| Wardsend Cemetery | |
|---|---|
 The cemetery is part of the wider Wardsend Cemetery Local Wildlife Site | |
 | |
| Details | |
| Established | 1859 |
| Location | |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Coordinates | 53°24′32″N1°29′25″W / 53.40887°N 1.49034°W /53.40887; -1.49034 |
| Type | Anglican cemetery |
| Style | Victorian |
| Owned by | Sheffield City Council |
| Size | 5.5 acres |
| No. of graves | 29,000+ |
| Website | https://wardsendcemetery.wordpress.com/ |
| Find a Grave | Wardsend Cemetery |
Wardsend Cemetery is aVictoriancemetery in theOwlerton district ofSheffield,England, consecrated by theArchbishop of York in 1859 and closed to legal burial in 1968.[1]
The ground on which the cemetery stands was originally purchased by John Livesey in 1857, theVicar of the nearby St. Philip's Church as an overspill burial ground.[2]
The first burial at Wardsend was of a 2-year-old girl named Ann Marie Marsden in 1857. She is, in keeping with tradition, the "Guardian of the Cemetery".[clarification needed]
The graveyard is also noteworthy for being the final resting place ofGeorge LambertVC, a highly decoratedIrish soldier,[3] for holding graves of many victims of theGreat Sheffield Flood of 1864, and being the only cemetery in Britain with an active railway line passing through it.
Sheffield Archives offers much material on the history of the cemetery, perhaps most significantly a detailed narrative account of the 1862 riot and subsequent court hearings entitledExtraordinary Doings in a Cemetery in Sheffield by Ivor Haythorne,[4] and a 2013 dissertation project (heavily influenced by thehistory from below movement spearheaded byE.P. Thompson andGeorge Rudé) calledCrisis of Confidence: The Public Response to the 1862 Sheffield Resurrection Scandal by Jordan Lee Smith.[2]
On the evening of 3 June 1862 the cemetery was the location of a turbulent riot by angry Sheffield citizens, against accusations that the Reverend John Livesey and hissexton Isaac Howard were neglecting to bury corpses, and instead selling them to the town's medical school[5] for use in anatomical dissection. The rumours were proven false and Livesey and Howard were instead fined by YorkAssizes for reusing graves in order to save space. However both were later paid compensation for the damage caused to their property during the riot, and Livesey was reinstated as the Vicar of St. Philip's Church.[2]
Today Livesey Street, now home to the Hillsborough campus ofThe Sheffield College as well as the back entrance toOwlerton Stadium is named after the Reverend Livesey.
A memorial stone at the nearby Walled Garden inHillsborough Park alludes to the unrest; it is a stone four feet long by 18 inches wide, designed to lie flat on the ground and cover a grave. The inscription reads:
To the affectionate remembrance of Frank Bacon.
Who departed this life April 2nd 1854, aged three years.
Also Louis Bacon aged four months
Buried in Wardsend Cemetery April 12th 1858.
And was one of the many found in 1862.
Who had been so ruthlessly disinterred.[6]
The cemetery was originally linked at its Hillsborough entrance by Wardsend Bridge, a two-arched stone structure built in the 18th century exclusively to provide access to the burial ground.[7] However, after its destruction bythe Sheffield floods on 25 June 2007[8] it was rebuilt as a 31.2-foot (9.5 m) wide single-span integral bridge at an estimated cost of £673,000 and re-opened in early 2009.[9][2]
The cemetery also contains anobelisk dedicated to soldiers who died at Sheffield'sHillsborough Barracks, just down the road from the cemetery.[10]
There are also buried here a number of service personnel who died in theFirst andSecond World Wars but because their graves are now unmaintainable by theCommonwealth War Graves Commission their names are listed on a Screen Wall Memorial in Plot H of nearbyCity Road Cemetery.[11]
Since its loss of status as a legal burial groundSheffield City Council have done little to maintain the cemetery and it has fallen into neglect, save for the efforts of a conservation group the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery, who along with offering guided walks of the site, aim to cull theJapanese knotweed that has overgrown the area.[12]
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