Kirkby Stephen Cemetery

Notable graves and memorials

Aisgill Rail Disaster

The Aisgill rail disaster occurred on the Settle-Carlisle Railway on 2 September 1913, at a point near the hamlet of Aisgill where the gradient caused a challenge for smaller locomotives. A stalled passenger train was hit from behind by a second train which was also in difficulty, and where the crew had failed to observe the danger signal.

The main cause of the crash was a danger signal and there were a number of contributing factors including the poor quality of coal used by the first locomotive. Fourteen people in the first train died at the scene and a further two passengers subsequently died of their injuries. Thirty-eight passengers in the second train were seriously injured and there were several fatalities including two children. The children's remains were buried in their home city of Edinburgh, but their nanny, Kathleen Wood, was buried in Kirkby Stephen with everyone else.

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Candle Factory Fire

The Varty family, Christopher, an agricultural labourer, his wife Jane and their three children lived above a candle factory in Mellbecks near Franks Bridge in Kirkby Stephen. Tragically the entire Varty family perished in a fire on 25^th October 1884 that went unnoticed for several hours because the house was obscured by surrounding buildings and adjacent Brewery. There is a blue plaque on the house in Mellbecks commemorating their loss.

The funeral took place on the Sunday and was reported to be the largest and most remarkable gathering that ever took place at Kirkby Stephen. Residents came from miles around to visit the fire site and the open coffins in the workhouse, before joining the funeral procession of an estimated two thousand people. School children and teachers carried the children’s coffins, with the mother and father being carried by Oddfellows Society members. Rev. Canon James Simpson and Mr. Brown of the Oddfellows officiated. After the burial service, the large crowd filed past the grave, many in tears and throwing flowers.

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Egbo

Little detail is known of how an eighteen-year-old male from Old Calabar (now southern Nigeria) came to be in Kirkby Stephen, many years after the abolition of slavery. In the 1871 census he is listed as living in a house in Main Street, Kirkby Stephen as a domestic servant to Thomas Sayer, a medical practitioner. He died of smallpox on May 20^th 1871 as the result of an outbreak among the navvies building the railway. His grave was erected by a Dr Henderson.

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Workhouse Memorial

In 1818 a cluster of buildings that had formerly been the Union cotton mill in Kirkby Stephen was converted into a workhouse with its own laundry, hospital and manager’s house. If an inmate of the Union workhouse died and a relative could not be found who would organise and pay for a funeral, then the Guardians of the workhouse would arrange for an unmarked burial in the cemetery.

At the instigation of the Revered Roger Paul, the Vicar of the Parish in 2002, and with the help of the Kirkby Stephen Town Council and Margaret Birkbeck, Secretary of the Friends of Christian Head, sufficient funds were raised to erect a memorial stone on the site of the paupers’ graves. This stone was dedicated on 26^th November 2002 as a belated symbol of how the Workhouse cared for paupers both in life and death.

The inscription on the memorial stone reads:

In Loving Memory of the 632 Residents of Eden House Kirkby Stephen Workhouse Who Died Between 1837 and 1961 And Who Are Buried in This Cemetery, But Who Have No Other Memorial Known Unto God.

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Photo gallery

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Links

Commonwealth War Graves Commission