SALE and Brooklands cemetery was first opened in August 1862 and has many interesting and famous residents.

The Ashton and Sale History Society will give a special guided tour of the old part of the site in September as part of this year's national Heritage Open Day.

In this feature Messenger's "Trafford Through Time" team take a sneak preview.

Click here to watch a video that takes you on a virtual tour of the cemetery

The nineteenth century graveyard was one of Manchester's first municipal cemeteries and for several years the history society has been copying and researching the memorial inscriptions.

Project officer John Newhill explained: "Copying, typing and indexing nearly 5,000 graves was no mean task, but at last we are ready to reveal our results.

"There are two points that stand out when you read through the inscriptions. Nowadays it is normal for wives to outlive their husbands, in the nineteenth century the opposite was the case.

"The second point is the comparatively high number of German immigrants in the area, most of whom who had married English girls."

Perhaps the most famous person to be interred in the cemetery is James Prescott Joule, who discovered the mechanical equivalent of heat.

The eminent scientist and father of modern physics' lived on Wardle Road in Sale until his death in 1889.

A man less well known today - but who is credited with first discovering the ozone - is John Benjamin Dancer.

He never patented any of his discoveries and inventions but had a prolific life as a scientist, instrument maker and photographer.

In 1839 he pioneered the use of microdot' technology when he unveiled microphotographs that could be viewed through a microscope. Dancer died in November 1887, aged 75.

The graveyard is also the resting place to a man who was the husband and father of some of the most influential women of the nineteenth century.

Richard Pankhurst was one of Manchester's most radical lawyers and was the husband of Emmaline and father of Christabel, Sylvia and Adela of the Manchester suffragette family. He died in 1898.

There are many more interesting and beautiful monuments in the old part of the cemetery including that of John Brogden who lived in the now converted Raglan House, on Raglan Road, Sale until his death in 1869.

He was responsible for building the Manchester to Altrincham railway as well as many other international projects as far away as New Zealand.

The cemetery is also the resting place for one of Manchester's first private watch men John Benjamin Lester and master cotton spinner Alfred Knowles.

Lester patrolled the streets of Deansgate in the early 1800s for more than 40 years.

Knowles moved to Northenden Road in Sale from 1869 but before that he shared a house in Chorlton on Medlock with Friedrich Engles.

He was also friends with Karl Marx and is credited with supplying him with information for his communist manifesto Das Kapital'.