Sheffield General Cemetery


The General Cemetery in the City of Sheffield, England opened in 1836 and closed for burial in 1978. It was the principal cemetery in Victorian Sheffield with over 87,000 burials. Today it is a listed Landscape on the English Heritage National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. It is also a Local Nature Reserve. It is owned by the City of Sheffield and managed on behalf of the city by a local community group, the Sheffield General Cemetery Trust.

Location

The General Cemetery is located just over a mile to the south-west of Sheffield city centre, in the district of Sharrow. It occupies a north-facing hillside site between Sharrow Vale and Sharrow Head. The Porter Brook runs along its north-west edge, and Cemetery Road forms the boundary to the south-east. The Gatehouse entrance is accessed from Cemetery Avenue off Ecclesall Road.

History

The General Cemetery was one of the first commercial landscape cemeteries in Britain. Its opening in 1836 as a Nonconformist cemetery was a response to the rapid growth of Sheffield and the relatively poor state of the town's churchyards. The cemetery, with its Greek Doric and Egyptian style buildings, was designed by Sheffield architect Samuel Worth on the site of a former quarry. Robert Marnock who also designed Sheffield Botanical Gardens and Weston Park acted as a landscape consultant for this initial phase. The first burial was of Mary Ann Fish, a victim of tuberculosis. An Anglican cemetery with a chapel designed by William Flockton and a landscape laid out by Robert Marnock was consecrated alongside the Nonconformist cemetery in 1846—the wall that divided the unconsecrated and consecrated ground can still be seen today. By 1916 the cemetery was rapidly filling up and running out of space, burials in family plots continued through the 1950s and 1960s, but by 1978 ownership of the cemetery had passed to Sheffield City Council and it was closed to all new burials. In 1980 the council got permission by Act of Parliament to clear 800 gravestones to make a recreation area. Through the 1980s and 1990s most of the rest of the cemetery was left untouched, becoming overgrown and an important sanctuary for local wildlife. Unfortunately, many of the buildings also fell into disrepair. In early 2003 work began to restore the gatehouse and catacombs funded by a £500,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The restored gatehouse now houses the offices of the Sheffield General Cemetery Trust. In October 2021 the Trust opened an Airbnb in part of the Gatehouse to raise money for its ongoing conservation aims.

Notable buildings and structures

  • The Gatehouse is built directly over the Porter Brook in a Classical architectural style with Egyptian features. The gateway itself resembles a Roman arch. It was possibly built over the river so that entering the cemetery was symbolic of the crossing of the river Styx in Greek mythology.
  • The Egyptian Gate forms the upper entrance to the cemetery on Cemetery Road. It is richly ornamented and possesses gates bearing ouroboros, two coiled snakes holding their tails in their mouths.
  • The Nonconformist chapel is built in a classical style with Egyptian features. The sculpted panel above the door shows a dove, representing the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit. Stone steps lead down to a wall with catacomb-like entrances. Work to restore the chapel started in 2014, with the building - now called the Samuel Worth Chapel - opening in 2016 as an events and activity space.
  • The Anglican chapel. Designed in the Neo-Gothic style by William Flockton. Unlike the other buildings in the cemetery, the chapel was built in Gothic style rather than Classical or Egyptian. The building is distinctive in style due to its ogival windows, the porte-cochere and the spire. The spire is indeed far too big for the rest of the building, built purposely so that it would be seen from afar.
  • The Registrar's house
  • The Catacombs. There are two rows of catacombs built into the hillside, this method of burial was unpopular and only ten bodies were laid to rest in the catacombs in the first 10 years.
  • The Dissenters' Wall was built between 1848 and 1850. It divided the older Nonconformist part of the cemetery from the consecrated Anglican ground. The wall runs almost uninterrupted, from the perimeter wall on Cemetery Road to the path beside the Porter Brook at the bottom of the cemetery.

Notable burials