So, what do you do when you go up to the cemetery with a long list of graves to find and photograph to discover the cemetery gates are locked. Well you go to another churchyard instead!
There are few remaining headstones in the churchyard at St. Mark’s. It is unlikely there were ever many more as this was the burial place of the early residents of the railway village, most of whom were young with large families and little money.
By the end of the 1870s burial space at St Mark’s was running out and a new burial ground was urgently needed. This and the increasing demands of the large non-conformist congregations for an independent burial ground saw the establishment of Radnor Street Cemetery in 1881.
Robert Hanks was born in Bristol, the son of Thomas and Elisabeth Hanks, and baptised at St. Phillip and St Jacobs, Bristol on October 16, 1796. He married Elizabeth Phillips at St Paul’s, Portland Square, Bristol on September 10, 1820 and the couple had six surviving children.
The 1841 census finds the family living at an address at the Viaduct Foundry, Newton in Mackerfield, (Newton le Willow) Lancashire, where both Robert and his eldest son, also named Robert, are working as mechanics.
By 1851 the family had arrived in New Swindon where they lived at 13 High Street (later renamed Emlyn Square).
In 1866 Robert was killed in an accident in the Works when an iron truck on which he was working toppled over, crushing him. He was 71 years old.
It is said that after this fatal accident, Joseph Armstrong, Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Superintendent, began a series of measures designed to improve safety in the railway factory.
Radnor Street Cemetery 