Forgotten Fields

Walk around Manchester city centre today and it is difficult to appreciate that in the nineteenth century you would never have been more than a few minutes walk from a graveyard. Today, virtually every trace of these once numerous burial grounds has been erased. John Marsden takes you on a tour of thirty-seven of Manchester's burial places, starting with the pre-conquest parish churchyard and ending with the emergence of cremation as an alternative to burial. He discusses the development of burial in the city and its eventual banishment to the suburbs following the Burial Acts of the 1850s. The book provides a history of each graveyard, tells what became of it and highlights some of the more notable burials which took place there.