For this church:

Introduction

Location

History

Archaeology

Contacts

Fittings

Glass

Organ

Bells

Clock

Stonework

Monuments

War Memorial

Churchyard

References

Pictures

Plans

Listing Description

List of Incumbents

Parish page

Trowell St Helen

Churchyard

One of the older headstones (now laid flat). This one is of Thomas Bostock who died in 1779, aged 17

The southern extension of the churchyard from the church tower

The Parish Registers go back to 1570, but the earliest date readable on a gravestone is about 1750. Until 1883 the burials were done in the small area around the church and inside the church. 2,000 burials were listed in the registers between 1700 and 1883. They must have been re-using the older graves and that must have been the reason for a letter from Dr Whitgrove in 1877, stating that it would be injurious to health to continue burying in the old graveyard.

In November 1877, a special meeting was called, and a committee formed to find a new graveyard and close the old. The Derbyshire family, who owned the field below the church gave them 0.587 of an acre for an extension which was opened in 1883. By the 1940s this land was almost used up and the Derbyshire family gave them another 1.015 acres, which was consecrated by Dr F Russell Barry, Bishop of Southwell, in May 1950.

A strip of land at the bottom of the new part was lost when the access road was put down for the old people’s bungalows and now much of the land left is full of graves. In the 1970s a Garden of Rest was made in the South East corner of the old ground. As this area was also becoming full, it has now been extended.