M. G. Metcalfe (Member no: 63)

Heysham

Heysham must have been a site of some religious significance for both Pagans and early Christians, as there are barrows, a carved stone labyrinth, a holy wellspring and the stone-hewn graves

We visited Heysham on a grey and wet Saturday afternoon in late September, 2021. Parking up at the St Patrick’s Chapel Heritage Centre car park off Barrows Lane, we walked the short distance to the Chapel via Main Street.

Heysham is a place of pilgrimage for the religious, pagans, history buffs and metalheads alike, but what is there to see in this small village on the Lancashire coast? If you take the time to find them, you’ll see six graves with two very different claims to fame - one religious and historical, and the other secular and esoteric. 

Heysham must have been a site of some religious significance for both Pagans and early Christians, as there are barrows, a carved stone labyrinth, a holy wellspring and the stone-hewn graves near St Patrick’s Chapel on the headland located there.

The graves are believed to be some of the earliest examples of Christian burials in mainland England. Likely constructed in the 11th-century, each grave is carved out of the solid rock and shaped slightly differently. There are six graves in total, four of them clearly body-shaped. One of them is coffin-shaped, and the other is rectangular.