Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

[Her stone:]

Sacred
to the memory of
Charlotte second daughter of
Thomas Fishburn Hall and Betsey his wife
of Heworth.
Who died Jany 17th 1837. Aged 25 years

A lovely flower
removed, alas, how soon
from the tender watchful care
that had reared and cherished it
to be THE FIRST transplanted
into this garden of death
yet not to continue here for ever
but at the appointed season to be taken
into the paradise of God.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

A modern conservation volunteer, Jack Bouckley, also quotes the contemporary Yorkshire Gazette announcement:

This is the first breaking of the sod to inhume a mortal’s remains in the spot but how many must follow in the train is past calculation.

And clarifies:

During the following 165 years there have been over 122,000 bodies interred in over 28,000 graves. The exact numbers I do not know, but this I do know: from this garden of death there now blossoms forth life in the form of our newly-planted fernery (Bouckley 2003).

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• Burial (12) W/G ·
• Christianity (9) W/G ·
• Fishergate (1) W/G ·
• Resurrection (3) W/G ·
• Unitarianism (1) W/G ·
• 📌York Cemetery (1) W/G ·
• 📌York (165) W/G ·

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

A modern conservation volunteer, Jack Bouckley, also quotes the contemporary Yorkshire Gazette announcement:

This is the first breaking of the sod to inhume a mortal’s remains in the spot but how many must follow in the train is past calculation.

And clarifies:

During the following 165 years there have been over 122,000 bodies interred in over 28,000 graves. The exact numbers I do not know, but this I do know: from this garden of death there now blossoms forth life in the form of our newly-planted fernery (Bouckley 2003).

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Similar

27 March 1634: In commercial Gothic urban legend, John Bartendale, a piper, is hung and buried at York, but awakes, is rescued and pardoned, and returns to the music business

17 March 1190: Jewish survivors of preceding massacres and overnight suicides plead from York castle walls to be allowed to convert to Christianity

30 May 1836: Albinia Chaloner becomes the last person to be interred in York Minster

25 September 1066: The Stamford Bridge massacre by Harold Godwinson’s army of Harald Hardrada and Tostig Godwinson’s force – symbol of the end of the Viking Age

14 April 1792: The ballad of Spence Broughton, hung this day at the York Tyburn for robbing the Sheffield and Rotherham mail

20 September 1319: During the Anglo-Scottish wars, seasoned raiders encounter an improvised Yorkshire home guard of clergy, peasants and officials at Myton-on-Swale

26 December 1570: Edmund Grindal, Puritan archbishop of York, orders the removal of rood-lofts (and their superstitious images), and the erection of pulpits

12 April 0627: In a triumph for his Kentish wife, Edwin of Northumbria is baptised on Easter Sunday by Paulinus, in the latter’s wooden oratory on the site of York Minster

11 November 1918: George Ellison of Richmond Hill, Leeds, is the last British soldier to be killed in action in the First World War

1 March 1888: John Strange Winter, a military novelist from York, presents her husband with twins, to general amazement

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Also, from the same source:

Between the age of nineteen and twenty-seven, Mrs. Stannard wrote no less than forty-two novels, some of these three-volume length, besides numerous short tales and sketches.

These were published in the Family Herald, London Society, and other periodicals, chiefly under the pseudonym of “Violet Whyte.” Many of these army stories were subsequently incorporated in “Cavalry Life.” It was when this book was issued that the authoress was advised by her publishers to assume a masculine nom de plume, as they considered that the avowal of feminine authorship might prejudice the sale of such a work. She accordingly chose the name she had bestowed on one of the characters in a tale, and so came before the world as John Strange Winter.

And:

It may here be remarked that Mrs. Stannard holds very strongly the opinion that there should be “no sex in art,” and whilst never desiring to conceal her identity, deprecates the idea of receiving indulgence or’ blame on the ground of her work being that of a woman, as both unjust and absurd (Black 1893).

This story and the Black quote via John Bibby (Bibby 2022). I hope that the fact that the twins were born shortly after the couple’s move from York to London will not be held against me.

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