This blog post is slightly different from my usual content, in that no sneaking was required. I had permission for these visits. Prior to this, I'd never actually been to Wem before. It's probably the most unexciting town name in the world. Nevertheless, it exists, and it's in Shropshire, and its not without its secrets. As far as rooftopping goes, it's a bit of a flop. It has derelict buildings but none of them are accessible. There's a lot of old buildings and history here, and there's a psychic palm reader who took one look at my hands and said "You will die doing something stupid." But that's probably less to do with psychic abilities and more to do with the great big scar down my palm. Nevertheless, something in Wem caught my attention. It's not derelict or abandoned, but it is hidden and historic, and it deserves to be looked at.
I was initially invited to Wem to photograph an air raid shelter that was due to get demolished. Certain people felt, rightfully so, that the air raid shelter should not go down without some form of documentation, and given that I regularly cover such topics, I was chosen to be the one to document it. However, the guy who brought me down to Wem showed me his place of residence, and I was gobsmacked. He happens to have the most unorthodox of backyards, in that it was an old Victorian burial ground. So naturally, I asked to see that too.
It turns out that the word "Wem" actually derives from the Old English word "Wamm" which means Marsh. It is believed to have been occupied by Celtic settlers in the Iron Age known as the Cornovii. They were then driven away by the Roman Conquest of Shropshire. The Domesday Book then lists Wem in 1086 as consisting of four manor houses, but by 1202 it had grown into a market town.
In 1677 a fire destroyed a huge portion of the town, allegedly caused by fourteen year old Jane Churn, who accidentally dropped a candle set the whole wooden town ablaze, with such ferocity that the towns chuchbells melted and had to be recast.
Later on, in 1981 there was a tornado. And because none of this Emmerdale shit is good enough for one tiny town with a population of just 5000 or so, in the 1990s Wem made international headlines when the ghost of Jane Churn was allegedly caught on camera. We'll come back to that...
So why does Wem have a secret cemetery, or "Wemetery," as I called it?
It seems that the general area was once all part of the Congregational chapel and a nearby school. The chapel dates back to 1775, and the burial ground along with the building in front of it, currently a residential home, were constructed in 1844. The house itself was to be a meeting room, and also a Sunday School, which was in turn linked to the nearby school behind the wemetery, which is now demolished.
Among the graves are those of Sydney Herbert. According to the grave he died in 1900, and his wife Clara died ten years later. Both are down there, together, which sounds romantic until you realise that they're also buried with Sydneys parents, Joel and Sarah Stinchcombe, and most notable, George Albert Griffiths, their grandson, who died in 1917 at the age of 27. Georges mother Minnie was Sydneys sister, but she doesn't seem to be here. However, in spite of the family mostly being all under here, the grave is legally a war grave, given that George had a military background. The fact that his grave is now out of sight on private property is sad, especially given that he was loved by the community in his time.
However, this and another war grave are perhaps the most recent burial plots here, the rest being Victorian.
My host expressed displeasure at the fact that his home was a burial ground, being seemingly unaware of the scale of it when he moved in, due to the overgrown garden hiding these gravestones.
Quite eerily, a two-year-old girl is buried here.
And again, there's an entire family buried under this one.
This one appears to be another child. The grave has degraded to the point of being difficult to read, but she's definitely younger than ten.
Here's the other war grave, in the design of a book. It makes mention of The Great War, which is how World War One was referred to before they decided to make a sequel. As with the other, I think it's a shame that it's going unnoticed here.
This tower is actually in remembrance of a one-year-old boy, who was allegedly related to someone high ranking at the chapel, a connection that earned the infant a more prominent grave than the rest.
And here is the grave of the schools headmaster, who actually lived next door to the meeting room. His grave reads "For 54 years master of the Wem British School."
That's a long time to be teaching kids in Wem. He must have taught multiple generations, and seen the children or even grandchildren of his former pupils attend the school in his time there.
It sure is strange to think that underneath this guys backyard are a bunch of dead people, including children as young as one. But what's really strange is just how forgotten all this is. With the meeting room being converted into a residential premises, this burial ground became private property, and as such it has largely fallen out of the general publics gaze. In fact had the current occupant not chosen to cut back the overgrowth, none of this would even be visible, and Wem would just have an overgrown yard that nobody knew the significance of.
But there's more. The occupant has copies of all of the original deeds to the house, some of which date back to the 1840s. It's a lot of paperwork, and not all of it will be shown here, and a lot of the font is difficult to read. Nevertheless, it's cool that some of this historic documentation has been kept.
The part about the burial ground is huge, and handwritten in an old fashioned style that reminds me of a spider with diarrhea. Along the bottom of the sheet are loads of family crests, which would have been visible on the original version, but just look like splodges on this version.
The text is a little clearer here, dated 19th December 1844, and specifies that it's the First Deed "setting a meeting house and cemetery or burial ground in Wem in connection to the present chapel."
This sheet says "Names and descriptions of all the Trustees on the last appointment of trustees made on the second day of April, one thousand, eight hundred and eighty five." It lists estate agents, oil merchants, and farmers.
More recent documents are typed and originating in 1952, detailing the list of trustees on their last meeting, which was in 1925.
The documents list their names, addresses, occupations, and most morbidly, the fact that they are almost all deceased.
Nevertheless, it was very cool to have a peek at such historic documents regarding the burial ground, once significant but lost to time, and forgotten by all but a few.Onto the second attraction, which brought me to Wem in the first place. It's not nearly as exciting, in my mind at least, but it deserves a place here while we're on the subject of Wem. It's an air raid shelter, situated in the grounds of Wem school, currently used by the groundskeeper to store all of his groundskeeping paraphernalia.
Historically there's not much to say besides the obvious. In the 1940s this building was constructed for the purpose of protecting the school pupils during the blitz. In this era of nuclear missiles being a thing, we typically expect things like this to be underground, but during the second world war, such devastation was unheard of, although not for much longer. The primary objective during the blitz was to not be seen. Homes had blackout sheets so that at night time, the enemy aircraft couldn't spot any actual dwelling, and shelters were established for people to gather in the event of an air strike.
This tiny building would have been crammed full of school children and the teaching staff.
Good thing it wasn't a catholic school...
Rumour has it there was another identical one on the school grounds, and maps from the era do show two additional buildings near the school that aren't there anymore, as well as this shelter, so it's certainly possible.
Obviously it's undergone modifications since the war. This hatch, while old, is not an original feature.
Neither is all this. As you can see, this place is used, but I did have permission to come in and snap photos.
The building is segmented by a central wall and door, not at all uncommon in buildings of this style from this era, but the purpose is totally unknown to me.
The brickwork holding up the work surface is all original.
At the end was this small room, accessible via an external door but not leading to the rest of the building. However the brickwork in the corner quite clearly has been altered at some point in the past, indicative that the room once connected to the rest of the building. This was something I actually pointed out to my hosts, who had not noticed it.
Lastly I want to touch on the Wem ghost. It's a little outside of what this blog is about, but I feel that while I'm in Wem I really should mention it. Even if you've never heard of Wem before, if you're a paranormal enthusiast you'll have seen the photo of her. It took place right here in the tiny town of Wem, in this building, the town hall.
The town hall caught fire in 1995 and some photos of the blaze revealed this image of a transparent girl standing in the burning building.
Obviously this image isn't mine, but I remember it being on television back when I was a small child, when this news was fresh and my young, impressionable mind refused to listen to any rational idea that debunked this image.
In hindsight, it was obvious really. People claimed that this was the ghost of Jane Churn, revisiting to witness the fire of 1995, due to having caused and died in the fire of 1677. To me this seems illogical, because why would a fourteen year old girl killed in a fire come back to stand in more fire??? It ties in to one of the huge things that bug me about the supernatural- People talk as if spirits of people were never people, likening their behaviour more to a dog or something that will come if you wave the right biscuit or whistle at them. People hold hands in circles and say "Come to us, spirit" when they're trying to contact a dead war hero who, if we assume their spirit is there paying attention to proceedings, would probably consider the tone rather patronizing. No wonder the dead like to tease the living.
You know what I'd do if I was a ghost? I'd haunt the queue at a supermarket checkout. Nobody would see me, except for the person stood right behind me, so when the person in front is done, everyone is looking at the person behind me, thinking "Why aren't they approaching the cashier???" The person behind me will be thinking the same thing, about me, just stood there. Eventually they'll reach out to tap me on the shoulder, at which point my head will turn around 180 degrees, I'll wink at them and then vanish in a puff of awesomeness, leaving their reaction completely random and unexpected by everyone around.
Take that, fleshlings!
Anyway, I digress! The ghost of Jane Churn went unexplained right up until 2010, five years after the photographer had passed away. It was completely by chance that someone happened to come across a Wem postcard from 1922 which featured the girl from the 1995 fire.
The similarity is obvious. Same outfit, same facial expression. He totally took this girl and stuck her in his photos of the fire. And look where it got him! He died in 2005, with the photo recognised all over the world, and believed to be genuine by many people. In his mind, he won, and that's kinda cool.
I wonder what became of this girl. Maybe she's in the Wemetery!
That's all I have for today! The Wemetery was cool. The air raid shelter was pudding after the main course. The ghost story gets mentioned purely because I have such vivid memories of the news reports when I was a small child, so it's personal to me. When I think of Wem, I think of the ghost, even if it did get disproven.
Next time, I'll be writing about a derelict house on my other blog, and then I'll be writing about a derelict house on this one, although truth be told, I have a lot of non-Shropshire adventures coming up and if you've missed the adventures on my other blog, go check it out. Also, share this blog wherever you want, and follow my Instagram, like my Facebook, subscribe to my Youtube, and follow my Twitter.
Thanks for reading!
