Stockport : Stockport St. Mary’s Church and its Gravestones

I don’t much like when churches use gravestones as paving for outside their buildings as it feels disrespectful to me, and also causes damage to the stones. However, St. Mary’s Church in Stockport seems odd as they have some old stones, with many from the late eighteenth century, and their entire paving is done like this.

I’m not entirely sure I have the answer to why they’re like this, but there was a new burying ground established in 1810 by Lady Warren-Bulkeley to give the church more space for burials. At the same time, the church authorities decided to take down the church’s historic nave and tower to build a new one, but they decided to use dynamite to do this. The result was somewhat sub-optimal, with numerous stones damaged by the explosion. I bet that Fred Dibnah would have done a better job.

I’m rather impressed at how tough some of these stones are as they were a few that are around 250 years old and they’re still undamaged despite their treatment over the years.

There’s no shortage of stones to look at. Which I did, so expect a heap of gravestone related posts now….

This image, from Stockport Heritage Services, is even more intriguing to me. It’s of the old medieval church just before it was demolished in 1810, which I think is a rather grand and beautiful affair. However, in the graveyard there are numerous stones and they’re all lying flat. So, it seems that what likely happened is that during the reconstruction of the church, including its rather explosive demolition, they’ve collected the damaged and undamaged gravestones up and just relaid them around the outside of the building. There are numerous stories which say that the gravestones were used as part of the demolition rubble to build the nearby Waterloo Road, although I imagine this was mostly stone from the tower and nave, as many of the gravestones do seem to have survived. The new church opened in 1813 to much excitement, but there was much controversy in 1810 and a local meeting roundly condemned the church (twas ever thus) for their poor engagement with parishioners about the rebuilding.