It was the Public Health Act of 1848 which gave rise to reports on the sanitary conditions of towns. One typical report calculated that each plot was being re-used on average every 11 1/2 years. The churchyard was closed for burials in 1854, and in the 20th century the gravestones were recorded and removed so the council could take over the maintenance.
There was an old pub outside the churchyard wall, which was demolished in the 1960s and the site became a large flower bed in a pedestrianised street. In a conversation with a superintendant of cemeteries I learned that occasionally bones come to the surface and are transferred to a cemetery, where they have a plot reserved for oddments from the churchyard.
There was a sports ground in the suburbs, with a stone wall capped with flat stones. Some alterations were made, the local paper reported the undersides of some slabs were found to have inscriptions. The vicar had said "Nothing to do with my church". But the monumental inscriptions were in the local studies library, and tallied with the reported slabs from the wall!
