer industry.  The large black marble memorial that stands at the right of the main entrance gates  celebrates the family of Joseph and Rachel Barker, Innkeepers of the Waggon and Horses , Holbeck. Many other memorials are for  brewers and  beer-sellers such as Thomas H Bentley of The Lord Nelson, William Broadbent , publican, Union Inn, James Barker of New Harrogate Inn Beer-house, who is also listed as a ‘Brewer’s Engineer’ ; Benjamin Roberts of Old Dusty Miller, Elland Road ;Joseph Tempest who was an important Maltster, William Webster of The Foundry Inn, James Hope of the Nelson Inn and Elizabeth Barraclough of the Old Peacock Inn.

They would have been very busy on the days of the Holbeck Feasts which at one point featured activities such as horse-racing, cock-fighting, man–fighting , wrestling and running. This was besides the automata, sideshows, shooting galleries,peep-shows, Punch and Judy,photo-booths,swing-boats and whirligigs.the working class may have been poor but they enjoyed a full and rich communal life. Sadly ,from about 1881 the feasts began to be more commercial and more impersonal with fairgrounds and rides dominating the events rather than  community -run . Today Holbeck Gala is  community led once more , perhaps a bit smaller  but   it provides a good day out for the locals with various stalls, music, children’s entertainment, food stalls  and a Beer tent.

So come and join us and help  to continue a great tradition on Holbeck Moor.

 

Visit of Friends of Lawnswood Cemetery

On the hottest Saturday this year The Friends of Holbeck Cemetery met with The Friends of Lawnswood Cemetery to take them on a tour Holbeck Cemetery.Holbeck Cemetery is a much more humble affair than Lawnswood , which is Leeds’s main  cemetery but there are still lots of interesting and beautiful things to see.

Thankfully Steve Miller , one of their members,was willing to take photographs for us , and you can see a small collection of them on this article.

 

Holbeck cemetery is only 10 acres in size but FOHC could only  show a fraction of it in the time allocated. ( So a chance for a further visit from FOLC to explore even more next time!!) We began by telling them a bit about how our group  started and then led them to the first monument that had sparked our early interest .

Henry Bailey, ‘caterer of amusement’. Not  many cemeteries have a stone with that legend written on it. Connected to the Barnum and Bailey circus family they had performed all over the world and  Frank Walton who is also buried in the plot had introduced moving pictures to the local fairs that were held throughout Leeds and especially on Holbeck Moor. 

Then we looked at some of our more impressive monuments . Henry Rowland Marsden  who invented the famous stone crusher used on railways and roads throughout the world.( One of his machines is still in Thwaite Mill, Hunslet)

Robert Beacock who with Smith and Tannett  took over Matthew Murray’s Round Foundry and re-named it Victoria Foundry . A major employer in the engineering  tool-making industry, which was employing 422 men and 172 boys in 1861. In fact the Victoria Foundry , which was used by a number of firms for a time , being described as having become  in effect one of the earliest industrial estates

Ken Burton then took the tour to look at two memorials one to Joseph Longley and one to Joseph  Henry , who was the called ‘King of Holbeck’ 

The tour  continued towards what was once the viewing platform  where we studied the ever changing city-view and tried to spot landmarks through the shimmering heat. We watched tiny trains leaving City station, cars looking like toys driving along the M621 and we even saw an Air Ambulance  hovering over the LGI.

The group then had a look at more of the cemetery to see what they could find. Discovering a Champion Swimmer of the World, a fishmonger, an inventor of probably the first sewing machine in 1851 and another  lithographer, George Mann to add to our collection.

A great morning  spent with a lovely group of people   enjoying great weather too, what more  do you need .

All photos are courtesy of Steve Miller 

Family research and Family search

We have been busy over the last week or two helping families find their ancestor’s resting places.

People often contact the Friends of Holbeck Cemetery to ask us to pinpoint their ancestor’s memorials – not an easy task for anyone. Our cemetery plans don’t show the paths  and each plot marked is only 1cm. in length, so it’s always easier if we can meet the family in person. Obviously this isn’t always possible but family researchers are a keen bunch and last week we had Sue  & Andrew Jubb from Cheshire who were looking for her Goodhind , Mallinson  and Endeacott family plots. She had found some old notes from her Aunty which indicated the plot number and who was buried there. Her 91 year old father had remembered another plot number that he had noted down in the past when he came to his Uncle Arthur Goodhind’s funeral . So with plans in hand the search began. Thankfully they arrived just as the rain had stopped and the sun came out, so it was a pleasant search . Luckily we managed to find all  three plots ; two vaulted large monuments , which were readable , but  the third plot had a gravestone that was face down so no information could be gleaned from thatone . These were all next to each other which made the search easier

Another family also met us at the same time . Naomi and her family were from Drighlington and their ancestor’s ,called Hayley, or Haley, plots were scattered all around the general side of the cemetery,. Their task was very difficult as one of the Haley’s was in a guinea graves         ( These graves which are scattered around the cemetery have up to 42 names on , covering both sides of the stone. ) They found  the plot  among the guinea graves  but sadly there was only a space- not a stone. However later they managed to find another  plots that they were looking for  and this one was at the opposite side of the cemetery , near to Beeston Road !!

Then this week Ian Morrell contacted us from Pudsey , he was looking for several Barugh or  Baraugh family plots. These were also scattered throughout the cemetery. So Ian and Ken set out on their search dodging through the breezy, rain  storms  but sadly this time, they only managed to find one. Interesting Ian  also had an ancestor buried in a guinea grave and he also only found an empty plot.

An interesting note from Ian was that Holbeck Cemetery’s archives of graves are now digitised and are available to search at LCC Farnley Hall site near Pudsey .  This should make it easier for people who are trying to locate their family plots.

receipt books 1857 onwards

 

 

 

Remembrance Walk 2016

The Friends of Holbeck Cemetery invite you to join them on their annual Remembrance Walk on Sunday 13th November at 2:30 pm. Please meet at the main gates on Fairfax Road, off Cemetery Road. We will focus on some of those who served at the Somme , as this year is the 100th anniversary of that event. Each grave has its own story to tell of the lives of ordinary people like you and me.Please help us to remember them.

I thought some of you may be interested in the background to the  Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones which can be clearly seen scattered throughout the cemetery.In fact Holbeck Cemetery has 87 of these stones and they are looked after by the CWGC

At the beginning of WW1, a man called Fabian Ware , too old to serve in the army, arrived in France in September 1914 to lead a mobile unit of the Red Cross. He soon noticed that there was no one in charge of marking and recording the graves of those killed. He reported ,“Many graves are frequently under fire and inaccessible.I regret to say that not only have a large number of bodies been destroyed beyond all recognition   by the enemy’s fire before burial but that the  traces of graves themselves have in a large number of cases been obliterated.”

The Commission decided to use headstones rather than crosses to mark the graves , simpler to produce,stood up  better and had more room for inscriptions.This did upset some people who wanted a cross.Some families wanted to choose their own headstone . The Commission felt that ‘costly monuments put up by the well-to-do over their dead would contrast unkindly with those humbler ones which would be all the poorer folk could afford ‘, and that headstones should be uniform, to honour everyone equally.Overcoming massive problems of lack of manpower, transport and materials ( enough stone  for 700,000 headstones to begin with ) the Commission managed *’ the biggest single bit of work since any pharaohs.’*Rudyard Kipling.

When the USA entered the war, they promised to bring back home any of their citizens killed in action. Commonwealth governments had not made  any such commitment , and in any case , the scale of their losses were many times greater. The Commission decided that ‘to allow the removal ( of bodies) by a few families( of necessity only those who could afford the cost) would be contrary  to the principle of equality of treatment.’ They thought it would be much more fitting if ‘those who fought and fell together, officers and men, lay together in their last resting place , facing the line they gave their lives to maintain.’

 

When the First World War ended in November 1918 barely half of the Western Front’s dead  had been given a proper burial in a designated military  cemetery. The battle fields were strewn with hundreds of hastily made ‘soldiers’ cemeteries, some little more than clusters of graves in fields , by roadsides or canal banks. Thousands lay in No Man’s Land. Men . Post war  clearance began in earnest in 1919.  Men served in special Graves Concentration  units ( initially volunteers from infantry and labour units) Later it was felt necessary to directly recruit men into the Labour Corps for a limited period of service. As can be imagined this was  a very difficult task for the men employed not only having to work in  a desolate, devastated  landscape but  the additional hazards  from rusting battlefield  debris and unexploded ordnance. These men definitely earned their extra pay’.

More details about the work of the Commissioner can be found on their interesting website , which also feature details of cemeteries throughout the world and details of service men and women who died in service.

Today the CWGC takes care of the graves and memorials of 1.7 million men and women  from across the Commonwealth who died in the two World Wars. In total that is 1,146,918 burials.This gives you some idea of the enormous task that the CWGC  carried out then , and continues today.

Commonwealth War grave

NOTE :The Friends of Holbeck Cemetery are grateful to CWGC for their care of these graves  and only recently   when FOHC  found that two  of them had been damaged ( one broken in half and one uprooted ) the Commission  have responded very quickly and are going to repair them for us.

 

Heritage Open Day 2016

Join us on Thursday 8th September at 11 am to begin the new Holbeck Heritage Trail.  It is a whole day walk  which will begin in Holbeck Cemetery where we will look at some of the memorials of those innovators and inventors  who made Holbeck the great centre of Industry in the early 18th and 19th century. We will hear about their connections with Mathew Murray, John Marshall , the Round Foundry and others, as well as the   Fairs that took place on Holbeck Moor.

You will hear about the Holbeck inventor of probably the world’s first sewing machine in 1851       ( and it was not Isaac Singer !!)

Henry Marsden

Learn about the showmen and women who attended the Feasts and Fairs that took place throughout England  and what they did when they came to Holbeck Feast.One of them was known as #a caterer of amusement’ and another as ‘The oldest showman in England’,who often told of how he brought  the first cinematograph show to Leeds.His wife recalled being at Holbeck Feast when they used to hold a race meetings there .

Then after a walk from the cemetery down Beeston Road you can eat your  lunch  at The Holbeck club, which opened in 1877, where they will be an exhibition and a chance to chat ,

Then the main part of the Holbeck History  Trail continues along Holbeck Moor, St Matthews church and taking in Mathew Murray monument and other noteworthy old buildings in Holbeck and concluding near Templeworks at about 4pm.

Cars can be parked at the cemetery and number 1 Beeston bus could bring you back from the city centre ( they run every 10 minutes) Parking is also available at the club which has toilets and there will tea, coffee etc.available

If you want to just join us for part of the walk just let us know &  bring your packed lunch, walking shoes . . More details/booking contact Ian on  07830665016

 

Remembering the Somme

 Join us for a Sunset Vigil  July 1st at 7:30 pm

Remembering The Somme Vigil will take place around the Cross of Sacrifice ( near Beeston Road) Please join the Friends of Holbeck Cemetery  for about an hour as they focus on some of the soldiers who are remembered in our cemetery. Please help us commemorate this historic event

On the first day of the Somme there were 57,000 British army casualties including 19,000 dead.

Some soldiers  are listed as  ‘dying at home’which usually means  that they had died in a British hospital.In Leeds the hospitals used were 2nd Northern General Hospital, the former Leeds Training College at Becketts Park or East Leeds Hospital which is now the Thackray Museum.

Richard Bunkall was one of the soldiers to die from his injuries in a Leeds hospital on 9th November 1916. He served with The Royal Garrison Artillery and his father was the foreman of the Leeds Sewerage works at Knostrop. Another soldier, Harry Stead, was  the youngest son of Ezra and Emily Stead  and was only twenty -one  when he died in hospital He was in the West Yorkshire Regiment ( Prince of Wale’s Own)and  he came from a family of stone-cutters and plumbers living at 5 Camden Place ,Leeds.

Two married brothers from Holbeck joined the Leeds Pals in early 1915. Tom Pilkington had only recently married and was working as a butcher, his brother, Arthur was a commercial clerk in the local V, he inegar brewery. While Tom was injured at the Battle of the Somme , Arthur survived after been transferred to the Royal Engineers and was discharged on 23rd February 1919.

Some soldiers enlisted when they were underage and they fought in the Somme . At that time many underage boys were being returned from France but many  remained there  anyway, we will never know whether they realised  that they had this option  or not.

Thomas Paul was the eldest of six children and had left school when war broke out but waited until early 1915 to volunteer. A tall well built lad of sixteen years of age when asked how old he was he had told the recruiting officer that he was eighteen and he had been accepted into the Leeds Pals, where he served alongside his cousin, Alfred.Thomas was wounded in battle and sent to the 2/2nd London Casualty clearing station behind the lines where he died on 22nd September 1916. Cousin Alfred, aged twenty-three, was wounded on the first day of the Somme and returned to a Leeds hospital where he died of wounds on 24th July 1916.

Fred Mortimer , son of Henry and Mary Mortimer of Nineveh Avenue, Holbeck was twenty-one years old when he died of wounds on 19th September 1916 in the same Casualty Clearing Station as Thomas Paul.

One seventeen  year old, Tom Clarkson, died of wounds  in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital , London but was buried in Holbeck Cemetery with full military honours on 17th July 1916

In the same week on the 12th July , Frederick Richard Lewis was also buried in the cemetery . Frederick had been severely wounded on 1st July and a couple of days later had found himself on a hospital ship bound for  Britain but  sadly he had died of his wounds before been able to reach the shore .Frederick was the first Leeds Pal, who had died in the theatre of war,  to be buried in Leeds.

Ernest Longley  was a young gifted footballer , who played for Leeds Grammar School, YMCA and Leeds Yarnbury Club. On the outbreak of war he had enlisted with the Leeds Pals on 24th September 1914 and was killed in action ,on 1st July, at the Somme, where he had been a Platoon Bomber . He was twenty-six years old and came from a wealthy family who owned the Joseph Longley Bedding Manufacturer & Co . The company’s  premises had originally fronted Lands Lane . The building is still standing at the junction of Lands Lane and Albion Place and the name ‘Longley’ can be clearly seen on top of the building .( YEP 25th May 2016  mentions that this building has been sold for £3.7 million ! ) 

Leonard Clarkson( 1st/6th Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment) was another nineteen-year old who was killed in action and even though his family came from Wetherby he is remembered on a family grave in Holbeck cemetery.

John William Hainsworth( King’s Own Light Infantry) was 24 years old when he was killed and is remembered on the Thiepval Memorial  in France. This memorial is to the missing of the Somme and bears the names of more than 72,000 officers and men of the UK and South Africa forces who died in the Somme sector before March 1918 and have no known grave. Over 90% of those commemorated died between July 1st and November 1916. The memorial also serves as an Anglo- French Battle Memorial in recognition of the joint nature of the 1916 offensive. The memorial was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and was built between   1928 and 1932  and unveiled by the then Prince of Wales in the presence of the President of France on 31st July 1932

Private John Fell, West Yorkshire , Prince of Wales’s Own, is also remembered on this memorial

John William Milner, an Engine Pattern Maker and general engineer who had lived with his wife ,Hilda at 14 Ledbury Street, Beeston Road before enlisting in the West Yorkshire , Prince of Wales’s Own, died on the first day of the Somme  aged 36 and is remembered in Serre Road Cemetery no 3, France.

 

Wandering and working in the blossom

Wednesday 11th May was a pretty busy day in Holbeck Cemetery. The cemetery was looking pretty spectacular too with its cherry trees looking their best after the sun and showers that we had had recently.If you want to come and see this beautiful place don’t delay as the blossom will soon be over.

Blossom time

The Friends of Holbeck Cemetery  were conducting a tour for the Wednesday Wanderers . It is always nice to introduce new people on our tours . Thankfully the rain had stopped just in time and it wasn’t windy. We had a good look around and heard about the Holbeck inventors who made this area so important during the Victorian age . They were a great group with lots of interesting questions. Because of limited time we only managed one section of the  cemetery and they are hoping to return at another date. They were particularly impressed by the view from the former viewpoint. It is always interesting to see what buildings  you can spot from here and it is ever changing with new cranes indicating even more change ahead.

Other folk busy in the cemetery were volunteers from O2 helping to tidy up the centre path. They were also interested in the history of the cemetery and were excited when they  discovered some numbers on the edging stones. ( FOHC believe that this indicated that these stones had been re-used and had originally been around various graves)

It is really good to see companies putting something back into the community and they were a great enthusiastic  and hard-working  bunch of young people. A big thank you to them for all their hard work , much appreciated .

 

Investigating and detecting in the cemetery

Today the 19th April 2016 dawned bright and sunny, just the day to get down to  some investigating, but this time this will be just a bit different.

Instead of helping families who are searching for family plots or hidden meanings in the symbolism of the memorials-carvings , a new person has stepped forward to help with the detecting .

Step forward DCI Banks – yes one of his famous cases will involve Holbeck Cemetery  and the Nosters!!

DCI Banks is a very popular detective series broadcast on TV and today it is being filmed in Holbeck Cemetery. DCI Banks is a British crime series produced by Left Bank Pictures . The series is based on Peter Robinson’s inspector Alan Banks novels and stars Stephen Tompkinson as Detective chief Inspector Banks . In 2013 the series won in the drama  category at the Royal Television Society Yorkshire Programme Awards.

LEFT BANK PICTURES writes ‘The fourth series , (part of which is being filmed today), will feature the usual powerful personal stories for the lead characters,both in their private lives  and in their work environment; a deeper exploration of Banks’ relationship with his parents, further complications in Annie and Banks on/off romance and a personal crisis that threatens Helen’s career.’Annie is played by Andrea Lowe and Helen is played by Caroline Catz.

There will be three stories in this series:- ‘What Will Survive’; ‘Home’ and ‘Ghosts’ We can only guess which one will feature Holbeck cemetery .So keep your eyes peeled for the broadcasting dates  all you fans of DCI Banks , crime stories and especially Holbeck Cemetery

tiring work filming

 

Gentleman Joshua Horner Robinson

Gentleman Joshua Horner Robinson 1816-1891

The Friends of Holbeck Cemetery get a great many enquirers from relatives seeking information about their ancestors and some we can help. The other day an email arrived from Helen asking for information about her great, great, great, grandfather and his wife and sons who are buried in the cemetery. Thankfully they feature on FOHC’s limited database taken from the original grave receipt-books from 1857. We also found that the son had also purchased another plot.Another plot nearby is to his daughter Hannah Walker

This led to Helen telling us a bit more  about her ancestors history in Holbeck, with more information promised later. So here is a ‘taster’ based on Helen’s information.

Joshua Horner Robinson lived at Wellington House, Mill Green Holbeck when he purchased three grave-plots, 9433, 9434, 9435, on 23rd September 1880 at the cost of £3 per plot. He needed the three plots together because he was having a grand memorial erected for his family and his wife, Maria , who had recently died  on 16th June 1880.

Joshua Horner Robinson was a wealthy man when he died on 1891, leaving £140,000, a huge sum of money at that time . His elder son, also named Joshua Horner, who was living in Balm Walk at the time of his father’s death in 1891, did not inherit the lump sum and was effectively disinherited . although the money was put in trust for him to have an income from,so perhaps he was feeling a bit better off and purchased a plot of his own .

Joshua senior’s funeral on 8th May 1891 was very grand affair as noted in the daily paper.

The obituary reads:-

The late Joshua Horner Robinson. The internment of the remains of this gentleman took place on Tuesday afternoon at Holbeck Cemetery. A large assembly of relatives, friends and work people were present, and there were seventeen  coaches and carriages in the funeral cortege. Mr Robinson, who resided at Mill Green nearly all his life, was a well-known man of business, though not in the ordinary sense a public man. He had entered his 75th year . He was for many years a maltster and corn-miller, and had recently become connected with the cloth mans’ business. Mr Robinson is reputed to have died a rich man, and left behind him five sons and one daughter  to mourn his loss. The Revd. O Cookson officiated at the graveside.Mr W Swales was the undertaker.

Helen notes that this report was a little inaccurate as he had more surviving children

This plot is for his daughter Hannah Walker

***NOTE-£140,000 in  1891 would be the equivalent of about £16,8000,000 in today’s money. Joshua  was definitely a rich man when he died****

 It would be interesting to discover just how he became so rich; was it as a maltster, a corn-miller or with the cloth mans’ business?Maybe Helen will tell us more tantalising tales of her ancestors

2015 in review

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