John Walsh headstone

[dave the tyke]

Help needed to ID or roughly date this piece of headstone which was spotted at the side of Shibden Hall lake.
Thanks
Dave

[arthurk]

If the top had "In Memory of" the stone must have been quite a bit wider than the piece in the photo, and I suspect it might have been something like "XXXX wife of John Walsh".

That probably makes the quest a lot harder...

[dave the tyke]

Inclined to agree with you there arthurk. I must confess that I was just hoping to find out roughly when this style of monumental masonry was in use and perhaps a pointer or two towards John Walsh.
Dave

[dobfarm]

Could be wife, daughter or son of John Walsh.

I would have a look at other headstones around church graveyards near Shibden Hall looking for a similar type of inscription design to get a year date range and to make a starting point of further research.

No doubt there will be some person in the know, professional headstone mason or them people who take rubbings of headstone designs and maybe a chat with staff of Halifax local studies library & Calderdale WYAS  ( was both in same room floor at the old library). If your moving in the right circles - there will be somebody who knows somebody who is up on the subject. Have a word with Malcolm Bull as he knows a lot about a broad view of Halifax past history.

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=23864

http://www.calderdalecompanion.co.uk/

[dave the tyke]

Thanks dobfarm, the style of the 'of' with the swirl around it looks very unusual. That could be Significant.
I do need to visit Halifax sometime soon so I'll visit the local studies library.
Dave

[dobfarm]

As an after thought, at one time a lot of churches use to clear very old unsafe headstones to grass over the areas involved in the graveyard (Birstall St Peter for one), after taking records of inscriptions, they sold the stones for uses by reclaiming material firms and John Walsh stone could have come from afar not connected to Shibden Hall area of Halifax itself.

Also the surname Walsh is more wide spread nationally - not really just a local name to Halifax/Bradford/Huddersfield/Todmorden/Brighouse parishes. (To check PR/ NC registers)

Yet  you maybe lucky! 

[arthurk]

I'd hoped to check the Calderdale FHS transcription index, but it doesn't seem to be available at the moment. However, I had a look at Malcolm Bull's Calderdale Companion, and found that he has a section on the surname Walsh - http://www.calderdalecompanion.co.uk/mmw114.html#11

I may be wrong, but my impression is that the stone might date from the late 1700s or early 1800s, and most of Malcolm's names seem to come from a bit later. Nevertheless, it might be worth scanning through the list.

I did notice one with a Shibden connection (there may be more!) - Jonathan Walsh, who at one time owned Dove House. There are links from that page to more information about Dove House, and also about Jonathan, who apparently asked for his wife to be buried in one corner of a field, and he would be buried in the opposite corner.

[dave the tyke]

Hi arthurk,
I'm following this from a post on facebook and the person who posted found the same information about Jonathan Walsh and his wife. I am reluctant to accept that Jonathan appears as John on his headstone but it is possible. The lake was constructed in Ann Listers time so perhaps the kerb stones were put in place at that time also?
thanks
Dave

[arthurk]

I'd had doubts about Jonathan appearing as John, too, but I wondered if they might be different people in the same family.

If you mean the celebrated Ann Lister (1791-1840), I suspect the stone might have been too recent in her lifetime to be broken up and used in that way.

On the other hand, if a monumental mason made a mess of a stone, might he have broken it up for alternative uses? Pure fantasy, of course - probably better to look for actual burials first.