Salford city council’s legal team is set to contact the Roman Catholic church in a bid to ‘get to the bottom’ of who owns a disused cemetery ‘once and for all’. Town hall bosses are also appealing for the mystery people, or organisation, who fixed new gates to Barton Upon Irwell RC Cemetery at Peel Green to contact them to 'establish their interest in the site'.
No one has yet been able to establish who the overgrown burial ground - last used in 1940 - belongs to, or who is responsible for its upkeep. Yet, after the Local Democracy Reporting Service highlighted how easy it was to gain access, the rusting gates and broken padlock were restored bearing a notice ‘private property trespassers keep out’.
The conundrum over who owns the site prompted amateur historian Craig Ellis to write to Pope Francis over the demise of the graveyard, which he said had become a place where people went to drink alcohol and take drugs. So far, the city council, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salford and land property giant Peel say they do not own the land.
