All Saints, Bradley, Derbyshire

Bradley has a good collection of headstones, including a few in Swithland slate. This grey-green material, which is no longer quarried, weathers to a lovely whitish green. Swithland slate does not cleave like Welsh slate so the backs of the stones are often pock marked where they have been hand worked to the right thickness and only polished flat on the front. Swithland takes fine detail extremely well and weathers very little, though the corners of headstones are often chipped or broken. Swithland seemed to attract the most skilled letter carvers as they all seem to carry very high quality work... Except the one to Hannah Weston which has an overcut letter in her name and a couple of spelling errors.

Several of the families which feature prominently in the old part of the churchyard still live in the village and properties around the village are named after some of those families.

© Copyright Poor Frank Raw, 2016