Huyton Cemetery

Huyton Parish Church Cemetery, to give it its full title, is the cemetery of Huyton Parish Church, also known as St Michael’s. It is situated in the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley in Merseyside.

There has been a place of worship on the site as far back as Norman times. Although the current church building is mainly from the early 19th Century, some parts of the chancel and south arcade are up to 700 years old.

 

There are a number of older graves in the churchyard, with what is commonly known as Huyton Cemetery, entranced via Derby Road, opening in the early 1880s.

Huyton Cemetery

The most famous person interred at Huyton Cemetery is Stuart Sutcliffe, known by many as the ‘Fifth Beatle’. Sutcliffe was a bass guitarist in the group but left in 1961 to pursue an art career in Hamburg. He died there of a brain hemorrhage in April 1962 and the repatriation of his body was arranged by the group’s manager Brian Epstein. Sutcliffe’s father Charles, who died four years after his son, is also buried in the grave. He had not even been aware of the tragic death as he had been away at sea at the time.

A notable person from local business and civic life buried in Huyton Cemetery is John Stone, whose grave is just on the right as you enter. He died aged 92 in 1936 and was head of J & R Stone who operated Park Colliery in Garswood, which was in existence 1887 to 1960. He had continued working until just a few weeks before his death. Stone was a member of the Liverpool Cathedral Building Committee and donated £5000 to the fund in 1933. He served as a magistrate for forty years and was High Sheriff of Lancashire 1912-13.

Huyton Cemetery contains sixteen Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones from both world wars. One of those is of John Simmons, a merchant seaman who spent twenty days adrift in the Atlantic Ocean after his vessel was torpedoed in 1941. After being rescued John, who lived in Knowsley Lane, died of exposure at Broadgreen Hospital.

Knowsley Council is responsible for the upkeep of Huyton Cemetery, which is very well maintained. However new grave plots are no longer available and interments are only allowed in exiting ones. All new burials within the borough now take place in Fox Lane Cemetery, Whiston.