Fundraising for Penistone mass children's grave memorial

Councillor David Greenhough said it was important to acknowledge the children who where buried there

A memorial to 700 children buried in an unmarked communal grave would offer "dignity and recognition", a councillor has said.

Infant burials took place at Penistone-Stottercliffe cemetery in South Yorkshire for a century, only ending in the 1970s.

Councillors David Greenhough and Hannah Kitching are trying to raise £5,000 for a permanent reminder at the site.

They said many parents never knew where their child was laid to rest.

Richard Galliford, 71, discovered his sister, who died in the 1940s, was interred there only after his mother's death in 1985.

"I went to the cemetery with my father. He said 'I think your sister is buried in there'. He was upset still."

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Mr Galliford contacted Peter Shields who has helped organise memorials at other graveyards in Yorkshire.

Mr Shields has spent two decades cataloguing graves in the county and runs a website helping people find their relatives' burial site.

His daughter, Dawn, died of congenital difficulties at just three weeks old, and his son died of spina bifida during the 1970s.

"We experienced not knowing where our children were buried - it took 30 years to find them," Mr Shields told the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

He said it gives a great deal of joy for people to finally find where their loved ones are buried.

Public mass graves, like the one at Penistone, are not uncommon, and according to stillbirth and neonatal death charity Sands, it was only in the mid-1980s the death of a baby at or near birth began to be recognised as a major bereavement.

Mr Greenhough, who set up the fundraising appeal for a memorial, said: "A lot of these parents were separated from their babies and the parents simply didn't know where the babies had ended up.

"It's important to acknowledge the fact that all these babies are here, and this memorial will signify the fact that these babies do have some dignity and recognition."

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