Edwin Waugh: St Paul's, Kersal Moor #1

Saint Paul's churchyard, Moor Lane, Kersal Moor, Salford.

 

The grave of Edwin Waugh (1817–1890) – pronounced 'Woff' – the dialect poet who was born in Rochdale and was the son of a maker of shoes. His poem "Come Whoam to Thi Childer an' Me" (1856) greatly impressed Andrea Burdett-Coutts with its emphasis on temperance and marital fidelity, although the alcoholic wife-deserter Waugh was obviously no exemplar of the ideals of the poem.

 

EDWIN WAUGH

'BORN 29^TH JANUARY 1817

DIED 30^TH APRIL 1890'

 

The following paragraphs are included in the Wikipedia entry for Kersal Moor:

 

'In 1876 the Lancashire dialect poet and songwriter Edwin Waugh moved from his Manchester home to Kersal Moor for the "fresher air". Waugh's early life was spent in Rochdale and although he worked in Manchester he yearned for the moors he remembered from his youth. He wrote the following poem about Kersal Moor:

Kersal Moor

Sweet falls the blackbird's evening song,
in Kersal's poised dell;
But the skylarks trill makes the dewdrops thrill,
In the bonny heather;
Wild and free
Wild and free
Where the moorland breezes blow.

Oft have I roved you craggy steeps,
Where the tinkling moorland rills,
Sing all day long their low sweet song,
To the lonely listening hills;
And croon at night
In the pale moonlight

While mountain breezes blow.

As his health declined, Waugh moved to the seaside town of New Brighton. On his death in 1890, his body was brought back to be buried in the graveyard of St. Paul's Church, on the edge of the moorland he loved so well.

...Oh lay me down in moorland ground,

And make it my last bed,
With the heathery wilderness around,
And the bonny lark o'erhead:
Let fern and ling around me cling,
And green moss o'er me creep;
And the sweet wild mountain breezes sing,

 

Above my slumbers deep. – from The Moorland Breeze, Edwin Waugh (1889)'

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Samuel Oldham Lees: St Paul's, Kersal Moor #2
Robert Angus Smith: St Paul's, Kersal Moor #3

William Edward Armytage Axon: St Paul's, Kersal Moor #4
James Crossley and Eleanora Atherton: St Luke's, Kersal Moor #5