Wems secret burial ground

(Disclaimer: Joking aside, I fully understand the risks/dangers involved in these adventures and do so in the full knowledge of what could happen. I don't encourage or condone and I accept no responsibility for anyone else following in my footsteps. I never break into a place, I never take any items and I never cause any damage, as such no criminal offences have been committed in the making of this blog. I will not disclose a location, or means of entry. I leave the building as I find it and only enter to take photographs for my own pleasure and to document the building.)

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!

The Swan Inn

(Disclaimer: Joking aside, I fully understand the risks/dangers involved in these adventures and do so in the full knowledge of what could happen. I don't encourage or condone and I accept no responsibility for anyone else following in my footsteps. I never break into a place, I never take any items and I never cause any damage, as such no criminal offences have been committed in the making of this blog. I will not disclose a location, or means of entry. I leave the building as I find it and only enter to take photographs for my own pleasure and to document the building.)

When it comes to derelict pubs, the subject is often met with a lot of sadness. Pubs are social locations, and many people have fond memories, and are generally sad to see them go.
But the British pub is dying a slow death, especially in rural locations. We've shown several in this blog before, such as the Eagles, the Cape of Good Hope, and even in Shrewsbury town itself, with the Castle Inn. Todays pub doesn't even look like a pub anymore. My fellow adventurer and saviour of the day when we went to the Garden Bunker, Tamsin, was one source of information regarding this pub, having known the last owners. But little did she realise I'd already come and gone, with my monkvestite friend, Brother Michael, who had drank here back in his youth.

It's a little place called The Swan.

People had very fond memories of this place, and it's easy to figure out why. Humans are social creatures, and pubs are a social environment. They're designed to be homely and comfortable. Even the term "pub" derives from Public House. Pubs are a huge part of British culture, and many date back hundreds of years. The Swan appears on maps as far back as the 1880s, but is likely far older. It closed its doors for good in 2006. They didn't lock them though.

The village in which this pub sits, slowly rotting away, was said in the 2011 census to have a population of a measely 256, but honestly, to look at the village, even that number seems surprisingly big. It's a very blink-and-you-miss-it place. And yet there is history here. There is a building in the village known as the lodge, which dates back to 1591, which was originally a hunting lodge owned by Edward Scriven, whose ancestors have been recorded as living in this village as far back to Reginald Scriven, who died in 1428. Curiously, in 1848 a Roman votive altar was found near the lodge, bearing the engraving "L Caractacus."
It's all very fascinating.

But onto the Swan. Historically, this place was the meeting site of a branch of The Friendly Society of the Ancient Order of the Foresters, an organisation that doesn't sound at all real, but nevertheless is. It dates back to 1834, when it was formed from the remains of an older fraternity which dated back to 1745. "Friendly society" is a genuine term for a fraternal organisation, membership of which grants one tax-exempt savings, not just for the member but their children too. So they're kind of like the Freemasons, except they're not secretly controling the world. The Ancient Order of the Foresters is actually pretty simple. It guarantees financial and social support to its members. They pay a few pence a week into a common fund, and as a result get sick pay and funeral costs covered by the fraternity. And allegedly one branch of this organisation met here, in the Swan Inn.

 Brother Michael referred to the Swan as "The Mucky Duck." It's a nickname that some people confirm the pub did have at one point, but many people remain mystified by, having never heard it. Whatever its nickname is, it reminds me not of any kind of waterfoul, mucky or otherwise, but of a large block of cheese, the kind which has sat in a fridge for so long that one ponders if it is safe to eat. It wasn't always so. Old photos of the Swan do exist, and it was really quite nice to look at, back in the day. These old photos can be credited to Mark Vickers. He probably didn't take them, but he did provide them, having a keen interest, given that his grandfather, Jack Lemon, ran the pub during the second world war.

These pictures of the Swan dates back to the 1900s, and depict it as two buildings, the pub on one side and a shop on the other. At some point, the wall in between was demolished, and the two buildings became one larger pub. Doesn't it look lovely though?

During this time, the Swan was ran by the Edwards family, starting with James Edwards in 1911. By 1913, it was being ran by Richard Edwards, although any relation between the two is unconfirmed but likely. Richard met his untimely demise when he fell off his horse and was carried away by flood water. Witnesses saw him struggling briefly before vanishing beneath the surface, and his body was found dead a few hours later. Following that it was ran by Mary Jane Edwards, who was likely Richards descendant or even widow. She actually died in the pub and in 1934 it found its way to Jack Lemon. Jack Lemon had it until 1948 when his daughter Margaret and her husband John Vickers took it over. John and Margaret are presumably the parents of Mark Vickers, who provided the old exterior shots.

Here's the pub in the 1950s, having now extended to include the former shop.

And I found this picture in the local newspapers "Pictures from the past" article, but upon reading that, found out that Mark Vickers had provided the photo to them too.

Slipping inside, we found that the place was quite a tip. The bar is still visible but the place will need a good clean out if it ever became operational again.

 Once long ago, this place would have been full of life.

 There's a candle here, shaped like two naked figures in a loving embrace. Well I'm glad someone in this derelict pub is getting some, because I ain't, and neither probably is Brother Michael.

So after the Vickers family moved out in the 1970s, the pub changed hands numerous times throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s. It seems like the majority of the fond memories of this place are from this era, although Mark Vickers obviously has more sentimentality given that he grew up here prior to that. Of course, I'm viewing this entire thing as objectively as possible- These aren't just characters in a narative, but real people, and any information that I have on this place comes from real people who loved this pub.

The Jacksons eventually had the pub, and in the era of the breathaliser and smoking ban, the rural pub culture began to die, and as such running a small village pub became a bit of a struggle financially. It seems that the Jacksons attempted to bring more money in by turning the pub into an eatery, and this proved to be an unpopular decision among the villagers.
This was all elaborated on in a letter left behind in the pub.

 The letter seems to be in response to a letter of objection from 2006. It seems that the Jacksons, following their pubs closure, attempted to get planning permission to turn the pub into a private dwelling, and met some fierce backlash from the villagers, who wanted their pub back. However, this angry letter points out that of the 67 villager letters of objection, several were from the same households, and twelve were from people who had never even been to the Swan.
The letter states that the villagers are mainly complaining because they preferred the pub in its earlier incarnation, with darts, and dominoes, and oddly added among the list of pub activities, air rifle shooting. They would like to see the Swan reopen as that, and not as an eatery, and certainly not closed forever to become a house. The letter counters these objections, saying that these people have no idea how the pub-running thing works, that running a small village pub is not enough to sustain a business, and they had to open it up as an eatery to stay open. But of course, the villagers hated it, and as a result they had even less customers.

It's a tricky one. Keep the pub as it is, and go out of business because only a handful of people go there due to drink driving laws, a remote location and a smoking ban, or try to stay in business by making it more welcoming to visitors in spite of its remote location, but pissing off the entire village, and going out of business. The Jacksons were trapped between a rock and a hard place. It's no wonder that in the end they just thought "Fuck it" and moved to Spain, with absolutely no intention of coming back.

 The letter continues, addressing villager complaints, that the drinking area wasn't big enough, that the prices were high, and that they banned children and dogs. It's true that one of the factors to Britains dying pub culture is the fact that supermarkets sell alcohol for less, but here the Jacksons claim that their prices aren't that bad. They do agree that children and dogs are banned though. Dogs, because they're an eatery that serves food, and kids because they're an adult-only establishment.

That seems a little contradictory to me personally. An eatery would insinuate that it's family friendly. A ban on children would indicate a pub. Banning children from a pub makes sense. Banning dogs from an eatery makes sense. Banning both just sounds like they didn't quite know what they wanted to be. But I could be wrong.

It seems the villagers are saying that they preferred the Swan during the pre-Jackson era, when it was a warm, friendly environment. The Jacksons say here that this is a lie, and they allege that many people were banned by a previous landlord for virtually nothing.

And finally the letter addresses the factors that brought about the end of so many rural pubs. The smoking ban, prohibiting people from smoking indoors, the drink driving laws, restricting drinkers to pubs within staggering distance of their home unless they had a designated driver, and new lifestyle changes as people prefer to stay in and drink rather than go out.

It actually seems like a tragic loss to all involved. The Jacksons seem like they did their best with a bad situation, and the changes to the pub were objected by a group who were loyal to the old village pub, but sadly not big enough to maintain the business.

It's sad.

But ultimately that's how the Swan ended. The Jacksons decided that if they couldn't run a pub, they'd turn it into a house. The villagers objected because they wanted to keep their pub, and in the end they won, and the Jacksons attitude was, along the lines of, but not verbatim, "Fine, you stopped us having a house, but we still own the property, and we say you're never getting your pub back."

They said that even though they own the pub, they're just going to let it fall into ruin, and over time people will get fed up of having a big derelict ruin in their village, and eventually admit that the Jacksons desire to turn it into a house was the correct course of action. But it didn't matter, because they were never coming back.

According to Tamsin the Adventurer / warrior priestess, the Jacksons are now in Spain.

The Swan, however, is abandoned, in a very literal sense.

 SO WHY IS THERE SO MUCH STUFF???

I mean seriously, I understand abandoning a building to fall to ruin, but they seemingly left the majority of their posessions behind with it. Why? It makes no sense. That's a nice dartboard on the wall.

It sure is an odd place to put one though, right next to a doorway. What if someone comes through at the same time that someone misses the dartboard?

 There's another bar area, not that anyone can get to it.

 A darts trophy. Why is that still here?

For paranormal enthusiasts, Tamsin claims that as a child, she used to play with the kids who lived at the Swan, and they were convinced that the pub was haunted. Now an adult, Tamsin says it probably isn't. But I wonder if shes aware that a former landlady died here in the early 1930s.

Some of this stuff seems like a huge shame to leave behind. I can totally understand the Jacksons getting annoyed and moving abroad, and leaving this place as a derelict building, but to leave such things behind in the process totally mystifies me.

There's another dartboard down here.

Onto the public restrooms... 

 There's still handsoap here.

 One can't access the urinal, but they seem pretty grim.

It's dirty from years of no maintenance, and cluttered, but still in better condition than the toilets in some active pubs and nightclubs.

 Behind the bar, things were similarly cluttered, but there were a few tidbits of interest.

 Perhaps the most hilarious Shropshire Star article, from 2001, only 56 years after Winston Churchill said "Sorry for the inconvenience, it won't happen again" before launching an air defence revamp that my publicist insists was to protect us from angry racist pensioners on Ryanair.

What I love about this article, where a woman reported twenty naked men running around the Abbey, is that she actually counted them before reporting to the police. Surely anyone else would be like "Yes, Hello, there's a bunch of naked men running around Shrewsbury Abbey. Come quick."

 For some reason, someone has listed lost civilisations on the wall.

 The pub seems to lack a cellar, but has a store room behind the bar.

 It was time to go upstairs, but I wasn't expecting too much. I can get my head around abandoning a pub and all of its stuff, but the upstairs was lived in, and as such would probably be cleared out of personal belongings, right?

 Well, they left some of their clothes hanging up, as if they've just nipped out to the shop.

 Up here, the buildings derelict nature becomes really apparent, with peeling wallpaper and damp in the corners.

 The bedrooms look like they've thrown some wild parties, but there's still multitudes of garments left behind, some half packed into boxes. It looks like the Jacksons wanted to take them, but decided not to at the last minute.

 The upstairs bathrooms are also pretty grim.

And there's a cat scratching toy in the hallway. Presumably the Jacksons had a cat which they either took with them or re-homed.

 Some books were left behind.

 The oddest room upstairs was this office, where the Jacksons had written all of their login details for Ebay, Trip Advisor, Ryanair, etc. I've censored these on the photos because it's information that can be misused, but given that anyone can just stroll in, it's quite worrying, and I hope that they changed their passwords once they got to their new home.

 The final bedroom has this adorable doll. It's the baby from the old TV show, Dinosaurs. It's also not the first time I found this doll on my adventures. I guess Dinosaur merch is easily forgettable.

 The last bedroom had an odd little ensuite bathroom, odd in that it was down some stairs, carpetted, and also cluttered.

 A mattress and exercise bike block the view of the toilet, which I'm sure is immaculate.

 Lastly we made our way out into the beer garden. The sun was starting to set and we were eager to set off. The angry letter in the pub says that it was the Jacksons who opened up the garden for public use, following the smoking ban, but it seems difficult to imagine this garden not being used, given that it's right at the rear of the pub, next to the car park.

Sadly for the Swan, there is no future. The pub closed its doors in 2006, and has been slowly decaying ever since while the property owners are living the life in Spain, content in the knowledge that the villagers who stopped them transforming the village pub into a house now have to watch the pub crumble away... The sad truth is, even if someone was to buy The Swan and reopen it, chances are it wouldn't last long. It's a rural village pub, and the industry simply isn't as prosperous as it once was. It's the end of an era.

But even if the Swan could generate enough business to stay open, this year it was confirmed to soon be demolished. I never knew this pub in its glory days- I was born too late. But even so, I can appreciate the loss.

Thats all I have for today. Next I'll be blogging somewhere remote on my other blog, which handles non-Shropshire related adventures. In the meantime, share this post, and like my Facebook, follow my Instagram, subscribe to my Youtube and follow my Twitter.

Thanks for reading!