Do you remember that Beatles song with the line "Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name, nobody came"?
A rather depressing song I think and not one that we had grown to get used to from the Beatles.
I have often wondered who Eleanor Rigby really was, if indeed she was a real person at all, or was she just somebody whose name was plucked out of mid air.
Well, I was playing some gigs recently in Liverpool, and although my evenings were busy, the rest of the day was free and so I decided to use my spare time to do some research into this and to try and find out if there really was an Eleanor Rigby.
I looked up a few points of reference in the local library, donned my Sherlock Holmes hat, and set off for a suburb of Liverpool known as Woolton.
In the Anglican church there you will find a typical English churchyard, surrounding the church, and you will find many tombstones, but one headstone in particular caught my attention.
Yes, you guessed it, the tombstone had the inscription Eleanor Rigby.
Having located such an interesting gravestone I then began to ask myself if any of the Beatles lived anywhere nearby. And guess what? As a child John Lennon used to live in Menlove Avenue, which is very close to the church.
So I reflected for a moment about when I was a young boy. Odd as it might seem, one of the things that I and my friends used to do is to play games in our local churchyard, untill we were chased away.
With this in mind it is not stretching things too far to assume that as a child John Lennon possibly also played in his local churchyard, and would have noticed the tombstone dedicated to Eleanor.
Now unfortunately I only had a couple of days in Liverpool so I was not able to dig any deeper into this, but I intend to return soon and continue my research.
I want to spend some time going through the church records, and I would like to see what I can find out about the other people mentioned on Eleanor,s headstone.
If you would like to hear from me again when I have found out some new information on this then please click on the link at the bottom of the page. This will take you to a seperate page and you will find my email address near the bottom. Just send me a brief email asking to be kept updated and I will do so whenever I find new items of interest.
A rather depressing song I think and not one that we had grown to get used to from the Beatles.
I have often wondered who Eleanor Rigby really was, if indeed she was a real person at all, or was she just somebody whose name was plucked out of mid air.
Well, I was playing some gigs recently in Liverpool, and although my evenings were busy, the rest of the day was free and so I decided to use my spare time to do some research into this and to try and find out if there really was an Eleanor Rigby.
I looked up a few points of reference in the local library, donned my Sherlock Holmes hat, and set off for a suburb of Liverpool known as Woolton.
In the Anglican church there you will find a typical English churchyard, surrounding the church, and you will find many tombstones, but one headstone in particular caught my attention.
Yes, you guessed it, the tombstone had the inscription Eleanor Rigby.
Having located such an interesting gravestone I then began to ask myself if any of the Beatles lived anywhere nearby. And guess what? As a child John Lennon used to live in Menlove Avenue, which is very close to the church.
So I reflected for a moment about when I was a young boy. Odd as it might seem, one of the things that I and my friends used to do is to play games in our local churchyard, untill we were chased away.
With this in mind it is not stretching things too far to assume that as a child John Lennon possibly also played in his local churchyard, and would have noticed the tombstone dedicated to Eleanor.
Now unfortunately I only had a couple of days in Liverpool so I was not able to dig any deeper into this, but I intend to return soon and continue my research.
I want to spend some time going through the church records, and I would like to see what I can find out about the other people mentioned on Eleanor,s headstone.
If you would like to hear from me again when I have found out some new information on this then please click on the link at the bottom of the page. This will take you to a seperate page and you will find my email address near the bottom. Just send me a brief email asking to be kept updated and I will do so whenever I find new items of interest.
