St. Matthew’s Church in Hayfield has a churchyard associated with one of the more remarkable traditions in the Peak District. A severe flood on 23 July 1748, recorded in the journal of John Wesley, tore up the churchyard and swept bodies from their graves; some were found hanging in trees, others carried miles downstream.
The event appears to have generated a persistent local tradition. Sidney Oldall Addy, writing in 1895, recorded a belief that in the sixteenth century all the dead in the churchyard had risen from their graves clothed in golden raiment. A letter written by the Revd Dr James Clegg, a Nonconformist minister of Chapel-en-le-Frith, describes a more vivid account: on the last day of August, he writes, several hundred bodies rose from a communal grave in broad daylight, ascended into the air singing in unison, and vanished from sight, leaving a fragrant odour behind them. Clegg places the event in 1754. Whether this represents a theological allegory, an embellished account of the flood’s aftermath, or something else entirely is left open in the sources.
