Halkyn Old Graveyard
A visit to the Old Graveyard at Halkyn in Flintshire, North Wales is always fascinating. It is an eerie and atmospheric location, overgrown and yet not quite completely abandoned. It is a graveyard which has a haunting beauty and romance too.
It feels as if it is frozen in time as the last burials took place in the latter half of the 1870s. The old church and its churchyard were abandoned in 1878 when it was relocated to a new site with a bigger church. The old church is gone and there is just a clearing and a mound to show where it once stood. Many of the graves are now overgrown and the gravestones hard to read. Some are easier to decipher than others.
In the graveyard there are a number of tombs, or more correctly chest tombs, which are overgrown or collapsing.
Chest tombs were popular for a few hundred years though you don’t seem to see new ones these days. Maybe they are too expensive or no longer popular or no longer used in modern cemeteries. They comprise of four sides and a lid forming a kind of box or cist. They sit on top of the grave with the body usually being buried six to eight feet beneath.
One in particular caught my eye as its lid lay askew as if someone or something had pushed it aside. Pretty spooky.
What is going on here? What can have happened?
Could this be caused by the weather, geology, nature, vandalism, grave robbers or some other reason?
There are many stories throughout the country of body snatchers who were active in the 1800s. The fear of the newly interred being ‘uninterred’ led to the relatives of the deceased to find innovative ways to try to prevent this from happening. Could this be the case here in Halkyn? Were the resurrection men active here in the dead of night or are there other reasons for the state of these chest tombs?
Body snatching
Body snatching was the illicit removal of corpses from graves and morgues in the 18th and 19th century. These bodies were then sold on to medical schools and surgeons as teaching aids for dissection. Body snatching was a relatively lucrative trade as the body snatchers could earn good money. Until the Anatomy Act of 1832 it was not actually illegal to steal corpses from graves as no one actually owned them. It was however illegal to steal any goods from the corpse or to carry out dissection. This led to a furtive trade in bodies with individuals such as Burke and Hare or groups such as the Bethnal Green Gang raiding graveyards and even resorting to murder to get their hands on corpses. The trade died out partly due to the Anatomy Act and also due to the use of embalming. It also led to relatives and friends of the deceased to try different ways to prevent their loved ones from becoming a victim of this trade by the use of mortsafes, nightly vigils or even railings around graves to make it harder for the graves to be accessed. However, due to the lack of a nearby medical school which would have provided a ready market for the bodies I think this is unlikely to be the case here in Halkyn. Grave robbery could be another possibility as any valuables which might have been buried with the deceased could have been an attraction to thieves.
What else could it be?
If not these suspects then what other culprits could there be? I did what every good investigator does and I decided to follow the evidence and look for expert opinion. Following a search of the internet I found two articles which definitely sounded promising. One was entitled, ‘Churchyard Chest Tombs‘ and was by Jonathan Taylor and the other was, ‘Churchyard Monuments‘ by Sally Strachey. Both articles cast further doubt on any theory which involved body snatchers or grave robbers and instead pointed the finger of suspicion firmly at a number of other suspects.
Who are these other suspects? Apparently the main ones are vegetation, subsidence and rust? Yep, rust.
The Main Suspects
Vegetation seems to be one of the chief culprits and especially ivy or other such woody plants. This appears to be the case for many of the tombs in Halkyn.
Subsidence is the next culprit. This can cause movement to the monument and potential collapse. Could this be what has happened to our tomb with its wonky lid?
Our last major culprit is the iron fixings which were used as structural ties but which corrode and result in the opening up of the joints and a loss of structural integrity and then collapse.
If we add to these a lack of maintenance and damage from vandalism then I believe we have our culprits and the causes are nothing more than the effects of time and weather.
Expert opinion seems to point to the Resurrection Men and the undead being completely innocent.
Or are they?
Thank you for joining me for our investigation in Halkyn.
Join me again on Christmas Eve for a Christmas Ghost Story and on 31st December for a trip to Chester and the Writing on the Wall….
Pubs to enjoy in Halkyn
The Blue Bell Inn, Halkyn, Flintshire, North Wales
https://www.facebook.com/BlueBellInnHalkyn
The Britannia Inn, Halkyn, Flintshire, North Wales
https://www.britanniainnhalkyn.uk/
Further reading and sources:
Churchyard Chest Tombs (buildingconservation.com)
https://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/churchyard-monuments/churchyard-monuments.htm
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/body-snatchers/
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