St Michael and All Angels Graveyard

The churchyard of St Michael and All Angels lies between the church, the Parsonage and the open fields that lead out onto the Pennine moors. There are estimated to be about 40,000 people buried in the churchyard, interned in close packed graves and marked with a diverse range of memorials, table and flat gravestones. The overcrowding and poor drainage in the churchyard and its effect on the health of villagers was a cause for concern for Patrick Brontë, who campaigned for improvements. Gravestones were ordered to be placed vertically to allow shrubs to grow and improve decomposition and trees were planted around and inside the site. These now mature trees, the shadows cast by the surrounding buildings and the mist that rolls in off the moors add to the dark, atmospheric feel of the churchyard.

A walk around the churchyard is a sad lesson in social history. In Victorian times, overcrowding and poor sanitation meant that life expectancy in the village was very low. A health report of 1850 stated that 2 in every 5 children did not reach their sixth birthday and this fact is borne out on the inscriptions on the gravestones. The graves of the Brontës’ servants Tabitha Ackroyd and Martha Brown can be found here, but the Brontës themselves are buried in a vault inside the church, apart from Anne who is buried in St Mary’s churchyard, Scarbourgh.