While browsing the gravestones at Mellor Church the other day, we came across one that may or may not belong to one of Mrs P’s distant relatives — Joseph Chatterton and his wife, Silence.

What a lovely name for a girl, I thought, and not all that uncommon for women in the 1700s, but then I began to wonder whether that really was her name, or a marketing ploy by her father, in the same way that Windscale became Sellafield. Picture the scene: Read more ›››