Vernacular funeral paths in Upper Calderdale
By John Billingsley
48pp • Postage included in price
Funeral paths, popularly known as corpseways, became a familiar topic in neo-antiquarian research in the 1980s when they entered discussions about leys as spirit roads. The association with leys faded, but they are still recognised as spirit paths of a kind, and often interact with hauntings and other supernatural encounters. In this book, John Billingsley reviews the ley debate and subsequent understandings of corpseways and coffin roads, including the incidence of resting stones and related graffiti, and their importance to the communities they conveyed to their final resting place. The likely route of four corpseways in the mediaeaval and early modern parishes of Halifax and Heptonstall are retraced in today’s landscape.
