# High Royds chapel, cemetery and tunnel.



## rikj (May 22, 2006)

Hi

Not sure where to put this. Apparently High Royds was unusual in not having a chapel on site. However, some way away, over the main road is a small chapel and cemetery that became well used. Before this was built 900 inmates had been buried in an unmarked grave in nearby Guiseley.

The chapel is very small and now derelict and overgrown.







It sits in a small field overlooked by a Wacky Warehouse, a Vauxhall dealership and an ambulance station. The chapel has been stripped internally, though fortunately there appears to have been no vandalism or even graffiti. All that remains is the altar rail.






At first glance, particularly on a cold, grey Yorkshire evening, it appears as if the chapel sits in an empty field. However, looking around there are two headstones.






A cemetery with only two graves hardly seems to justify its own chapel unless you know that there are 2858 bodies buried here. Only two graves are marked. I'm actually an ex-gravedigger myself, so I feel a close bond to cemeteries and know quite a bit about the technicalities of returning people to the earth. But this place I found deeply upsetting. Some people are simply not made to fit in with the society of the day, and this is where they ended up, unmarked and unnoticed. It's almost like some sort of ethnic cleansing.

On a different note what brought me here today were the persistent rumours of a tunnel from High Royds to the cemetery. Most recently an ex-High Royds employee said they had been taken into a tunnel that led to the nearby ambulance station. The tunnel had been used for removing inmates who had died, to spare the feelings of the living left inside.

Well, the reality seems a bit more prosaic. This is probably the tunnel in question:






It does run from the edge of the grounds at High Royds to near the cemetery so it might well have been used for conveying bodies for burial. However, it was actually built during the construction of the hospital. The family that built the hospital owned a stone quarry at Pool Bank between Leeds and Otley. A light railway was constructed to bring the stone to High Royds, and this tunnel was part of the line.

It's a fine irony that this tunnel was here before the asylum was built, and now remains after the asylum has gone.

Cheers

rikj


----------

