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FORMATION In 1833 the Mayor of Newcastle, Henry Bell, was requested by many of the town’s leading citizens including John Dobson, architect, and Richard Grainger, property developer, to call a meeting ‘to form and establish, for the use of town, a General Cemetery a measure for which the crowded state of the church yards has long rendered necessary’. The meeting was held in the Guildhall early in 1834 and it was agreed to form a private company to carry out the scheme with a share capital of £8000 (400 shares of £20) which was considered enough to cover purchase of the ground plus the necessary building and landscaping work.
A Prospectus was issued inviting subscribers for shares and adding that the proposed cemetery would be on 11 acres in Jesmond Fields, owned by the Corporation, surrounded by cornfields and meadows. The cemetery would be open to all religious denominations, roughly one half as consecrated ground to ministered by the curate of St Andrew’s, in whose parish the cemetery would lie, and the other half as unconsecrated ground for all non-conformists. Investors would be attracted by the fact that a freehold plot could be sold without the buyers fearing disturbance, and the added revenue from sales of family vaults and catacombs meant that a healthy dividends return would be likely.
These family vaults were to be brick-lined with stone shelves supported on corbels to carry the lead-lined coffins. They could be as deep as six metres and were popular because coffins survived longer when not in contact with soil.
Another incentive to shareholders was their automatic entitlement to a County vote at the elections.
WORK BEGINS John Dobson was appointed architect.
Work began in 1835 when land was drained, three-metre walls erected to enclose the triangular site, and construction got under way. During the following year a sexton-gardener was appointed at 18 shillings a week, with free accommodation and coal, and he assisted the architect in the laying out of the serpentine paths and the planting of trees and shrubs. John Dobson’s achievement is impressive.
The main entrance from Cemetery Road (now Jesmond Road) has a huge arch surmounted by two square towers. On either side were the two chapels, Church of England to the west, and non-conformist to the east, in local sandstone ash-lar, built in the classical Grecian style. The imposing entrance leaves no doubt that this is the gateway to a solemn place, no public park or country house. The buildings also contained accommodation for the resident cemetery superintendent and his office for books and registers. Beneath the buildings were the catacombs, 22 large shelved enclosures identified by Roman numerals. They were, like vaults, below churches, designed for the permanent storage of compulsory lead-lined (air-tight) coffins.
However, there seems to be no evidence that they were used as such and they probably functioned as mortuary vaults to store the coffins before burial at a time when funeral parlours were much rarer than today. It may be that the catacombs were used during World War Two as a temporary accommodation for victims of a local air raid.
Today the Archaeology Department of Tyne and Wear Museums and the County Archaeologist occupy the buildings and store equipment in the catacombs.
At the south side of the cemetery on Benton Lane (now Sandyford Road) was a single storey lodge (now disused) for the sexton, standing beside massive square sandstone pillars, again in the Grecian style, with iron gates.
The high wall surrounding the cemetery was built to deter bodysnatchers and is very different from the railings and low wall of All Saints Cemetery opposite, built some 20 years later. By that time the 1832 Anatomy Act, which stated that medical schools could use any unclaimed corpses (not just criminals) once 48 hours as elapsed, had put most bodysnatchers out of work.
OPEN FOR BURIALS The western half of the cemetery was consecrated by the Bishop of Durham on 11th November 1836 and declared open for burials five days later. On 9th December Margaret Redford Hoy, the 14-year-old daughter of a Newcastle grocer, was the first to be buried in the cemetery. Her grave, in the non-conformist section, was unmarked. By 1845 non-conformist family vaults near the Middle Walk were not selling as well has been expected so this land too was consecrated by the Bishop of Durham.
PROPOSED UPHEAVAL The cemetery went on fulfilling its function undisturbed for well over a century.
It escaped serious damage during World War Two but a few headstones to the east side of the Middle Walk are said to have been hit by enemy aircraft fire. However, in the mid 1960s plans were prepared for a dual carriageway to connect the Coast Road from Tynemouth with the Central Motorway East along a widened Jesmond Road. This inevitably meant encroaching on part of the cemetery, and in 1967 the private company was wound up and returned to the City Council. The proposed upheaval would involve major problems – about 600 graves (nearly 1,100 burials) some more than 100 years old, would need to be exhumed and reinterred, and John Dobson’s magnificent entrance gateway and chapels would have to be moved. The legal machinery whirred into action. Noticed were issued and attempts made to contact the relatives of all those burials involved. Relatives were given the right to carry out removals to any other cemetery, up to a maximum cost of £100, or allow a transfer to another part of the cemetery. The Council undertook to re-erect all monuments and tombstones unless in a ruinous condition. Years later the number of unclaimed graves was ‘considerable’, and of those families successfully contacted only two opted for private removal. Only one was ‘not keen to have remains disturbed’. The rest of the tombs had to be moved without consent. The estimated cost of re-siting the gateway and chapels amounted to £100,000.
This seemed too expensive to the City Planning Department and demolition was proposed. However, pressure from conservation groups brought the Environment Minister into the controversy. Because the buildings were of exceptional architectural and historical importance, as well as being structurally sound, dry-jointed and capable of being re-erected elsewhere, he offered a 75 per cent grant. Suggestions for the new site included Leazes Park, Denton Burn Crematorium, a new entrance to All Saints Cemetery at the east end of Clayton Road, and replacing the gateway on Sandyford Road. Other plans involved making them into a symbolic gateway to the city at the eastern tip of Jesmond Old Cemetery, or just moving everything 40 metres into the cemetery, necessitating the transfer of even more graves. The problem was rapidly becoming a test of national importance as this time no historic building had ever been officially wiped out by a motorway.
REMOVAL OF GRAVES In 1971 work began on the removal of the graves, ‘with the utmost reverence’ by the London Necropolis Company, and although they usually carried out exhumations at night constraints on this project meant that they worked in daylight too with protective screening. Public access was not allowed. All soil was sifted for remains which were then re-coffined and reburied. The work on the Jesmond Road border took several months and at a later date more exhumations took place on the Sandyford Road and in the South West area. Eventually the whole bypass scheme collapsed because of legal difficulties and when the project was resurrected nearly 30 years later the ‘dualling’ of Jesmond Road and the widening of Sandyford Road never took place.
RECENT NEGLECT Burials are still taking place in the cemetery and at the last count nearly 25,000 people have been buried there since 1836. The first investors might have been concerned to find that today plots may not be bought in perpetuity, and are only leased for 50 years. Not all the graves are marked by a monument or a headstone. Although the grassed areas of the cemetery are mown regularly many parts have become jungles of vegetation with headstones and monuments submerged beneath a sea of brambles and ivy. Others have been damaged by self seeded saplings and falling trees. Such neglect could ultimately prove disastrous for this unique area of social history.
1st Location N54 58.899 W001 36.052 Deuchar Building 1st, 2nd and 4th numbers in date above lintel = A, B and C
2nd Location N54 59.102 W001 35.824 Number of letters in the longest word in Pub's name across the road (it has 3 words) = I
3rd Location N54 59.042 W001 36.003 Blue Plaque on wall 1st and 3rd numbers in first date = D and E 2nd and 3rd numbers in second date = F and G 2nd number in last date = H
Final Location :- N5C 58.FGB W001 3I.HDE
Area is busy for traffic at most times of the day so a quick dash and grab may be necessary and should be easily achieveable! Opening Times:- April - September Monday to Friday 8.00am to 6.45pm Saturday and Sunday 10.00am to 4.45pm March and October Monday to Friday 8.00am to 5.45pm Saturday and Sunday 10.00am to 4.45pm November - February Monday to Thursday 8.00am to 3.45pm Friday 8.00am to 2.45pm Saturday and Sunday 10.00am to 3.45pm On public holidays, Mothers Day, Fathers Day and Remembrance Sunday the cemeteries will open at 10.00am.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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