Records of Ford Cemetery

The collection contains computerised reports of the actual Interment registers as well as Superintendent's Registers, Deed owners' Registers, Grave Owners' Registers and Superintendents' Grave Owners Registers.

These volumes contain information from 282 FOR/1 & 282 FOR/2 below. Each volume is arranged by strict alphabetical order of surname of persons interred and thus acts as a names index to the burial registers. All volumes give the following information:

Name (of person interred)

Age

Date of burial

Section and plot number of grave

Whether a private or public grave

The collection is closed to the public under instruction from the Archdiocese. Computerised reports have been compiled making the information contained in the archive accessible and microfiche records are also available. Staff may check originals on behalf of the public under certain circumstances.

Deposited in April 1991 by Lawrence Furlong of the Liverpool Archdiocesan Cemeteries Board, Curial Offices, 152 Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L3 5RQ

According to William Farrer and J. Brownhill Victorian History of the County of Lancaster, 1907, Vol. 3, p99, "a Roman Catholic cemetery of 21 acres was opened in 1855..." at Ford near Litherland. A printed notice in James Gibson's Epitaphs...in Liverpool Churches..., Vol. 9, p 344, refers to "Liverpool Catholic Cemetery, Ford, near Seaforth" as having been established in 1855. Thomas Burke in Catholic History of Liverpool, 1910, p 142 states that the "vast Catholic population of the town, and the passing of the Intra-mural Act of 1859, created the demand for a Catholic cemetery" and indicated that it was blessed by Bishop Goss on 22nd September 1859. By the 1850s space was becoming scarce in the graveyards of town churches such as St Anthony, Scotland Road and St Patrick, Park Place. A Canon Newsham had purchased an estate of twenty-four acres at Ford and the first burial in Ford Cemetery appears to have taken place on 1st January 1859. The crosses serving as the Via Dolorosa in the cemetery were actually blessed by Bishop Goss on Sunday 25th September 1859. The procession and ceremony were reported in the Liverpool Mercury, Monday 26th September, p3, col. 4 which states that "...the persons assembled on the ground could not number less than five thousand; and two or three hundred conveyances, including carriages, cabs, omnibuses and a large number of spring carts were stationed outside the ground". The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Ford, consecrated on 8th September 1861 served as a mortuary chapel to the cemetery.