Middleton Old Cemetery

The cemetery adjacent to Middleton Parish Church (St Leonard’s) is known in various records by a number of different names. On most old maps, it is shown as Middleton and Thornham Cemetery, whilst other records refer to it as Middleton Old Cemetery and some records will refer to Churchyard No 3.

Layout

The cemetery itself is actually two different cemeteries, consisting of the church owned cemetery (the central area on the plan) and the public cemetery in the surrounding land.

The church owned part is technically Churchyard No 3 with the public cemetery being Middleton & Thornham Cemetery. The name "Middleton Old Cemetery" was adopted on the opening of the New Cemetery at Boarshaw in November 1912.

The church cemetery contains 2003 individual grave plots, but not all are used and a small number are combined as vaults.

The public cemetery was planned to have 3737 individual grave plots, but a number of these were later found to be impractical due to the sloping nature of the ground. Further plots were not used, as it was found to be difficult to carry coffins to certain areas and some rows were used as additional pathways. In order to address this shortfall some additional plots were made and these will carry an additional letter as a suffix to the grave number. Section Q for example has an extra row to the East that is not shown on the original plans. Like the churchyard, some plots are not used.

Numbering and conventions

	Churchyard No3	Municipal Cemetery
Section	A column of graves starting from the South-East Corner	A lettered area shown on the plan.
Plot	The number of the grave, counting from the South	An individual burial plot
Suffix	Used to denote the Churchyard	An additional grave adjacent to the "parent" number
Grave	A used plot	A used plot

The municipal cemetery is split into sections and within each section the graves are numbered (starting at 1) The direction of subsequent numbers changes depending on which section you are in. Details of each section can be found in the links above.

Most stones do not display a number, however, there are graves that only have a marker stone. These are small posts that will carry a number and possibly the name or initials of the grave owner.

The general layout of the cemetery is shown below. please visit the individual section pages for more detail.