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Family History Documents and Artefacts => Graveyards and Gravestones => Topic started by: Ellis of Lostock on Wednesday 25 August 10 15:53 BST (UK)
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Does anyone know, in cemetery records, what the entry "Cold ground" might mean? It appears in the column marked "Situation of Grave or Vault", together with a description of the type of grave concerned. The question relates particularly to Colne cemetery, Lancs, UK.
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Hi
It would help to be able to see an image of the abbreviation - could it instead be an abbreviation for consecrated? Consecrated ground would be the areas as in churchyards where the ground was consecrated by the Church of England. Unconsecrated ground would be where non-conformists were buried.
Regards
Valda
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Ta Valda, it definitely isn't "consecrated" or "unconsecrated", they appear as seperate words. It's always written "cold ground". I'm afraid I can't do an example electronically!
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Hi
Next attempt still doesn't really hack those initials, but a cemetery register might also be indicating common ground as opposed to privately purchased graves?
Regards
Valda
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You might be onto something, as (for the limited examples I've got photocopies of) "Common Ground" never appears with "Cold Ground" (just to irritate, I've found a Ground Cold!!)
I'm reasonably sure its an abbreviated word starting col- and ending in -ed, probably -ed.
Hmm.
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my initial thoughts were that it might have meant the North side of the churchyard i.e. the devils graveyard cold because the sun doesnt shine there, and peoples preferences were to be buried elsewhere although the churchyard soon filled up and they had no choice but to beburied on the Northside - i ramble on i have found another possible word to do with graveyards beginning with COL which is Columbarium which means the area where after cremation they were interred, but cremation wasnt in regular use in the Uk until late 19thc. in fact it was frowned upon
this bit comes from that wicked encyclopedia:
Cremation was declared as legal in England and Wales when Dr. William Price was unsuccessfully prosecuted for cremating his son;[63] formal legislation followed later with the passing of the Cremation Act of 1902 (this Act did not extend to Ireland), which imposed procedural requirements before a cremation could occur and restricted the practice to authorised places.[64] In 1885 the first official cremation took place at Woking. Ten cremations then took place in 1886. In 1892 a crematorium opened in Manchester, followed by one in Glasgow in 1895 and one in Liverpool in 1896.
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I think Toni is on to something, as I've just checked and the entries (I have) so dated are all post 1894?
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I`m wondering if it might refer to "Coloured Ground", possibly meaning an area where coloured people were buried?
Cold , is very possibly an abbreviation of coloured.
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Not coloured people (assuming you mean non-caucasian :-\ ) but it would make a typical entry read "Ground coloured green", but why should this be? Is it referring to colouring in of a plan maybe?
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Hi
They could only be cremations if there was a crematorium. The first crematorium in the whole country was in Woking in 1878 which was very much a lone crematorium blazing a trail. Though built in 1878 the first cremation did not take place there until 1885. By 1896 there were only 4 crematoriums in the whole country and those apart from Woking were all in very large cities Manchester being one of them in 1892.
Pendle council operates Colne cemetery. It says a lot on its website about its cemeteries but makes no mention of a crematorium. Would that mean the nearest crematorium was Burnley? In which case that dates from 1958.
The major building of crematoriums was really after the Second World War when cremations became much more popular.
Crematoriums in the Colne area (the cemeteries they were built in, if they were not purpose built, are much older)
Bradford 1905
Harrogate 1914
Leeds 1937
Skipton 1952
Huddersfield 1952
Rochdale 1952
Bolton 1954
Shipley/Bingley 1955
Accrington 1956
Blackburn 1956
Burnley 1958
Pontefract 1959
Keighley/Ilkley 1960
Wakefield 1961
Preston 1962
So if you wanted to get cremated in Colne in 1894 that meant taking the body to Manchester crematorium in Barlow Moor Road in Chorlton-cum-Hardy which is south Manchester, so a round trip of about 70 or more miles away. That is until the crematorium at Scholemoor cemetery on Necropolis Road in Bradford opened in 1905 - much better a round trip of 40 to 50 miles?
Cemeteries and crematoriums keep two separate registers, one for burials and one for cremations. It is a more modern concept that some people want the ashes buried.
http://www.pendle.gov.uk/info/200032/deaths_funerals_and_cremations/94/bereavement_services/10
Cemeteries don't really have north and south sides. Colne cemetery is 4.61 hectares in size which sounds big to me
http://www.pendle.gov.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=94&pageNumber=4
Cemetery maps would be sectioned nearly always alphabetically and then with row and plot numbers e.g.
http://www.canterbury.gov.uk/main.cfm?objectid=1108
They tend not to be coloured (cost of colour printing in the C19th and the fact that most cemetery officials tended to be men so logically they would map everything out with numbers and figures and not rely on colour coding particularly since colour blindness genetically is much more common in men).
Cemeteries were interested in whether someone had paid for the grave or not and what religion they were - that mattered because usually non-conformists were separate from Anglicans. They were not interested in gender and colour. It was a business and one where no-one (until relatively recently with cemeteries allowing photographs on memorials) could actually see who was buried where.
Colne Valley present day demographics shows it to be a predominantly white community even by 2010.
Ethnicity: Born outside UK: 5.7%, White: 91.6%, Black: 1.1%, Asian: 5.8%, Mixed: 1.2%, Other: 0.3%
Regards
Valda
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hi there in regards to the north and south side i was referring to a churchyard rather then a cemetery and i suggested cremation as it was the only other thing i could think of beginning COL of course a 70 mile round trip would not have been practical any money saved on cremation rather than burial would be spent on this, and cremations at this time were not common and sometimes frowned on.
a coloured person back hen wouldnt necessarily be part of regular society sadly and i could see that they may have been buried separatley but would it be necessary to have a part of the cemetery dedicated to coloured people if the population was not that high?
consecrated ground i agree with what Valda is saying re the meaning of it, other people would also be suried there sinners people who committed suicide after all suicide was a crime hence the term committed suicide and they took away all rites of burial and other people children that were not baptised but why abbreviate it to COLd and not CONd
is this COLd written elsewhere in the cemetery records does anyone working at the cemetery know what it means?
have you asked?
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Hi
I have never seen any evidence in cemeteries registers or even in churchyard records that anyone who was not 'white' would be buried separately as long as they were Anglicans. If Jews did not have their own cemetery then cemeteries happily buried them, along with Catholic Irish and anyone else who suffered discrimination in C19th Britain. Catholics as non-conformists would be in the unconsecrated section. Cemeteries were a burial business. They did not pick and choose and actively chased institutions like workhouses business. The only time I have ever seen a cemetery discriminate was Epsom in Surrey, a town with a large number of asylums. Those burials were refused in the cemetery.
http://www.epsomandewellhistoryexplorer.org.uk/HortonCemetery.html
Similarly you would expect with epidemics that separate pits were opened up such as plague pits.
In the C18th and C19th the black population that existed (predominantly male and in cites like London and ports like Liverpool) married into the communities they lived in.
'a large number of black men and women from Africa, the Caribbean and North America settled in London. By the last quarter of the eighteenth century the black population of London is estimated to have been between 5,000 and 10,000'
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Population-history-of-london.jsp
http://217.154.230.218/NR/rdonlyres/47F75F53-39BE-4606-98F9-36DDB8593E27/0/21BLACKCARIBBEANCOMMUNITYARCHIVESATLONDONMETROPOLITANARCHIVES.pdf
The following is taken from the burial guides on the London and Middlesex and Surrey boards, links at the top of the Graveyards and Gravestones board, on the information they give on suicide burials. The guide also has information on unbaptised babies in churchyards but again that is different from civic cemeteries with their large areas of ground for everyone else who wasn't Anglican - the unconsecrated sections. Families chose which section they wanted their burials in. I doubt civic cemeteries asked questions like were they baptised?
From 1823 all sucides could be buried in consecrated ground. All suicides except felo de se suicides previously had the right to be buried in the churchyard and have the burial service read. The law in the C19th eased for felo de se suicides as well. Civic cemeteries were mostly built from the second half of the C19th onwards.
'SUICIDES
Suicide ‘whilst of sound mind’ was considered by the state to be a serious crime. A suicide’s property could be forfeited to the crown. The church considered suicide whilst of sound mind a mortal sin. It was customary in England to bury suicides at cross roads, but not infrequently for charity's sake, the body was interred in the graveyard without ceremony. Coroner’s juries were often sympathetic and returned verdicts of ‘suicide while of unsound mind’. Better to be judged mad than a criminal and denied a Christian burial. If the jury returned the rarer verdict of 'felo de se', felon of himself, the suicide was deemed a felon and their property was confiscated.
Though in the context of the suicide of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, this is an informative article on the church’s response to the burials of suicides. SHAKESPEARE LAW LIBRARY: http://tinyurl.com/yg3h35t
Penalties against suicides and their families were gradually reduced throughout the nineteenth century. In 1823, the Right to Burial Act allowed for the burial of felo de se suicides in consecrated ground. In 1870, the Abolition of Forfeiture Act removed the penalty of forfeiting the suicide’s property to the Crown. No religious ceremony could be obtained for a felo de se until the Burial Laws Amendment Act of 1880, though the full burial service was still denied them and until 1882; the suicide’s body was buried privately between the hours of nine and twelve at night. Under the Suicide Act of 1961, suicide no longer became a crime, though assisting someone to commit suicide still is. The Church of England proposed Book of Common Prayer (1928) began the order for the burial of the dead with this statement.
'Here it is to be noted that the Office ensuing is not to be used for any that die unbaptized, or for any that are excommunicate, or have laid violent hands upon themselves, or in the act of committing any grievous crime.
If question arise as to whether this Office should be used for the burial of any person, reference shall (if time and opportunity permit,) be made to the Bishop, who shall decide the question.'
None of all of this necessarily pins down what cold may be, but it helps with what it isn't likely to be.
Regards
Valda
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Yes, we asked the cemetery records person and she (in quite a few years of transerring records to the 'puter and dealing with the public) had never had cause to question what it meant.
The north / south thing - no, because some of the graves so labelled are in the middle of the cemetery.
Coloured people / suicides / cremations - on reflection unlikely, as when we compared notes some 30-40% of the plots were labelled "cold". Our ancestor definitely fits none of these, particularly as he died on the field in WWI.
I mentioned colouring plans as I am a civil engineer regularly dealing with plans and drawings from the 1840s onwards (particularly land boundary plans) and these are often hand coloured (labour must have been cheap - it takes ages to do with a brush and ink!). I'll ask a few more questions when we go back.
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions, plenty of interesting reading!
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particularly as he died on the field in WWI.
maybe thats the answer?
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particularly as he died on the field in WWI.
30-40% of the plots were labelled "cold".
Not enough WGC headstones on site!
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Ellis
Just a suggestion. Is it possible that the abbreviation is simply a contraction of the word 'collapsed'. There are several situations where the word could be appropriate in a cemetery or graveyard.
1. When a coffin is first buried and the grave is filled, the earth is left as a mound on top of the grave. After a few weeks this loose earth settles down and the cemetery attendants can then level it off and grass it over, or allow the deceased's relatives to place a kerb around it or erect a headstone. The ground would need to be stable or 'collapsed' for any of these to be done.
2. If the deceased has been in the ground for a long period the coffin itself may crumble with the result that the soil above it could sink, leaving a depression in the ground above which may have to be filled in for safety reasons.
3. In a cemetery where there are multiple - and possibly unrelated - burials in plots for space saving reasons, the church wardens or cemetery attendants may check for collapsed plots so that they will know when the plots are ready to receive their next occupants. I think this was common practice in some of the earlier graveyards.
I'm not speaking from professional experience. I'm just one of those sad people who spends a lot of time in graveyards copying down headstone inscriptions and looking for lost relatives - sound familiar? It's surprising how many times you have to avoid depressions in the ground which are the sole reminder that someone is buried there.
PatB.
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... it would make a typical entry read "Ground coloured green", ...
If you are still puzzling over this, could you give us some more typical entries?
What is in that column for the other 60-70% of plots?
The more context the better when trying to work out what something means.
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Are you sure it isn't short for 'Consecrated' - commonly used words - burial is on 'consecrated ground'. Just a suggestion.
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I'm sure we had a similar query some time last year, I think referring to a burial ground in London...I'll see if I can find it.
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Going back to the "collapsed" idea.
It could also refer to when a grave had collapsed when it was dug for burial , maybe the land in that particular churchyard was prone to that and possibly a system was put in place to worn future gravediggers of past problems.
Bit of a long shot , but i work in a Cemetery , and that sort of thing IS put in our burial registers , not with that particular abbreviation though.
Just a thought............. :)
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Going back to the "collapsed" idea.
It could also refer to when a grave had collapsed when it was dug for burial , maybe the land in that particular churchyard was prone to that and possibly a system was put in place to worn future gravediggers of past problems.
Bit of a long shot , but i work in a Cemetery , and that sort of thing IS put in our burial registers , not with that particular abbreviation though.
Just a thought............. :)
As I`m sure you are aware graves do collapse, mainly due to either a lack of time following the adjacent burial, a period of inclement weather &/or unstable ground.
Generally I`ve seen an annotation referring to a grave collapse with additional info such as "Grave collapse, not to be used for 1 - 2 years".
Use of grave shoring can help prevent collapse, but not completely prevent a collapse.
Interesting argument, but I`d like to see if the OP could get some more info from the Cemetery to help clear things up & thus help all of us to gain knowledge.
Kind regards
Steve