Graveyards & Monuments

By E Paul Lishman

The graveyard contains over 700 monuments. Many inscriptions are very detailed, sometimes with poems or unusual scriptural passages.  Details of inscriptions can be found by clicking on the 1876  document below.

A detailed survey of the church graveyard was undertaken in August 2016 by Mr and Mrs Woolard. A headstone inscription plan is attached below, with each gravestone given a specific reference number and recorded on file. To view the record, please contact Brian Furness in first instance. A contribution to Church funds would be appreciated

The father of our mutineer, an MP, an ear surgeon, several vets, vicars, clerk, sexton schoolmasters, colliery steward, a family decimated by cholera, miners killed in explosions in several different pits, weaver, maltster, farmers and the first guard on the Cockermouth to Workington Railway among many others who rest in peace in the churchyard which was extended several times over the years.

Brigham children died in all the armed forces, mainly in early naval postings or the Boer and World Wars. Others died abroad on business or emigrated and their last resting-places are often recorded. Thus Lima in Peru, Ponce in Porto Rico, Quebec, Toronto, Winnipeg and Nanaimo in Canada, Brussels, the West Indies, Ningpo in China, Australia, Umtali in South Africa and the Hotel Bristol in Rome feature amongst the stones in memory of those who lived and died in Brigham and nearby villages.