Talk:St Woolos Cemetery

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Claim to be First Public Cemetery

Re correction noting Brompton Cemetery actually being the first municipal cemetery - I've been looking for a reference to clarify the actual date of transfer to public ownership of Brompton. The History Page (Nationalisation Subsection) of the Friends of Brompton Cemetery states that it was bought under powers granted by the 1850 act, but says that the act was repealed in 1852, and the government tried to pull out, implying the transfer did not take place until after 1852, and that the company was involved in litigation until 1854, regarding the original purchase of the land.

Also, the National Archives has a catalogue entry for a series containing the papers of the Brompton Cemetery Company, running up until 1854, indicating the company was still running, and possibly in ownership of the cemetery, up until that year.

Leads me to believe that the company still owned the graveyard up until 1854, so the actual date in 1854 could be important for the claims being made in relation to St Woolos, as if it is in the first half of the year, then Brompton is the first public cemetery, but if it didn't take place until the second half of the year, then St Woolos claim to be the first would be correct. Displaced1980 (talk) 21:58, 15 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think you would be safest to say that Woolos was the first to be constructed by an authority (presumably by the vestry of St Woolos?)

My notes here say that the first inter-denominational cemetery in England was the Rosary in Norwich (1819) - it was private but came under the control of the Norwich Corporation in 1954, which would now make it the oldest authority cemetery. The 1850 Act set up Metropolitan burial districts, giving the General Board of Health power to purchase commercially-run cemeteries. In the event, only Brompton was acquired, and the Act was repealed in Jun 1852 when Vestries were granted powers to set up Burial Boards. This would make it the first to be under authority control...'

Probably the Friends of Brompton could give more definitive information - but The Times can give us some information. It records significant mismanagement and dithering by the Board in Jan 1852. By Jun 1852 when the Act was repealed The Times said that Brompton had been purchased 'as we understood'. (Elsewhere they noted that the Board had also tried but failed to purchase Nunhead, which remained private until 1975). Parliament seemed to move very fast when there was a cholera outbreak, but slowed down when it passed. It would not make sense for the purchase to complete after the Act was repealed, though it seems that the West London's debt was higher than planned, and the shareholders were pleased to offload it to the Crown Estate - it is now managed by the Royal Parks. I'm not surprised if the Cemetery company itself existed for a while after the sale, it would need time to collect monies and decide on the next steps before getting wound up and repaying dividends. Also note that there were cemeteries founded in Scotland and Ireland in the early 1770s Ephebi (talk) 22:57, 15 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

St Woolos was constructed by the Corporation of Newport (I'll get a citation from Warner "Local Government in Newport 1835 to 1935" when I'm next in the library), so would we be stretching it too much to say

"first municipally constructed cemetery in England and Wales",

and possibly

"first public cemetery in Wales".

Hopefully this will be enough to pass the notability test and avoid deletion.

Good point about Scottish cemeteries, though. Have found a few candidates that could be described as public (The Howff, Dundee - 1564, or the Old Cemetery Keith - 1600s), and although it's not clear whether they were publicly owned at this time, definitely indicates that at least some of them would be, so would certainly be safest to steer clear of any claims relating to the UK or Great Britain.

Seems to have been a couple of Newport local history books making a claim that can't be substantiated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Displaced1980 (talk • contribs) 08:55, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Those firsts sound safe enough. Sorry to be such a stickler, but nothing is ever straight-forward when it comes to cemeteries, it seems. The subtleties were enough to trap those unwary authors, it seems. Your write-up for St Woolos looks pretty good, well done! Ephebi (talk) 21:30, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]