Hull General Cemetery is a civic resource; a charming piece of ‘woodland’ nestled within the city.
The Hull General Cemetery has existed for over 170 years. That perhaps doesn’t appear to be a long time. Yet in the history of the town and later city of Hull it is significant. That time-scale is longer than most things still here in present day Hull. The Guildhall, the Maritime Museum, Paragon Station and Hull City Hall are youngsters in comparison.
Hull General Cemetery was here before Hull City AFC, Hull FC or Hull Kingston Rovers were ever thought of. The cemetery existed before any of the public parks in Hull were created. It was Hull’s first (and only privately owned) cemetery, and also one of the first garden cemeteries in the country.
It cannot be stressed strongly enough how important the Hull General Cemetery is historically and not only just to the City of Hull. It is also nationally important, with it containing the last resting places of such people as Sir James Reckitt of Reckitt and Colman fame and Reverend William Clowes, the originator of Primitive Methodism as well as many others.
Why was the cemetery needed?
Since before the Middle Ages every person, except for suicides, criminals and other odd exceptions, had the right to be buried in their parish church or, more likely, its graveyard, under common law. Burial grounds, being of limited space, began to fill up, often to the point that the churches looked as if they had been built in a valley. Up to the late 18th century the method of providing more burial spaces was to wait for the body to decay and then, when disarticulation had taken place, the body would be exhumed and the bones would be placed in either the crypt of the church or its charnel house.
This system worked reasonably well nationally until the population boom of the late 18th century began to place stress on it. Locally, Hull and neighbouring Sculcoates were estimated in 1767 to have a joint population of 12,964; by 1792 this had risen to 22,286. In effect the population almost doubled in 25 years. By 1851 the population stood at 95,000. In Hull both parish churches had opened up new burial grounds late in the 18th century in an attempt to manage the increased number of deaths that the burgeoning population created but within a few decades the seams were bursting once again.
Around this time, especially in towns and cities, there were horror stories reported in the press as to the state of the parish burial grounds. Hull was no different to other urban areas. In the 1840s various incidents regarding the crowded and foul state of the burial grounds in Hull, along with anecdotal evidence of gravediggers pulling skulls out of graves by their hair, of young boys playing with human skulls and of course the perennial presence of rats and dogs in such areas made people yearn for a better way to treat their loved ones in death.
Co-incidentally, there had developed a movement centred in Western Europe that hoped to deal with this problem. The idea of the garden cemetery was born. In such a cemetery the dead would be buried with grace and dignity, the burial place would be preferably placed outside of the urban area, it would be tastefully laid out with its grounds well planted and stocked whilst also being maintained to a high standard. It would become a place where the living could not only visit the last resting place of their relatives but also enjoy the experience, which was something they could not do in the crowded parish burial grounds.
Norwich was the first urban area to plan such a cemetery with Liverpool quickly following suit but Manchester was the first to actually open such a planned cemetery at Rusholme Road in 1821. The Norwich and Manchester cemeteries were prompted by the need for Dissenters, that is people who did not accept the Anglican Church, to be buried within an un-consecrated burial ground and this factor was also important in Hull, a noted Dissenter town. By 1845 it had become evident that Hull needed a cemetery to cater for both the needs of the Dissenters and also to provide a more dignified burial for all of the dead of the town. Accordingly, a prospectus for one was widely advertised in the local press asking for people to buy shares in this venture. After one or two difficulties the Hull General Cemetery Company was born and began to undertake burials in the April of 1847. The mayor officially opened it in the June of that year.
When it opened it was situated outside the town, in what was then part of the parish of Cottingham. It initially was comprised of 19 acres although at first the company only laid out and planted the first ten acres. The entrance was placed at the junction of Spring Bank with Newland Tofts Lane (now Princes Avenue). The initial plans for the cemetery set out an entrance lodge, a chapel and ‘dead house’ the latter fulfilling the role of mortuary. Later in its life two further chapels, one Anglican and one Non-Conformist, were built and also two cottages, either side of the lodge, were added. The Hull General Cemetery Company was intent on sending out a statement that here was a new way of dealing with the town’s dead and that Hull was abreast if not ahead of the latest fashions. The future looked promising.
Heyday
One of the things that made the Hull General Cemetery stand out amongst burial places in Hull when it opened was that it accepted burials from any faith. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, this was a central aspect of the notion of ‘general’ cemeteries; that they were non-denominational and were not tied to a parish or parishes. Only certain parts of the original site were consecrated so that other areas in the cemetery could accommodate the non-conformists of which Hull had a good proportion. Amongst such groupings were The Society of Friends also known as Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians and even at one stage there were proposals for a Jewish section. It also made arrangements with the local Poor Law Commissioners representing the Hull Workhouse, that was situated on Anlaby Road, to bury the paupers that died ‘on the parish’. Whether this was good business sense was open to question, although it did constitute a regular income. What it did do, however, was to make Hull General Cemetery Company all embracing and as such it raised its profile above the other alternatives on offer in Hull at that time.
The grounds of the cemetery were tastefully planned and planted out by the first superintendent, Mr John Shields, in conjunction with Cuthbert Brodrick. John Shields, had fulfilled the same role at York General Cemetery when it opened in the 1830s and was obviously not only experienced but eminently qualified for this post. It was noted in the local press of the day that the cemetery grounds were on a par with the Botanical Gardens situated elsewhere in Hull.
Obviously, being a private cemetery company, with shareholders, the company was always seeking a profit and undertook to provide the entire care that one could wish for in the event of a loved one’s death. If you wished, and could afford it, the company sold you the grave plot, provided the funeral carriage and entourage, the minister to officiate, the gravedigger to dig and bury the loved one and finally they could also provide you with the headstone or monument of your choice to be placed on the grave. Naturally, as aftercare for the bereaved, they could plant the grave with flowers or shrubs, and also maintain the grave and monument too. If you could afford it of course.
The cost of burial varied with how much you cared to pay. It ranged from a pauper burial at 10 shillings (50p), up to the catacomb burial costing £105, which would probably be the equivalent in 2018 terms of about £7,000 to £9,000. The average income for a labourer in Victorian times was about £1 to £1.50 a week.
The first test of the worth of the new cemetery took place within two years of its opening. Cholera was an endemic disease in its home area of the Bay of Bengal. However, it had begun to be transported around the world unwittingly by English traders and soldiers who had been in that area. The first cholera pandemic swept across Europe in 1830/1, reaching Hull in 1832 from Sunderland. It found the filthy living conditions that the working class in Britain had to endure a perfect spot to multiply and it infected thousands nationwide. Eventually the disease died out and apart from a few houses in the densest areas of population in Hull being whitewashed, little changed.
The second and more deadly cholera pandemic came in 1849 with it reaching Hull in the July travelling overland from Goole via Hamburg. The authorities had taken little heed of the last epidemic and the conditions that some people were living in were dreadful. In some of the courts and alleys of the old town, 20 or 30 families had access to running water via one standpipe, whilst their sanitary needs were met by two or three ‘privies’ at the end of the block. The ‘privies’ themselves were not connected to any sewers and workmen emptied them irregularly. These conditions were not unusual. There is little wonder that cholera spread so quickly in the town. By September the death toll was running into thousands.
One of the bright spots of this dark time was that Hull could call upon the Hull General Cemetery for the safe disposal of the dead. If the town had still depended upon the parish burial grounds, the death toll would almost certainly have been higher. The resident non-conformist minister to the cemetery, the Reverend James Sibree, wrote a telling account of this time and how the dead were buried in the cemetery. He stated that the sheer number of funeral hearses often stretched from the Beverley Road and Spring Bank corner up to the very gates of the cemetery. In his memoirs he told of one day when he officiated at 43 burials. This may give some idea of the death toll taking place within the town at this time. At the end of the epidemic some 3% of the population of Hull had died from it, which proportionally was the highest of any town or city in the country.
It was mooted, when the disease had finally burnt itself out, that a monument should be erected on the spot where so many of the victims were buried. This monument, a large obelisk upon a square plinth, was commissioned by the cemetery company and may still be seen today. Hull City Council refurbished it in 2002.
By the 1850’s the cemetery was well established and it became, not only a peaceful and hygienic place for the dead to be buried in, but also a pleasant place to stroll for the town’s inhabitants. Indeed, before the opening of the People’s Park, now Pearson’s Park, in 1861 it was the only place where people could promenade without paying a fee. As such it was immensely popular as a backdrop to the middle classes socialising. We may find this rather strange today but the Victorians appeared to rather enjoy the idea of melancholy for its own sake and a number of people of the period wrote correspondence to the local newspapers stating how much they enjoyed a walk in the cemetery. Indeed, the pressure was so intense that the cemetery company had to change its rules and open the cemetery on a Sunday simply to meet demand from the public.
Of course, at this time, it was also the place to be seen whilst dead too. The more prosperous and important citizens of the town began to opt for burial there. Larger and more ostentatious monuments were erected which we can still see today.
In 1855 intra-mural burials, that is burials taking place within a parish or church burial ground, were prohibited by legislation and Hull General Cemetery now held, with just a few minor exceptions, the monopoly of burials within Hull. For the next few years the Hull General Cemetery was, as they say, the only game in town.
Slow Decline
Unfortunately, the very legislation that removed the previous competitors to Hull General Cemetery also paved the way for its downfall. One of the major aims of this legislation was to allow local authorities to set up their own Boards of Health. Most local authorities moved to do this. Initially seen as a means to avoid the spread of diseases such as cholera and typhoid within the tenements of Victorian cities and towns, to begin with the local authorities concentrated upon improving sanitation and housing.
However, the Act also allowed local authorities to create their own Burial Boards. In Hull this body initially negotiated with the cemetery company to purchase grave spaces within the cemetery grounds but it quickly moved to lease and then purchase from the company the western part of the Hull General Cemetery’s land. This purchase occurred in 1862, and although this piece of land was still administered by the Hull General Cemetery Company, this was the beginning of the present Western Cemetery. This was the first of Hull’s municipal burial grounds and, by its very nature, did not have to make a profit as it was funded by the public purse. A point not lost on the cemetery company.
Throughout the 1870’s and 1880’s the annual shareholders’ meetings are peppered with statements implying that the local authority was undercharging for its graves and therefore making the cemetery company’s charges uneconomic, implying that the rate payer was being ‘swindled.’
What these meetings also show however is that the company continued to pay out large dividends to its shareholders whilst not investing in any new land for burial. In 1854 a proposed extension to the north was mooted to cover roughly the area that Welbeck Street now stands upon. Indeed, the cemetery company went so far as to secure a private Act of Parliament to achieve this end. However, these plans came to nothing and, as mentioned above, the company had leased out and then sold its westernmost holdings. In effect it could only expand to the north and it failed to grasp that opportunity.
Looking back, it almost seems, even at this early stage of its life, as if the Cemetery Company realised that the game was up and aimed to gather as much money from the venture whilst the going was good. That profit in a venture like this depended upon selling new graves must quickly have been evident and without the land available for new burials that simply could not happen.
The company’s failure to expand is hard to understand in those terms and one must draw the conclusion that the directors had seen the writing on the wall for their enterprise. As such, in hindsight, the seeds of the cemetery’s decline were sown within a decade of its opening.
The busiest burial period for the cemetery was in the decade 1870 to 1880. In 1887 there were almost 9,000 burials, a peak that was never reached again. In 1897 there were just over 5,000 burials and the 20th century saw the numbers dwindle still further until the cemetery eventually closed with the final burial taking place in 1972.
One could argue that the decline had set in earlier with the failure of the Company to invest in further expansion but now the decline began to be felt, and more importantly, seen in other ways. The decision to sell the Princes Avenue frontage to builders in the first decade of the 20th century was simply the first indication of retrenchment. The decision to demolish the lodge designed by Cuthbert Broderick, to close the original entrance and create another one less grand further along Spring Bank West in the 1920’s highlighted that the cemetery company was retreating and the following 50 years from then appears to be a process of scarcely managed decline until its demise in the early 1970’s.
Life after Death?
The Hull General Cemetery Company sought liquidation via the courts which it achieved in 1972 leaving the site without ownership. Eventually, after questions asked in Parliament the site was sold to Hull City Council for a nominal sum of £1 in 1974. At the time the local press was calling the site an ‘eyesore’ and demanding that it was cleaned up. What the aims of the council were when it acquired the land initially is open to question and it could be argued the local authority was reacting to events rather than having a strategic goal for the site.
However, within a short space of time the local authority made clear that the cemetery should be re-developed. There had been earlier demonstrations of cemetery ‘re-development’ in the city when Trippet Street, Division Road and the Drypool graveyards in the early 1960s and 70’s suffered this process. Redevelopment in this sense meant that the vast majority of headstones would be removed and the cemetery landscaped. This took the form of harrowing and grass seeding the ground so that it could be mown.
Public opposition to this plan for Hull General Cemetery, including such names as Philip Larkin and John Betjeman, was overruled and the wholesale destruction of irreparable historical artefacts took place. The whole process took about 18 months. However, because of Hull General Cemetery’s conspicuous role in Victorian Hull, a number of headstones, principally of more notable members of the public, were allowed to remain. Also, as an indication of how ‘bad’ the cemetery had become until the council stepped in, a number of rows of headstones were left in situ. These are the rows next to and surrounding the Quaker plot. By 1979 the site had been ‘developed’.
At first the council maintained the grounds. Grass cutting took place on a regular basis and paths were re-laid every year with sand and gravel. The council maintained the trees. The cemetery resembled a park with headstones dotted around. Children played there, families picnicked and dogs were walked. Apart from the headstones, the cemetery may well have been, to a casual observer, either West Park or Pearson Park.
Unfortunately, over time, with the council suffering significant funding cuts, the maintenance of the cemetery fell by the wayside and it began to acquire a neglected feel. The dumping of rubbish began to happen more regularly, paths became quagmires; sycamore saplings began to destroy the remaining stones whilst ivy swamped them. The entire cemetery was quickly becoming a place to avoid rather than to visit.
Conclusion
Hull General Cemetery is one of the greatest historical resources that the city of Hull has. That it has been abused, neglected and damaged by its custodians is not in doubt but it still breathes charm and exudes magic. Walking there, within 100 yards of a major thoroughfare, one can forget the modern world.
You can experience the pleasure of a ‘country walk’ whilst being ten minutes away from the lattes and pastries of Princes Avenue. You can emulate Dr Who and time travel simply by reading the inscriptions and wonder at the lives and times of those people who were buried here. You can bird watch in solitude, feed the many squirrels or simply try to identify the many plants and trees there and all within a short walk from ‘civilisation’.
But beware, the future of this unique paradise within our city is fragile, due to our neglect, both individual and corporate, and once this fabulous historical resource has gone, it cannot be recreated. It has suffered in its recent history but it is still here, thankfully.
Friends of Hull General Cemetery
In 2018 a group of like-minded people from all walks of life set up a Facebook group called the Friends of Hull General Cemetery, with the aim of rescuing this vital part of our city’s heritage. During its short life it has generated a significant amount of interest in the cemetery from the general public and plans are afoot to bid for local and national funding to make the cemetery a more hospitable place for the community to visit yet still retain its historical significance and environmental importance for future generations.
The book ‘Hull General Cemetery 1847 – 1972, A Short Introduction‘ by Pete Lowden and Bill Longbone is available to buy from Amazon. The book is available as a paperback and as a Kindle download.