I went to a talk about finding non-conformist religions ancestors by the Birkenhead FHS at the Lauries Centre and the speaker mentioned about bodies/skeletons? being unexpectantly dug up when they were building the Pyramids. Would there have possibly have been some interments at St Johns before Flaybrick/Bikenhead cemetery really came into becoming the main place for burials in Birkenhead.
Any info would be appreciated (if it was so I'd have thought it would be in some record or the Birkenhead News etc)
I don't believe there was any internments or a graveyard at St John's, prior to Flaybrick opening, St Mary's was the likely burial ground and Flaybrick taking a lot of the burden from St Mary's when it opened.
Having looked recently for some relatives internments, in the obits (papers) I came across notifications for a lot of places, I don't recall St John's being one of them. I think I might have stumbled across at least one, had there been any. However, just because I never actually seen any doesn't mean there wasn't any.
Looking now, there doesn't appear to be any evidence it had a graveyard.
Did the speaker mention, when the skeletons were found, what was the outcome? assuming some enquiry took place.
God help us, Come yourself, Don't send Jesus, This is no place for children.
What was on the site before the Pyramids? I remember it being built (I had just started school and use to have to cross the wasteground to get from the bus), but can no longer picture it.
St John's like most Birkenhead Churches were built after the laws changed on burials in I think in 1820s , the councils had to provide graveyards as most church burial grounds were over flowing, St Marys was built around 1840 but as the Priory has a graveyard it carried on being used until Cammell Lairds took a slice off the graveyard for a graving dock
The Market, the precinct and the Pyramids are three linked but seperate developments built one after another.
The Pyramids was the last of these. The precinct had already been built over St John's church. The Pyramids development is to the west of St. John's, being between Borough Road and the former Coburg St and Sailsbury St.
Your brain CVCVCV is working overtime to come up with that, to behonest when I actually read my comment I thought that myself
I went to St John's and it definitely had no burials around it, but it had the rt Rev Albert Howorth the vicar, who made us kids feel totally cheesed off with his long sermons on what seemed very short school holidays.
Thinking on what you said Derek, Grange Lane as it was called at one time must have been on the edge of the river that flowed into the Mersey, so why can't their be people buried by it, Borough rd is the original course of the river and all the streets sloped down from Grange rd to Borough rd so when it as a river would have been fields, our memories only go back to what we know was there, is there any history going back to even the Civil War as the Roundheads held Birket Wood, you onto something, keep digging ,