In Memoriam

Burial of Bentley Pit Disaster of 1931 at Arksey Cemetery.
Photo courtesy of Jill Lowe

The Story Of Burials In Arksey

Since the very earliest times of the parish, Arksey has provided a resting place for our loved ones after they have departed life. People from Arksey, Bentley, Almholme and environs were all brought to Arksey to be laid to rest. At first it was the churchyard of All Saints which welcomed the dead, but as room ran out, other cemeteries were laid out in the village. 

In this article we look at all three resting places in Arksey, how they started, some of the notable graves within them and the ongoing project to record as many memorials as possible before time erases them too. 

Contents

• Churchyard Burials
• Early Burials
• Space for the Dead
• Vaults and Permanent Memorials
• Memorials Survey
• Notable Graves and Memorials
• The Old Cemetery
• Notable Graves
• Memorials Survey
• Arksey New Cemetery
• Cemetery Layout
• Notable Graves and Memorials
• Memorials Survey

Churchyard Burials

Arksey Churchyard

Burial is one of the very last things we can do for a loved one and has been an intrinsic part of humanity since ancient times. Pagan burial sites were sacred and set-apart, and as Christianity grew many of these pagan places became sites of early Christian worship.

Before Christianity became established it was customary to bury the dead outside the city or town walls, in fact it was unlawful to bury the dead within the walls for reasons of health and preserving clean water supplies.

Churchyards only came into use after 752AD when St Cuthbert obtained permission from the Pope to have churchyards for the burial of the dead added to the church. This ground was consecrated (liturgically blessed) by the Bishop who walked the boundaries of the churchyard saying prayers to cast out evil.

Walls were constructed around the consecrated ground to isolate it as an enclosure for graves, and it was necessary for the grounds to be cared for and for no animals to graze there. 

It was usual for the higher classes to be buried within the church itself, while those of the lower classes were confined to the churchyards. Space north of the church was sometimes reserved for social outcasts, such as murderers, but some could be refused a consecrated burial on the grounds of being suicides, lunatics or even unbaptized children.

Medieval funeral

Early Burials

The earliest burials carried out at Arksey would probably be contemporary with its age. Building began in the mid 1100's by the Newmarch family, and it is probably a Newmarch grave cover that can be seen high up on the outer wall of the south chapel. Dating from the 13th century, this grave slab has been reused in the building, probably during its construction in the 15th century.

The cross on the grave slab is still visible.

   

The next record of a burial at Arksey is from 1349 when Richard Fegheherd, who was possibly a rector, was buried in the church. Sources do not tell us where exactly his grave is located as it is probably covered by modern flooring.

The parish registers for burials began in 1558 and at first there were on average one or two burials per month, about what you would expect for the size of the parish at that time. Numbers stayed steady until 1583 when a shocking 45 burials took place in the months of April and May alone, 65 in the whole of that year. The cause, pestilentia or 'plague' as it's more commonly referred to. Brought to the area by one William Monkton, a traveller from Thirsk, William was found collapsed on the road at Amersall, Bentley. He died and was buried in the churchyard but not before he had infected most of the immediate area, which spread to Doncaster and beyond.

For more on the plague and William Monkton go to the article How We Died.

Plague Doctors

In some cases there were as many as four burials a day at Arksey during April 1583, but that is not the only spike in mortality rates. In 1727, 52 burials were recorded; in 1728, 51 were recorded, while in 1729, 55 were recorded. A note in the parish registers written by Chas. Herring states:

'The greatest mortality that ever can be remembered or made out to be in the Parish of Arksey.'

It is difficult to determine what the cause of this high mortality was as this portion of the registers omits the cause of death, but there were periods of bad harvests and severe winters throughout the eighteenth century which would have had an effect on resistance to disease.

Space for the Dead

Now it doesn't take a mathematician to realize that the number of burials carried out at Arksey church over the last 700 years far exceeds the space available. The question was where did all the bodies go?

The answer comes from looking at the history of Christian burial practices. Before coffins were routinely used for burials, the dead would be wrapped in a shroud, and a 'parish coffin' kept in the church would be used to transport the body to the grave. The enshrouded corpse would then be lifted out and placed in the ground, with a simple wooden grave marker above. The body would then be allowed to decompose before being disinterred to allow the plot to be re-used. The exhumed bones would then be placed in either a charnel house (in larger churches) or in an ossuary. Unfortunately there are no records of where the burial remains were moved to in Arksey, and there is no evidence of a charnel house or ossuary.

Vaults and Permanent Memorials

Wealthy or landed families were often buried inside the confines of the church, sometimes in family vaults such as the Cooke family, who had two vaults inside the church, one of which was opened in 2013 for inspection. Inside, a number of lead coffins were found, their wooden outer skins long since rotted in the flood waters which used to ingress the foundations of the church. These coffins dated from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century and contained the remains of past Baronets of Wheatley and their immediate family.

For more on the opening of the Cooke vault go to the article Secrets of the Vault.

To read about the final Cooke interment at the church go to the article Funeral for a Baronet. 

The Cooke vault with visible lead coffins inside.

Permanent memorials for burials began to emerge in around 1650 when large square shaped tombstones began to be used. Reserved for the upper and middle classes, these stones were inscribed with the deceased's name, age and year of death. Some of the earliest stones at Arksey have since been moved inside the church, where they now pave most of the floor. The majority of these date from the 18th century, with a few dating from the late 17th century. The earliest memorial is to John Hall of Stockbridge and dates from 1680 (see below).

Memorial dating from 1680.

As permanent memorials became more widely used during the 19th century, the burials themselves were left intact which meant that space in churchyards came at a premium and public cemeteries evolved to accommodate the demand. 

By 1883 Arksey churchyard was becoming full and a new site for a cemetery was sought. The churchyard was subsequently closed to new burials two years later, unless plots had already been reserved. In fact there were only two more burials in the churchyard after 1885. All subsequent burials were interred in one of the two new cemeteries at the entrance to the village.

Memorials Survey

Over the course of time the memorials in Arksey churchyard have suffered damage from weathering and subsidence, therefore it is important that as many of these memorials are recorded while we are still able to read them.

The Doncaster & District Family History Society did an excellent job of surveying and recording graves a number of years ago, but it was lacking photos, so I carried out my own survey, photographing every single surviving  gravestone and recording the inscriptions. Merging the two surveys I was able to produce the fullest and most accurate list of burials in the churchyard to date. All the memorials inside the church were also recorded, although no burials lie under them I'm told.

From the survey I was able to produce an accurate 'plot map' enabling anyone looking for a specific grave to locate it on the ground. 

Plot map for Arksey church and churchyard

  

A pdf version of the fully indexed plot map is available along with the photos and transcriptions on the Church Graves page (see below).


For photos, transcriptions and plot map of all memorials in the church and churchyard go to the page Church Graves. 

For the Doncaster & District Family History Society go to Doncaster and District Family History Society.

Notable Graves and Memorials

Arksey church has a number of notable graves in the churchyard as well as some impressive memorials in the church itself.

Most notable are the Cooke burials. While most of them are interred in the family vaults, there are two substantial memorials in the church yard too.

Cooke Memorials

The two memorials in the photo (above) both belong to the Cooke family. The larger red and white stone monument marks the final resting place of  Sir William Ridley Charles Cooke (1827-1894), 9th Baronet of Wheatley. 

The stone cross next to the large monument belongs to Sir William's younger brother, Charles Edward Stephen Cooke (1829-1895).

Inside the church there is a magnificent memorial to Sir George Cooke, the 1st Baronet of Wheatley (1628-1683), who built the Almshouses and the Endowed School in Arksey.

Memorial to Sir George Cooke
Lady Chapel, Arksey Church

Another memorial mounted opposite Sir George Cooke's is that of George Augustus Cooke (1780-1808). He was the brother of Sir William Bryan Cooke (1782-1851), the 8th Baronet Wheatley. George Augustus would have inherited the title from his father, but he died at the age of 27, leaving his younger brother to inherit.

Memorial to George Augustus Cooke
Lady Chapel, Arksey Church

Some of the other notable burials and memorials in the church and churchyard include two for the Bradford family. The Bradford's are ancestors to William Bradford who was one of the Pilgrim Fathers.

Also remembered here are the Broughton family; a large number of memorials in the Broughton name relate to this prominent Bentley family.

An interesting memorial near the main gate remembers an American child who died at the United States Consulate Altona in Denmark in 1863. He was the son of William Marsh, a Bentley man who travelled to the US and as a friend of Abraham Lincoln, aided his rise to the White House. The little boy was named Lincoln after the great President, but sadly died at the age of sixteen months.

The Marsh memorial

To read the full story of William Marsh go to the article William Marsh, Son of a Miller, Friend of a President, on sister site Bentley Village, A History.

Buried in the church chancel are the remains of General Robert Portington who died in 1660. Portington was famous for engaging in battle against Oliver Cromwell during the Civil War and almost changing the course of English history at the Battle of Winceby. His memorial was to be found near the church altar for generations, but it was moved to the churchyard in the late 1700's and it's whereabouts today are lost.

To read the full story of General Portington of Arksey Hall go to the article Arksey Hall. 

The Old Cemetery

Old Cemetery view, facing south west.

After considering three sites for a new Burial Ground, one was chosen in late 1883 on the west side of the railway. However, at a meeting of the Arksey-with Bentley Burial Board in March 1884, it was proposed by Mr Atkinson and seconded by Alderman Elwis: 

"That the resolution of the 18th Dec. 1883, selecting a site for the Cemetery on the west side of the railway in Humphrey Croft be rescinded, and that the site in West Croft on the east side of the railway be selected instead."  

The resolution was carried and at a Vestry Meeting held on the 16th of June 1884 the Burial Board was granted permission to spend £362 on the purchase of the land, and £238 for fencing and laying out the cemetery in West Croft.

Map of Arksey 1903, showing the location of the Old Cemetery

Work got underway, and by December 1884 work was rapidly progressing under the direction of William Chadwick jnr. Esq. of Arksey Hall. Mr Chadwick supplied a number of ornamental trees at his own expense to adorn the cemetery, the idea being to improve the beauty of the approach from the station to the village of Arksey.

The cemetery lies in a rectangular plot, bordered by hedges. From the wooden gated entrance a straight path runs continuously in a loop around the interior, with a semi-circular section on the east side.

The Old Cemetery from above.

Roughly two thirds of the ground was set apart for consecration, and the remainder left unconsecrated. Once the plan was approved by the Home Secretary a date for consecration was applied for.

What followed next was a complicated disagreement on how the plots should be divided. There were to be three rates of payment:

• Two guineas (42s) - for larger ratepayers
• One guinea (21s) 
• Two shillings - for the 'public graves'

Mr Chadwick suggested that the two guinea graves should be in one part, while the one guinea and two shilling graves could be placed anywhere. Plots would be used alternately, so that spaces would be left and families kept together.

Another suggestion from a Mr Johnson divided the cemetery into three sections, one section for each rate of payment.

The vicar of Arksey Walter Gray, disagreed with making any charge, as was the principle with the churchyard. His objection to both schemes was on the grounds of making distinctions between those who had money and those who did not. 

A poll of ratepayers was taken which came out on the side of Mr Chadwick's scheme.

The first interment at the cemetery was noted in the parish magazine of March 1885 in its section in recording 'Monthly Extracts from the Parish Registers', it stated that 'George SPURR, Bentley, aged 19 years', was the 'first interment in the New Cemetery'. It is marked by an impressive monument as in the photo below.

Spurr monument

As with any cemetery, there still had be some division of the land, for recording plots as they were used. Besides each plot having a number, it also fell into one of seven sections, 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F' and 'G'. These are identified on a plan as shown below, while 'boundary markers' were placed at the edges of the cemetery itself, and look like this:

Boundary marker stone

  

Incidentally, section D is known as the 'babies section' and lots of infant burials can be found there.

Notable Graves 

Most of the graves in the Old Cemetery date from 1885 to the 1920's, with later additions for those previously reserved. There are a number of WW1 graves, including a rare female CWGC grave to Sarah Lizzie Harris, whose story is told in the linked article below.

Memorial to S. L. Harris

Other graves include one for Henry Woodhouse, schoolmaster of Arksey from 1902, also, his predecessor George Chadwick. Also remembered there is Frank Higginbottom, who went down with the ship H. M. S. Good Hope during WW1. His story is told in the article linked below.

Memorial to Frank Higginbottom

The largest plot in the Old Cemetery is reserved for the Chadwick family of Arksey Hall, squires of the village from 1839 until 1910.

The Chadwick plot

As mentioned earlier in the churchyard section of this article, there is a grave remembering Lincoln Bennet Marsh, the son of William Marsh who was born in the U.S. and died in Denmark at sixteen months. Whilst the boy was buried in Denmark his parents returned to England with their second son William Dawson Marsh. All three are buried in the Old Cemetery in unmarked graves. 

The location of the graves was unknown until 2015 when myself and officials from Rose Hill Cemetery, assisted a descendant of the Marsh family in finding the graves. One morning in August 2015 they were very kindly marked out for us and I was able to record their location.

The two Marsh grave plots in section 'A' of the Old Cemetery

For the article on Sarah Lizzie Harris go to The Story of a Grave.

For the article on Frank Higginbotton go to Frank Higginbottom - Casualty of War.

Memorials Survey

As with the churchyard I felt it necessary to record as many memorials in the Old Cemetery as possible. Sadly there are many fallen and broken memorials today, partly due to tree root disturbance, land subsidence and possibly vandalism. Some have fallen face down and are now impossible to read, making the recording of the memorials still standing more important than ever.

Once again the Doncaster & District Family History Society had already carried out their own survey and produced a booklet of transcriptions and a plot map. I repeated the survey and found some mistakes and missed graves, so I put together my own version, which can be viewed via the links below.

Go to Old Cemetery A - M

Go to Old Cemetery N - Z

Arksey New Cemetery 

Bentley Pit Disaster Memorial in the New Cemetery

Just as the Churchyard had become full in the 1880's, so did the Old Cemetery. The arrival of Bentley Colliery in the early 1900's saw an influx of people to the parish, people who would need burial plots one day.

The Old Cemetery soon filled up, and by the close of World War One a new cemetery was being planned.

With space aplenty over the road in the south section of West Croft, the new cemetery was laid out here. 

Burials began in 1920, and the first person to be buried there was a man by the name of George Ashmore. George came to Bentley from the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire area, and was part of the workforce sinking the new Bentley pit. He died in a colliery accident in 1920 at the age of 44.

George Ashmore and family.
Photo courtesy of Dianne Harvey-Marshall

Burials continued at the Old Cemetery where plots had been reserved in advance, but all new public burials would take place in the New Cemetery.

Arksey Cemetery from the air.

Cemetery Layout

The cemetery lies in a wedge of land between the railway, Station Road and the housing estate to the east. Open fields stretch away across Bentley Ings to Doncaster in the south. 

My own version of the New Cemetery plan as displayed at the cemetery entrance

The first sections to be laid out were those to the west, marked 'A' to 'F'. In 1936 the cemetery was extended eastwards to reach sections 'H', 'K', 'M' and 'N'. 

Below is a photo of a large cloth plot map from 1936, loaned to me in 2018. It shows the proposed extension, and despite it being in a poor state I was able to scan it and make copies of each section, identifying plot numbers.

Cloth plot map from 1936

One surprising discovery from the cloth map was the existence of a chapel in the cemetery grounds, something I knew nothing of before.

Right in the centre, at the end of the main drive is marked a rectangular building as shown in the scan I took of the area (below).

Scan showing the chapel site

This version (below) of the above scan has the chapel and circular path layout highlighted to make it easier to see.

Highlighted plan of the chapel

Today, this area of the cemetery has a circular area planted up with shrubs instead of the chapel as can be seen in this photo below.

Site of the former chapel, pictured in 2018

Today the cemetery extends as far east as section 'P' and burials are slowly filling up the vacant ground in a southerly direction.

The cemetery is arranged around a series of straight paths, interspersed with small circular paths. The paths divide the cemetery into their labelled sections, as seen on the plan above. Section 'N' is allotted for Roman Catholic burials. 

A straight driveway leads into the cemetery from Station Road, where an old public convenience building stands. A small office used to exist near the north east corner of section C1; cemetery information could be obtained there, and there were watering cans, taps and bins for the care of flowers on graves. Sadly the building has long gone.

The cemetery toilets.

Notable Graves and Memorials

The largest memorial in the cemetery is the Pit Disaster Memorial. Towering above all others in section 'C', the buff stone monument remembers forty five men and boys who perished in the Bentley Colliery disaster of 1931, and seven men who died in another disaster in 1978.

Bentley Pit Disaster Memorial

Thirty eight of the forty five who perished in the disaster were buried in one large grave (see photo at top of this article), the remaining were either buried in their home towns or were not able to be brought out of the pit. 

Photo of the memorial being erected.
Photo courtesy of Sheila Seymour

The inscription on the monument reads as follows:

In memory of the forty-five men and boys who lost their lives in the Bentley Colliery explosion on the 20th November 1931.

And of the seven men who lost their lives in the Bentley Colliery Disaster on the 21st November 1978.

The main monument is surrounded by a number of stone plaques naming each of those buried there.

One of the stone plaques at the Pit Disaster Memorial

A grave associated with the disaster is for Ernest Allport, who won the George Cross for heroism on the day of the disaster.

Memorial to Ernest Allport G.C

For more on the pit disasters and funeral go to Bentley Pit History Part 2 - Disasters on sister site Bentley Village, A History.

Another prestigious medal winner interred at Arksey is that of Thomas Bryan who was awarded the Victoria Cross for heroism during WW1.

Thomas Bryan V.C

Local celebrity Roland Todd, who remained undefeated middle weight champion of Great Britain and Europe until his death in 1969, is also buried at Arksey.

Roland Todd

Photo courtesy of Sean Brennan

As well as these notable memorials, a number of well-known business people from Arksey and Bentley are interred in the cemetery.  Included are, Ruth and Adeline Hall, who ran the corner shop near the school in Arksey. There is also Jack Crawshaw, milkman of Arksey Lane; father and son, Herbert and Donald Bostock, shoe retailers of Bentley for many years; and Tom Cargill Kemp, stationmaster of Arksey is also buried here.

Arksey cemetery workers c.1950

There are a number of war graves from WW2 scattered throughout the cemetery, and a large memorial seat in memory of civilians who died in the bombing of the Royston Avenue area of Bentley in 1940.

The Civilian War Memorial

Memorials Survey

Unlike the Churchyard and Old Cemetery, the possibility of me ever finding the time to survey the whole of the New Cemetery is pretty slim. However, that does not mean I have abandoned the project completely. A survey of the older graves in section A has been carried out, along with a partial survey of sections 'B' to 'F'. The recorded graves can be found on sister site Bentley Village, A History. 

I am hopeful that many more graves can be added to the list, but it is not something I can do alone. There are details on the cemetery pages of Bentley Village, A History of how you can get involved by submitting your own grave photos to be added. By recording as many as possible, hopefully they will not be lost once the inscriptions have worn off or the stones fallen.

For more on the New Cemetery list and how to submit photos go to Arksey Cemetery A - M .

For graves listed N to Z go to Arksey Cemetery N - Z.

Arksey Cemetery

Arksey cemetery continues to welcome the dead of the parish and beyond, and when this too becomes full, I'm sure space will be found nearby to welcome many more. Arksey cemetery is a place of peace and tranquillity, but it also holds many reminders of the colourful characters who used to live among us, and what is a cemetery for if not to remember those we have loved?


Alison Vainlo 

First written 2016, updated 2020