Atworth Village website |
On Monday 29th April 2002 it was proposed at a meeting of the committee of Atworth History Group that it would be of benefit to the community if a map of the memorials in St. Michael’s Churchyard could be drawn, and the inscriptions recorded.
As a consequence of this decision, David Tomkiss undertook the making of the map with Kath Harley as scribe. The work was carried out between the months of October 2002 and July 2003.
Most of the memorials listed here were visited more than twice in order to attain as much accuracy as possible. In several cases, the top layer of stone had disintegrated, and the researchers spent countless hours on their hands and knees searching the churchyard grasses for fragments. These were then painstakingly fitted back together again for recording. One inscription was unearthed from beneath a huge anthill. It was discovered that the time of day, the weather, and the time of the year, made a great deal of difference as to how much of an ancient tomb’s writing could be successfully deciphered. A torch, a watering can and a long black tube were found to be indispensable!
Grateful thanks are extended to Joan Cocozza, genealogist, for her enthusiastic encouragement, research and confirmation of many of the dates on the older tombs.
The outcome of the project was a document which contains the research
findings, together with an outline map of the churchyard to aid location of the
relevant burial site. The project document entitled "St. Michael's Church
Memorials", can be purchased in printed form if desired (details how to obtain
on our itemsforsale page), or it can be downloaded here
as an Adobe PDF file. There is a charge for the printed version to cover
materials & postage.
Please Note
It is important that you click once only on the link to the file. If you attempt to
download more than one copy, then your access to the archive is likely to be blocked.
Click here:
churchyardmemorials.pdf
for the file.
(Please note the file size is 959kB, so will take a
few minutes to download on a diallup connection.
There is a detailed location plan showing the position of the memorials using the reference number shown in the above document. This is not included in the above document, but is in the process of being converted to a CAD drawing. When complete it will be available on this web site.
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