The Graveyard Shift.

Last year our family decided that we should find our family tree and through hard work, research, help from family and friends we slowly began to know who we were and where we had come from.

This led us to find our great, great uncle Robbie MacDonald who had fought at the Battle of Mametz Wood, Somme France 1916, where unfortunately he would never get to returned home. So, my sister and I decided that we would go to France and find Robbie, which we did in a beautiful, well looked after French graveyard.

This got me thinking that if some kind stranger could tend to his grave, then in turn I could tend to the graveyard within the grounds of the old hospital. This was rather poignant and meaningful due to the fact that I work in the mental health 3rd sector where we actively promote removing the stigma around mental health within society.

At this time, little did I know that there was likeminded and good hearted people in the village who also thought the same and together we hatched a plan to begin the reclaiming, restoring but more importantly given those buried their identity back. They had been hidden for far to long but from that day they would no longer to be anonymous or hidden from society.

So Ally, Rhona, Christina, Karen, my kids and myself began what seemed like an impossible task at the time, clearing away the years of rubbish, restoring the broken gates, cleaning up the remaining headstones and memorial stone whilst discovering the plaques that identified the resting places of those buried.

Rhona, our resident 'Charlie Dimmock' sowed and germinated wild flowers, nurtured roses bushes back to health and became a master jedi at killing the weeds. Ally was the Queen of the path clearing, Christina became the master at restoring the stones, Karen was the negotiator, making sure the bags were removed and pestering the council to keeping their word, Rian and Jamie where the brawn, moving mounds of rubbish and foliage and I became the resident digger, digging up the plaques. More I think about it I'm glad the police never approached as I don't know how we would have started to explain what we were doing with spades, metal detectors and wheel barrows in a graveyard.

Throughout the summer we planted these flowers, bushes of lavender (mental health plant) and roses, discovered hundreds of plaques and slowly began to build a database of the names, where exactly they were buried, the date of their death and basically any information we could find. After months of research and hard work we identified a Polish Princesses, a baby, 6 WW1 personnel, 1 being a woman but more importantly we began renaming everyone buried within the boundaries of the old wooden fence.

There are hundreds of sad stories within the database but mainly connected through the stigma surrounding mental health and poverty.

So move forward to November this year, it was decided that we would hold a Remembrance Sunday Service within the cemetery due to the fact that we had identified 5 WW1 soldiers and 1 lady from the Queen Mary's Corps, all buried and probably never honoured until now.

Unfortunately the graveyard was trashed over the weekend, all our hard work destroyed, the plants removed, the benches broken and the gates kicked in.

Why would people do this? Maybe they didn't know it was a graveyard? Maybe they just don't care but we do care and we will restore it back.

We are looking for help to replace the benches, build raised flower beds, make it more secure and display the names of those buried within the grounds making it a peaceful place to visit.

A poem by Paul Colvin, The Indy Poet, which tell the story of Mental Asylums across the land of times gone by

Abandoned now and derelict

A building once so grand

Is testament to all that's wrong

In this, our Christian land.

This is Hartwood Sanatorium

From another time and place

But what lies below this hallowed ground

Is all of ours disgrace.

Twelve hundred plus lie buried here

With some plots being shared

And take with them their cruel lives

For no evil here was spared.

A few nursing staff are buried here

With the damned young single mothers

But in their everlasting peace

They are all our sisters, brothers.

A royal Polish Princess

An heiress without grace

And the baby girl who never danced

Died in this godforsaken place.

Some were ‘private lunatics’

Put here through family shame

But most were ‘pauper lunatics’

And are buried with no name.

Homosexuals, epileptics,

The disabled lie here too

All outcasts from society

Buried deep and out of view.

Five soldiers from the Great War,

Who were tortured by their past

Join a lady from St Mary's Corps

And are honoured here at last.

The atrocities to forgotten souls

And the stigma that they bore

Are remembered by this simple plaque

And are lost to us no more.

Paul Colvin

There are over 1200 buried in 630 graves, the majority were 'paupers lunatics' (records words not mine) with no money or means to bury them outside the hospital, there are a few 'private lunatics' (again records words not mine), probably buried there through shame and stigma, which makes me really sad thinking that they had to be hidden away so no one knew.

So please, if you can help it would be most appreciated to help us restore and rebuild the cemetery so people can visit it safely once again

The Hartwood Graveyard Project