SCRCA Location Introduction
St Leonards' Church in Chapel-le-Dale lies well outside the boundary of the Settle-Carlisle Railway Conservation Area (SCRCA). However, it has a direct and important association with the SCRCA through the graves of - and the memorials to - the hundreds of people who lost their lives during the construction of the railway in this area.
The church / churchyard is the site of:
- a wall-mounted memorial tablet to the construction workers,
- the millenium memorial,
- the marked graves of:
- Job Hirst (the sub-contractor responsible for all the bridges and masonry between Batty Moss Viaduct and the south entrance to Bleamoor Tunnel),
- James Mather (proprietor of the Welcome Home - a hostelry popular with railway navvies - who died on 29 April 1872 aged 45 years following an accident at Ingleton with a horse and cart),
- John Thomson (a navvy killed inside Blea Moor tunnel while using a brazier to dry wet dynamite) and
- the unmarked graves for an unknown number of railway workers and locals killed between 1869 and 1876 as a result of accidents and the smallpox outbreak.
The grave of Job Hirst is capped by a large ornately carved tombstone.
The grave of James Mathers is marked by a headstone, which includes the following inscription:
When I was in the prime of life it was through a fall I lost my life.
No man in this world need boast of his might, he is alive in the morning and dead at night.
