Journey Through The Past

During our recent trip to England we spent our first day in Durham searching through St. Cuthbert’s Churchyard trying to do what my Grandfather had failed to do when he visited the site in 1953. He had returned from Canada to the city of his youth for one last time, trying to locate and pay respect to his first wife’s grave. She had died suddenly while they were visiting his parents at 26 Western Hill. It was a blow that neither my grandfather nor my father who was only six years old ever fully recovered from.

The churchyard today is in pretty rough shape. It is largely overgrown with many stinging nettles but was dominated during out visit with these pretty little yellow buttercup type flowers. The ground is very uneven with many of the graves fallen in upon themselves. Many of the stones are damaged, leaning badly or knocked over so we knew our work was cut out for us. What chance had we of finding a marker for Helen Charlton?

All we had to go on was a photo I once saw of the burial site. I remembered from the photo that has long since disappeared that the grave was beside a wrought iron fence. Still, so much time had past. The burial and the photo were from 1919. There was no guarantee that the fence would still be there, or the stone for that matter. The only thing to do was comb the entire churchyard. We knew it would take some time.

We were also looking out for My great grandparents who we knew were also buried in the churchyard.

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