Tonge Cemetery
Cemetery Road
Bolton
England

Visited Tonge Cemetery on 19 September 2008 to, firstly, locate the Family grave and then, to take some photographs and video for this website. It was very interesting in that there are eight family members buried there. Six of them I was aware were buried here but discovered the date Robert William died and also discovered that Maria was buried there.

William (1821), Bessie, Arthur, Joseph, Mary Veitch and John Reid are also buried there. There are three headstones. Underneath the southern headstone are buried William and Bessie. Underneath the northern headstone is John Reid. The others are buried underneath the centre headstone.

Tonge Cemetery opened on 31 December 1856. Considering that the grave was set up after Arthur died in 1863, the grave is in pretty good condition but could do with a tidy up. It is interesting that the Chinese have a special day each year, a holiday, where they return to the family grave and tidy it up for the year ahead.

An old photo taken between 1937 to 1946, copied from a post card in DMH's post card collection:

Pictures of the family grave:

A picture of the southern headstone is below:

A picture of the centre headstone is below:

A picture of the northern headstone is below:

Tonge Cemetery is east of the centre of Bolton as can be seen from Google Maps.

It is very easy to find and I managed to park near the North Gate. Not sure if there is any other parking area, as the road leading to the North Gate has limited parking.

The next task was to locate the graves within the cemetery. Of course I had no idea where the graves were but spotted a notice board with a telephone number on it. The lady at the other end was very helpful and asked me to call back in ten minutes after she had found the location of the graves. After only a few minutes, one of the chaps who worked in the cemetery then found me, having been contacted by the lady I had spoken to, and guided me to the graves. The chap was quite funny as when he spotted the headstones, he commented, in a broad Lancashire accent, that my relatives must have been very rich!

From the aerial shot above, you can see that as you enter the cemetery from the North Gate, head south a very short distance then take the circular path to the west. When heading due south again you will see an area where a chapel used to be. Directly south of this overgrown area is where the three headstones are.

Guess that the chapel that was previously directly north of the three headstones may have looked similar, if not identical, to the East Chapel that is pictured above. There seems to be some planned symmetry about the cemetery.

There appears not to be much information on the internet about Tonge Cemetery but here are a few links:

Cemetery Registers

GENUKI.