The Parish of Atherton in the County of -- Lancashire --

Memorial Inscriptions at Chowbent Chapel
in the Parish of Atherton

In J.J. Wright’s book ‘The Story of Chowbent Chapel’, published in 1921, he stated that Mr. Benjamin Partington ‘laboriously and carefully’ copied out the inscriptions on every tablet and gravestone inside and outside the chapel, and presented his work to the chapel. The Rev. Peter Hughes, kindly loaned a photocopy of Partington's work (Copies of Inscriptions on Tombstones and Tablets In the Burial Ground and within the Edifice of the Unitarian Chapel Chowbent. A.D. 1906). The memorial inscriptions recorded here are reproduced from that work, not from a new reading of the gravestone inscriptions.

	Flatstone memorials in Chowbent Chapel Graveyard. Photo by Peter Wood, July 2005

The first burial register at Chowbent Chapel was opened on 3 Oct 1785, 64 years after the New Bent chapel was founded at this site. Roughly 30% of the deaths recorded on the gravestones occurred before that date, the earliest being in 1722, the year the chapel opened for worship. Thus the memorials are an invaluable resource for family historians researching their Protestant Dissenter ancestors in those early years.

Benjamin Partington was a teacher at Chowbent British (Unitarian) School, and also ran a photographic studio.

	Benjamin Partington who transcribed the memorial inscriptions. 9 May 1884

He completed his hand-written book in 1906, some 20 years after the chapel burial ground had been finally closed. Undoubtedly, the inscriptions on the stones were clearer then than they are now, 100 years later. Most of the stones were laid level with the ground, and he referred to these as Flatstones, as opposed to the upright Headstones and Monuments. Partington ordered the memorials by Rank and Number, according to their original location in the cemetery, but the stones were relaid in recent years to guard against theft and vandalism, and his system is no longer applicable. However, each stone has an inscribed number used by Partington, and the numbers are mostly still clearly visible. The stones are not in numerical order, but the chapel yard is small, and the quickest way for a visitor to find the stone that matches an inscription, is to walk around checking their numbers. Most of the headstones are now in a row along the cemetery west wall. The Chapel doors and graveyard gates are normally kept locked.

	A headstone showing the memorial number at the base. Photo by Peter Wood, July 2005

Some of the memorials inside the chapel post-date Partington’s transcript, and were written in the memorials book in 1982 by JG. Memorials recording the donations of stained glass windows, were recorded by myself in 2005.

Peter Wood
August 2005