The Reverend Leigh LEYLAND died a few years before Queen Victoria but when I first saw his headstone in Filey churchyard I expected him to be a mid-20^th Century kind of guy. Today I was amused to discover he had a good Lancashire name. He was baptised in Wigan and perhaps also born there. (IF you Google “Leigh Leyland” you may be offered the distance from Leigh to Leyland as a top return.)

His first parish was, I think, in Lancashire but after he married a young woman from the Lake District he went to “North Britain” to tend a Scottish flock. He served the people of Lanark through four censuses – his address was Hope Street for much of that time.

Margaret Leyland died in the winter of 1879.

When the enumerator called at Hope Street in 1881, he noted the Reverend’s wife was “Maryanne”, 47, born in England. Mary Ann was the daughter of  Henry GOGGS, the vicar of South Creake, Norfolk. I don’t know what brought Mary Ann, her parents, and her husband to Filey at the end of their lives but they keep each other company for eternity here.

Sky 30 · Heavens above the Country Park