Today was looking around Rochdale for evidence of the Maskews.  We went up to St Chads Church first, it was locked so we looked for Maskew headstones.  The headstones have all been taken out of the ground and laid as footpaths.  I’m not sure I agree with that, but it is the second church in this area where this has been done.  No Maskew headstones.

From there we drove to the various addresses we had where Maskews lived or worked.  We couldn’t find any of the properties.  They had all been demolished or redeveloped.  Interestingly though all the addresses, except one, were all very close together and close to St Chads.

After lunch we set out to find the Local History Section here.  On our way we passed St Chads and saw someone disappearing inside.  When we went up to the door it was locked, so we hung around until the people came out (they go a bit of a shock and seemed a bit frightened).  Once we explained what we wanted they let us in to have a look around and take some photos.  Neither of them had heard the name Maskew.

From there we found that the Local History Section is only open on Tuesday.  So tomorrow we are off to visit them at 1000.

We went on to do some shopping at ASDA and walked back up the hill to the hotel.

We got an email from the lady in Todmorden.  She also gave us the phone number of a gentleman who is a bit of a local historian so we rang him.  He was away for the day, but we had a long talk to his wife and she had dug out some information about John Maskew and Sarah Stansfield.