A ‘FORGOTTEN’ graveyard with links to the very first days of Warrington Wolves is being brought back to life thanks to a team of volunteers.

The club was founded after a meeting at St Paul’s Church Sunday School in Bewsey during the summer of 1876, and while the church has since been demolished and replaced with a care home having shut in 1980, the adjoining cemetery remains.

However the site on Bewsey Road, only around 400m away from the club’s present home at the Halliwell Jones Stadium, has since fell into disrepair.

But volunteers are now working to tackle overgrown weeds and years of neglect in a bid to mark the history of St Paul’s.

Steve Phillips, heritage manager at Warrington Wolves Charitable Foundation, said: “The story goes that the founding fathers met at the Sunday school that was associated with St Paul’s.

“It was this little forgotten graveyard that had fallen into disrepair and the church had gone, and one of our volunteers Pam Eden thought it would be a really good project for us to get involved in.

“There are already a few stories coming out of it other than a few people tidying up a graveyard.

“We’ve already found that the wall surrounding the graveyard is listed and we were told that the three large trees in there were planted to commemorate the Crimean war.

“Its good news all round and a few people from the surrounding area came in and said it was nice to see because there has been a bit of dumping of litter.

“Hopefully if people see that it’s being looked after and cared for they will think twice before dumping anything there.”

The first batch of volunteers headed down to St Paul’s Cemetery on Friday, April 28, with work set to continue until the end of June.

Warrington Borough Council, the Friends of St Mary’s Cemetery in Great Sankey and Birchwood-based International Nuclear Services are working with the foundation on the project, with the latter set to send all 120 of its employees to work on the site across six activity days.

Steve added: “It’s quite a large graveyard and it’s going to be quite a big job – whether we can get it finished over these six days we’re not quite sure but if we can’t we will continue the project with youth clubs or scouting organisations in August.

“The idea is that in September we will then go into local primary schools to help to create a memorial garden and talk to the kids about the history of the graveyard and the town.

“INS have been fantastic, we got help on the day from Central Self Drive who are providing a van for the six visits and the Friends of St Mary’s Cemetery plus our volunteers are involved so it’s a community-driven project for no other reason than to tidy up a bit of a forgotten graveyard.

“Unfortunately the church is gone but hopefully this will be a long term project that we can keep revisiting to make sure that the graveyard keeps in good nick.”