Hi Everyone,Thank you for everyones imput .I contacted Tongue cemetery and they have no records of the graves.I believe that some years after Moor Lane Chapel closed a Methodist church or school was built on the grounds, but there was no mention of what happened to the graves.I also have contacted Manchester archives and as Bob said,they only have records for Baptisms.Surely they would not just build on a grave yard without first taking note of who was buried there...........would they ? regards Kath ==== ENG-LAN-BOLTON Mailing List ==== To switch from one mode to the other, unsubscribe from one and then subscribe to the other. ============================== Find your ancestors in the Birth, Marriage and Death Records. New content added every business day. Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13964/rd.ashx --------------------------------- Switch an email account to Yahoo! Mail, you could win FIFA World Cup tickets.

Hi Kath, I'm not sure what the rules are, or if there are any but I can give you a couple of examples of custom and practice. St Paul's Church, on Halliwell Rd, Bolton had a graveyard a few hundred yards away on Cloister St. This has been grassed over with the graves intact, and is now a children's recreation ground. Some of the headstones, which have been laid flat are still partially showing through the grass. The children use some of these as bases for bonfires. Also in Halliwell is St Peter's Church. This is a different church from St Peter's, Bolton Parish Church where it has already been said that the headstones have been stacked against the boundary wall. My grandfather was buried in the churchyard at St Peter's, Halliwell in 1925. When my grandmother died in 1951 she was buried in the same grave. When I became interested in family research and discovered where they were buried, I visited the graveyard and discovered that their headstone had been "cleared away to make maintenance easier". The headstone has vanished. No one remembers what they did with it. A number of others have been used to build a dustbin storage area. You can see bits of some of the inscriptions. My grandfather was The Rev. Henry Wright Thornley. All around his grave are graves with headstones because they got fed up with the clearance project shortly after they started. Visit almost any graveyard, with the exception of CWGC graveyards, and you have to conclude that the only people interested in the graves are we whose ancestors are interred in them. I make no judgement of this situation, I simply observe it as a fact. Whether it's the Church, the Council, or property developers what matters is now and the future. Respect for the dead will be given token consideration, then ignored. The fact that families would not have expected their graves to be disturbed, and that they would have paid probably a significant part of their savings towards the interment and family memorials will receive not even token consideration. So, would they do it? Certainly if no one stopped them. Rgds, Bob Thornley, Bolton From: "Kathryn Hale" <kathhale23@yahoo.co.uk> <snip> Surely they would not just build on a grave yard without first taking note of who was buried there...........would they ? <snip>