Cemeteries - Colne cemetery
Location
Keighley Road, Colne.
Information
This is our largest and oldest cemetery, established in 1860, and situated off Keighley Road, Colne.
Opening times
1 April – 30 September 8.00am – 8.00pm
1 October – 31 March 8.00am – 5.00pm
If there is snow and ice, we don't open the gates to vehicles for health and safety reasons.
Burials
We offer vaults or walled graves within all our cemeteries, which are concrete or bricked chambers with space for two coffins. We need at least four working days notice for a vault and three for a walled grave before the burial.
Memorial wall
Ashes in a suitable container are placed into a niche in the wall. A green slate plaque is placed onto the niche with your chosen inscription.
Garden of remembrance
We have a garden area where ashes are poured into the ground and we provide a wooden block with an aluminium plaque for your chosen inscription. We also provide a container for flowers.
Garden spaces can be bought with burial rights which last 25 years. The price includes:
- burial rights
- one set of ashes, either poured into the space, or scattered on the garden
- a memorial block
- a plaque with lettering
- a vase
All plaques have the same black lettering, and the blocks and vases are in the same style.
You can put flowers in the included vases, along with wreaths at special times of the year.
Unfortunately, unauthorised decorations are removed by us, to make sure we keep a modern, clean look.
You can arrange to have a service at the time the ashes are placed in the garden.
Ashes chambers
There are modern chambers just below ground which can hold up to 4 lots of ashes, making this an ideal family plot. Each chamber is covered with a black granite memorial stone with your chosen inscription.
Wallace Hartley memorial
Hartley was a violinist and bandleader on the RMS Titanic. He lead the eight member band as the ship sank on 15 April 1912. He died in the sinking.
Wallace was born in Colne and later moved to Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. In school he learned to play the violin and in 1909 began working on Cunard Line ocean liners.
In April 1912 Hartley was assigned to be the bandmaster for the RMS Titanic.
After the Titanic hit an iceberg and began to sink, Hartley and his band members played music to keep the passengers calm as the crew loaded the lifeboats. Many of the survivors said that he and the band played until the very end. None of the band members survived the sinking and the story of them playing to the end became a popular legend.
A newspaper at the time reported "the part played by the orchestra on board the Titanic in her last dreadful moments will rank among the noblest in the annals of heroism at sea."
Hartley's body was recovered by the Mackay-Bennet as body number 224 almost two weeks after the sinking. He was transferred to the Arabic and sent to England. One thousand people attended his funeral, while 40,000 lined the route of his funeral procession. His funeral was held on the 18 May 1912.
He is buried in the old section of the cemetery, in grave Y85. A 10-foot monument with a carved violin at its base was erected in his honour.