Hi
They could only be cremations if there was a crematorium. The first crematorium in the whole country was in Woking in 1878 which was very much a lone crematorium blazing a trail. Though built in 1878 the first cremation did not take place there until 1885. By 1896 there were only 4 crematoriums in the whole country and those apart from Woking were all in very large cities Manchester being one of them in 1892.
Pendle council operates Colne cemetery. It says a lot on its website about its cemeteries but makes no mention of a crematorium. Would that mean the nearest crematorium was Burnley? In which case that dates from 1958.
The major building of crematoriums was really after the Second World War when cremations became much more popular.
Crematoriums in the Colne area (the cemeteries they were built in, if they were not purpose built, are much older)
Bradford 1905
Harrogate 1914
Leeds 1937
Skipton 1952
Huddersfield 1952
Rochdale 1952
Bolton 1954
Shipley/Bingley 1955
Accrington 1956
Blackburn 1956
Burnley 1958
Pontefract 1959
Keighley/Ilkley 1960
Wakefield 1961
Preston 1962
So if you wanted to get cremated in Colne in 1894 that meant taking the body to Manchester crematorium in Barlow Moor Road in Chorlton-cum-Hardy which is south Manchester, so a round trip of about 70 or more miles away. That is until the crematorium at Scholemoor cemetery on Necropolis Road in Bradford opened in 1905 - much better a round trip of 40 to 50 miles?
Cemeteries and crematoriums keep two separate registers, one for burials and one for cremations. It is a more modern concept that some people want the ashes buried.
http://www.pendle.gov.uk/info/200032/deaths_funerals_and_cremations/94/bereavement_services/10Cemeteries don't really have north and south sides. Colne cemetery is 4.61 hectares in size which sounds big to me
http://www.pendle.gov.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=94&pageNumber=4Cemetery maps would be sectioned nearly always alphabetically and then with row and plot numbers e.g.
http://www.canterbury.gov.uk/main.cfm?objectid=1108They tend not to be coloured (cost of colour printing in the C19th and the fact that most cemetery officials tended to be men so logically they would map everything out with numbers and figures and not rely on colour coding particularly since colour blindness genetically is much more common in men).
Cemeteries were interested in whether someone had paid for the grave or not and what religion they were - that mattered because usually non-conformists were separate from Anglicans. They were not interested in gender and colour. It was a business and one where no-one (until relatively recently with cemeteries allowing photographs on memorials) could actually see who was buried where.
Colne Valley present day demographics shows it to be a predominantly white community even by 2010.
Ethnicity: Born outside UK: 5.7%, White: 91.6%, Black: 1.1%, Asian: 5.8%, Mixed: 1.2%, Other: 0.3%
Regards
Valda