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Transcripts
Mrs B
transcript |
| Local resident Mrs B talks
about being buried alive...
"I never wanted to be buried
anyway. I once saw a film and I was only very young
and then I saw it years and years later when I were
grown up. The House of Asher I think it was called (The
Fall of the House of Usher - ed.), and somebody
had been buried alive and they found it, and I know
it was a film but still, but you know, they found all
these scratch marks on top of the coffin but I have
no idea.
I made my friend Connie promise (we used to act so
silly), that she would really feel my heart. But she
used to scare me stiff, said that when her cousin who
lived in Hull died, I think he was a kid about 9 or
10, he died from scarlet fever, whatever it was I can’t
really remember and her mother and dad drove over there,
they had a very old, I don’t know what kind of
car it was, but he was the manager for the big car company
here, Kennings, and they drove over there.
Of course they used to have the body taken and laid
in the front room, you know, some of them, and they
went in and she said her mother says ‘I’m
not going to go in, I want to remember him as he was’,
and the Dad went in and she says he came out and he
says ‘That lad’s alive, he’s still
alive’ but what it was it was like ‘hurrr…’
coming out of him and she said her father was rather
swarthy looking, a honey coloured face, you know, creamy
tan always, and she said he was as white as death and
the mother said ‘Ernest what on earth’s
the matter with you?’ and she said he just pointed
to back in the living room. But of course he was dead
but it was just some noise that was coming from him.
I don’t know, I can’t see how it could be."
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David
Cathells (1) transcript |
| David Cathells, an ex-employee
of the Sheffield City Council, speaks about locating
the grave of Samuel
Holberry...
"It was really almost an impenetrable
jungle. You could get along the main paths but the rest
of it was completely overgrown with bushes, brambles
and all sorts.
I know one of the features in the cemetery which I
think stimulated the City Council’s interest was
the fact that, Samuel Holberry was buried there. You’ve
heard of Samuel Holberry? He was the Chartist Martyr
who died in York House of Correction somewhere about
1942, 1842, about the 1840’s and he was buried
there, so the Council asked us to try and locate his
grave.
So we had to more or less battle into the jungle and
we did eventually find it but it was in an appalling
condition, a lot of the monuments had either been pushed
over or fallen over, some of the vaults had been broken
open and a lot of rubbish, you know, old washing machines
and so forth had been dumped there and it was really
in a terrible state."
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David
Cathells (2) transcript |
| Retired Sheffield City
Council employee, David Cathells talks about issues
relating to re-development
of the General Cemetery...
"At the same time of course,
Boden Developments, a Leeds based firm, had acquired
the cemetery company with a view to possibly, or what
they wanted to do was to, clear part of it and develop
it for industry.
Then, as I recall, they publicised the proposals in
the Press and that gave rise to tremendous objections.
And I don’t think they submitted anything in the
nature of a formal application but they did enquire
whether there was any chance of getting permission.
They were told that there wasn’t any hope, and
in any case I think the proposal would have been totally
uneconomic because if you want to develop a burial ground
of any sort, the expense of clearing the graves and
you have to, I think, dig down to something like 15ft
and sift all the soil to make sure that you get all
the human remains out, which would have made it a fantastically
expensive business. So as I recall and it’s all
a bit vague, having found that we were on a hiding to
nothing with this development proposal, Boden Developments
were stuck with what was really a total liability."
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Mr Payton-Greene
transcript |
| Local resident Mr Payton-Greene
speaks about his childhood memories of living near The
Cemetery. Particularly the Anglican
Chapel...
"Well I try not to think about
it, it’s one of those things that the wife accepts
and I don’t. But I’m 74 and I must have
gone in there when I was about 1 or 2.
I can remember going early, whatever time I was, and
we lived sort of half way down Cemetery Road, so mother
would push me right up to the top. I’ve spent
hours in there playing, just going round the gravestones.
I knew all the people, I didn’t know all, I knew
the names of the people.
You know the little church, yes, which was nice in
those days, the little chapel. When I’ve seen
it lately, that again makes me feel bad."
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