History of the English Cemetery

Until the mid-seventeenth century, although high-status burials took place inside churches, in vaults sunk into the floor, nearly all the dead were interred in parish churchyards. This monopoly was first challenged in the 1650s, when Nonconformist burial grounds like Bunhill Fields, on the northern fringe of the City of London, began to be opened; the earliest Jewish burial ground, in London's East End, dates from 1657. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was increasing criticism of burials in Church of England graveyards and vaults in urban areas. Churchyards were full to overflowing, which created insanitary conditions and spread disease. From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, people like Sir Christopher Wren, John Evelyn and Sir John Vanbrugh revived the Ancient Roman idea of burial with cemeteries on the outskirts of town. The first such burial ground was opened in Bloomsbury in 1714.

As the idea of the neoclassical cemetery gained ground, outdoor burial became increasingly attractive. In the 1770s urban cemeteries were created in Edinburgh (Calton Hill) and Belfast (Clifton), but not until 1819 was the first public cemetery in England opened, in Norwich (The Rosary). During the 1820s several more provincial cemeteries were opened, but still there was no national movement for cemetery creation. There was no legislation to allow public authorities to set up publicly accessible cemeteries. Instead, most were created by private Joint Stock Companies, set up expressly to make a profit from the interment of the dead. Private enterprise was responsible for the first public cemetery in the capital: All Souls' Cemetery at Kensal Green, which was opened in 1833.

Cemeteries legislation

By 1850, urban churchyards had had their day. Over-full, exclusively Anglican, and suspected of being sinks of contamination, they were closed in large numbers over the next few years. A public alternative to the profit-making private cemeteries was needed, however; the Metropolitan Interment Act of 1850 allowed for the provision of publicly-funded cemeteries in London, and was extended across the country by an Act of 1853.

This ushered in a boom in the construction of public cemeteries by publicly-financed Burial Boards run by parish vestries (the ancestors of today's local authorities). Scores of cemeteries were set up in the 1850s and 1860s. In many cases, the architect who designed the mortuary chapels and other structures was also commissioned to provide the layout, but other sites were laid out by nationally-known landscape designers. Many of these landscapes were of very high quality, incorporating careful compositions of chapels, lodges and catacombs and enhanced by many memorial structures, and planting. By 1900 there were few towns that did not have their own public cemetery. They were not only repositories of the dead but also places of resort for mourners and others: as cities expanded, so surviving areas of green spaces assumed ever more importance. They were, however, very high-maintenance places, too.

Up to this time, cemeteries had only received burials, but the ancient alternative of cremation was soon to return. In 1874 the Cremation Society was founded, but the first official cremation did not take place until 1885, at the great cemetery of Brookwood, outside Woking. (So special was this cemetery, which remains the largest in Europe, that it even had its own railway line that brought entire funeral cortèges from Waterloo Station virtually to the graveside.) In the 1890s Manchester, Glasgow and Liverpool built crematoria, but it was not until 1902 that the greatest of all such installations, the Golders Green Crematorium, was opened in North London. Further crematoria, set in their own distinctive landscapes, followed throughout the twentieth century as the cremation movement accelerated. By the Edwardian period, however, the 'Great Age of Death' had passed its zenith. Burial and mourning customs were changing, moving away from the elaborate Victorian ritual of commemoration towards a more private, less showy grief. The mass death of World War I confirmed this tendency. The dignified restraint of the cemeteries and memorials of the Imperial War Graves Commission provided a model for a new style of remembrance.

Layout and design

Early nineteenth-century burial grounds were utilitarian walled enclosures with minimal planting. Early cemetery designers lacked models to follow: churchyards had developed almost organically, following local precedent, and public parks did not yet exist. Instead, the private landscape park provided inspiration, with chapels taking the place of country houses as the centres of attention. The boundary walls, entrance lodges, and a scattering of Arcadian memorials were all there to be borrowed. The Parisian cemetery of Père Lachaise strongly influenced design from 1815 onwards. Its combination of straight and winding paths, a profusion of monuments, and a number of imposing structures set amid a carefully planted setting that sought to remind the visitor of Arcadia, was widely copied in English cemeteries. These landscapes developed in splendour as each new memorial added an extra note of interest.

The landscape of the early Victorian cemetery was usually laid out informally in the picturesque style, with sweeping drives and serpentine lines of trees emulating the legacy of the most fashionable designers of the day such as Humphry Repton. Planting was very carefully designed, with trees lining the drives and paths, and enclosing the perimeter of the site. John Claudius Loudon's practical and influential book, On the Laying Out of Cemeteries (1843), promoted a more utilitarian layout, often based on a standard grid pattern that did not fit well with informal picturesque principles but was undoubtedly a more efficient use of land; it made finding a grave easier, too. Loudon believed that cemeteries should also be morally improving, educational, soothing and dignified places, a view to which many others subscribed. The many cemeteries created as a result of the 1853 Act were planned with either a picturesque layout or a grid pattern, or a combination of the two.

The provision of cemeteries continued into the twentieth century. After World War II most were laid out on standard grid patterns. Lawn cemeteries were introduced, with memorial stones set flat into the grass, providing a large expanse of open lawn and making maintenance much easier.

Conservation crisis

The loss of landscape maintenance skills and reduction of budgets in the late twentieth century meant that cemetery landscaping could no longer be maintained to the original high specification. Another problem was the increasing age of many of the memorials, many of which were designed with little thought for their long-term care. As monuments get older, they are more likely to need attention. Metal fixtures rust, stone cracks, earth settles, and all these can cause a memorial to become dangerous. In those cases where funds have been left for upkeep 'in perpetuity', the value of the legacies has been eroded by inflation. As time passes, descendants move away or families die out, and private upkeep of family tombs has become the exception rather than the rule.

Economic difficulties too have arisen. Many of the private cemeteries were under-capitalised from the outset, and had not allowed for rising costs in their start-up calculations. Their once-elegant assets became fearful liabilities, as costs mounted and revenues from burials dwindled. By the 1960s, crisis point was being reached. Some companies locked the gates and simply walked away for good: Highgate Cemetery and Nunhead Cemetery were effectively abandoned until local groups decided to find a way out of the impasse.

Neglected site management is not benign. Unchecked, woody plants and other invasive species erode the landscape design, damage or destabilise memorials and undermine the diversity of wildlife. Neglect is not the only problem, however. Local authorities are obliged to offer burial places, but suitably large sites in urban settings are hard to find and even harder to afford. The pressure upon cemetery managers to utilise every available green space within existing cemeteries for burial presents the greatest immediate threat to cemetery landscapes. Disinterring bodies is a very expensive operation, but bulldozing memorials is all too cheap; new burials can be placed in between the plots occupied by much older burials, or encroach upon paths and avenues. An alternative is to clear older cemeteries and re-use the ground. Whilst the disinterring of bodies is an immediate threat to closed burial grounds, ancient sites and private cemeteries, it is less of an issue for operational municipal cemeteries at present, although it may become a problem in the medium to long term Such practices are among the biggest threats facing historic cemeteries.