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History
1867: 1 st deed, 28 September, …”Jesse Masters of Draycott for the sum of £25 conveys that parcel of land called Peaseland to the Trustees…the place to be used for a Public Cemetery or Burial Ground under and subject to restrictions and regulations as the Trustees or a majority of them from time to time appoint.”
(The land surrounding the cemetery was originally allotments and old maps show plots laid out and numbered. Even today we can see signs of terraced cultivation).
The first known individual burial was that of Jesse Masters in 1873, although there were probably others before 1870. (See also section Navigators (Navvies).
1885: 2 nd deed, 6 March…”between John Masters of Mapleton, Iowa, USA, who sold for £5 additional land to be added to the existing cemetery…”
1909: Two legacies were made by Sarah Higgs, niece of Jesse Masters. The first was £10 towards "any permanent improvement that might be undertaken and a further 19 guineas to be invested and annual interest to be used towards the upkeep of the cemetery"
1911: Proposed that the unenclosed land belonging to the cemetery be enclosed by a stone wall.
1995: A field known as Furlong (2.689 acres) adjacent to the cemetery, was purchased.
Navigators (Navvies)
Amongst the first burials in 1869 was a group of navvies who were employed incutting the Cheddar Valley local railway line. It is believed that there were a series of encampments near the Axbridge side of Winscombe Tunnel and possibly one near Rodney Stoke. With poor hygiene, disease (possibly cholera), was rife and coupled with harsh working conditions probably accounted for their deaths. The labourers were predominantly Irish Catholic so were not permitted to be buried in either of the two local churchyards. In July 2018 a gravestone was finally erected in their memory.
Who were the Navvies?
In the Victorian era, by 1900 from a standing start in the 1820s, about 20,000 miles of railway line had been constructed in this country changing its face forever. By today’s standards, the speed of construction with its tunnel, cuttings, bridges and viaducts was amazingly fast.
The work was undertaken by Navigators, or Navvies, so-called because their predecessors had originally been employed in the construction of the canals, or navigations. By the 1850s there were some 250,000 railway navvies at work, with about 30% of them Irish. Equipped with little more than picks, shovels and wheelbarrows, they tramped from job to job with their families.
The Navvies living conditions were appalling, often temporary encampments of rough timber and turf huts with poor hygiene. The work itself was dangerous with 1-2 fatal accidents per mile of track completed considered unremarkable and normal. The overall death toll from railway construction in the UK in the Victorian era was about 40,000. Perhaps unsurprisingly the Navvies had a hard-drinking, live-for-today reputation that spread fear in places along the way.
The contractors responsible for the work, such as Brunel, resisted all attempts to provide their workers with adequate accommodation and safe working conditions. Nevertheless, the sheer quality of the Navvies work, which forms the backbone of this country’s transport system to this very day, remains their greatest memorial.
Why were the Navvies buried in The Rodney Stoke & Draycott Cemetery?
The late Robert Hill, historian of Cheddar, believed that the workers who built The Strawberry Line (as it came to be later known) were accommodated in a series of encampments near the Axbridge side of the Winscombe Tunnel with a second camp near Rodney Stoke.
As well as disease, landslides were common and either of these factors could account for the burial of the labourers, believed to be predominantly Irish Catholic, who were not permitted to be buried in St Leonard’s Graveyard, Rodney Stoke.
In the 1860s, Draycott was a poor hamlet living in the shadow of its wealthier neighbour, Rodney Stoke. Unlike the inhabitants of Rodney Stoke, Draycott welcomed the coming of the railway, which is why the station was built there. Draycott was also a Non-Conformist stronghold, having at least three chapels until St Peter’s Church was built in 1861.
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