Eleanor Rigby

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 very sad song, and at the time it was rather out of keeping with the type of songs that we had come to expect from the fab four.

Well now, the song was real enough, but I have often wondered if there was a real Eleanor Rigby, or not.

Well now, as a matter of good fortune I recently had the chance to play a few gigs in Liverpool, and during my free time I decided to see just what I could find out about 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.

When I arrived in Woolton I straight away visited the local church, and their in the churchyard my eye was drawn to one particular tombstone.

Yes, you guessed it, the tombstone had the inscription Eleanor Rigby.

So, having found this fascinating tombstone I then wondered if any of the Beatles might possibly have lived nearby. And guess what, John Lennon used to live as a child in Menlove Avenue, which is quite close to the church.

This made me think back to my childhood, and I remember as a young boy I and my friends would often play in our local churchyard, playing hide and seek and other games behind the headstones.

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.

But I will be back. This is becoming very interesting to me, and I want to know more about Eleanor Rigby, and the other names that appear on her tombstone.

If you would like to be kept posted on this, and kept up to date with my research, then please click on the following link at the bottom of the page. You will be taken to another page and near the bottom you will find my email address. Just send me a note saying keep me informed or something like that, and I will email you whenever I have found out some fresh information.