Burials in unconsecrated ground etc, prior threads. (Parish Records)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Sunday, October 08, 2017, 21:45 (2385 days ago) @ Brenda Hughes

Hi Brenda,
regarding "Burials in unconsecrated ground", I have searched the forum to see if this query has been asked before, and found the following prior threads. I now belatedly realise you've been on the forum for several years now, so I suspect you've already seen them, especially as they seem especially relevant to the Coleford area (Christchurch chapel) where Richard and his family lived. Even so, in the hope it helps you or others, I'll list them here.

http://forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=15955
http://forest-of-dean.net/fodmembers/index.php?id=21578
http://forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=46249
http://forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=37972

By the way, I've spent some while today searching all the websites I can for a death/burial record for Richard b1812. As you know it seems he died sometime twixt the 1881 and 1891 census. However, and despite searching all across our local area and a bit father afield into Monmouthshire, and by using several spelling variations for ELLEY, so far I've not found him but will keep trying as he's on one of my trees.

Finally for now Brenda, I see from the 1901 Census that Emma's son Milson Elley and his family lived at Graig Terrace in Pontypridd. I lived "up the Graig" for a few months in 1981 while studying engineering at the nearby Polytechnic of Wales, and then a few yards away at Woodland Terrace, overlooking what had been the Maritime Colliery. Despite knowing of that area's mining history (and studying at what had been a mining school), at the time I never dreamt I'd be revisiting the area following the trails of my ancestors. In those days the land where the colliery had stood was just waste ground, without any of the landscaping that's taken place since, yet it was still hard to think of an important pit being there and all the associated activity. Only last week I was studying old maps & photos of the area, and amazed just how busy it was "just" 80 years before I was there, so chock-full of mines and railways etc, most interesting. It seems that there were and still are several cases of Cinderford and Pontypridd families being linked by miners, I wonder if there were agents for the Ponty mines actively seeking miners from the Forest, or was it just word-of-mouth between the families and maybe mine owners, I need to dig deeper methinks. Or perhaps more likely, such links were common across all the South Wales coalfields at that time. Then again, as this interesting article shows, some of South Wales's worst mining disasters were in the Ponty area, an area particularly easy & cheap to access by rail in those days, so maybe these factors point to just how many miners were employed there, hence so many links to the Forest of Dean.
http://daibach-welldigger.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/revival-meetings-in-coal-mines-in.html

You can zoom right into this highly detailed 1914 O.S. map of Pontypridd, and more from other years off the great NLS website
http://maps.nls.uk/view/102342529

And also these aerial photos at base of this page, keep clicking on one and it will then keep enlarging.
http://www.coflein.gov.uk/en/site/33597/details/maritime-colliery-coke-works-pontypridd

Both of these links are best viewed when opened into a new tab or window.

atb Jeff.