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The English coastal city of Brighton and Hove, made up of the formerly separate Boroughs of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, has a wide range of cemeteries throughout its urban area. Many were established in the mid-19th century, a time in which the Victorian "cult of death" encouraged extravagant, expensive memorials set in carefully cultivated landscapes which were even recommended as tourist attractions. Some of the largest, such as the Extra Mural Cemetery and the Brighton and Preston Cemetery, were set in particularly impressive natural landscapes. Brighton and Hove City Council, the local authority responsible for public services in the city, manages seven cemeteries, one of which also has the city's main crematorium. An eighth cemetery and a second crematorium are owned by a private company. Many cemeteries are full and no longer accept new burials. The council maintains administrative offices and a mortuary at the Woodvale Cemetery, and employs a coroner and support staff. Until the early 19th century, by which time Brighton was already growing rapidly as it developed from a fishing village into a fashionable seaside resort, all burials took place at churches, chapels or the Jewish community's newly established burial ground. Brighton Extra Mural Company founded the first private cemetery in the town in 1851. A similar situation existed in Hove and its westerly neighbour Portslade, where pressure for burial space around St Andrew's and St Nicolas' parish churches respectively resulted in the establishment of municipal cemeteries there. In the 20th century, as space became scarce and cremation became more socially acceptable, new and extended burial grounds were established and the Woodvale Crematorium, built in 1930, became increasingly important. Many structures in the cemeteries and graveyards of Brighton and Hove are of significant historical and architectural interest; reflecting this, many have been listed by English Heritage, the public body responsible for the administration of England's historic built environment. Listed structures include individual tombs, burial vaults, cemetery chapels and various structures at the entrances to the city's cemeteries. In many cases, the historic interest of an individual grave is based on the local or wider fame of its occupant. The 20th-century expansion of Brighton and its neighbour Hove brought several villages, formerly outside the urban area, into the area controlled by the boroughs. Ancient settlements such as Ovingdean, Rottingdean, Stanmer, Patcham and Hangleton each had their own parish church with a long-established graveyard. ==History== For hundreds of years in towns and villages across England, it was customary to bury the dead in the churchyard of the parish church. The Saxon fishing village of Bristelmestune, which grew and evolved into Brighthelmstone and later Brighton, was no different: St Nicholas' Church, which stood on a hill behind and separate from the settlement, was surrounded by a churchyard on the sloping land alongside Church Hill (the present Dyke Road).〔 Protestant Nonconformists who did not attend the parish church were not catered for separately until the Quaker community established a burial ground next to their own place of worship in 1690. Brighton's transformation from a declining fishing village to a fashionable seaside resort patronised by royalty, the nobility and daytrippers alike took place between the mid-18th century—when Dr Richard Russell published his theories on the apparent health benefits of sea-bathing and drinking seawater, and recommended Brighton as the ideal venue—and the mid-19th century, when the town was connected to London by railway line. It became the largest town in Sussex at the start of the 19th century, and the population grew from about 7,000 in 1801 to 40,000 in 1831, including a doubling in the 1811–1821 period. This put great pressure on the remaining land around the church: graves were already so closely spaced that maintenance was difficult to carry out. A small extension to the east was made in 1818,〔 and in 1824 the church bought a site north of Church Street and behind St Nicholas' Church and laid it out as extra burial space. This was full by 1841, and another extension was opened west of Church Hill (Dyke Road).〔〔 The Public Health Act 1848 sought to improve the sanitary conditions and public health in Britain's growing towns. Edward Cresy, a Government health inspector, was sent to Brighton in 1849 to report on its conditions and recommend actions which would make the town compliant with the Act. He advised that burials around the town's churches and chapels should cease, which would have affected St Nicholas' Church, the Presbyterian Hanover Chapel in North Road and the Quaker Friends Meeting House in Ship Street. (Although Brighton had 11 Anglican churches by the time, excluding St Nicholas', none had their own burial grounds.) Cresy's recommendation was enforced from 1 October 1853,〔 when the Government passed the Burials (Beyond the Metropolis) Act 1853 and prohibited burials around any of Brighton's places of worship.〔 Immediately after Cresy published his report, though, a group of public figures in Brighton took action themselves. They included doctor and politician John Cordy Burrows, the Union Chapel's minister Rev. John Nelson Goulty, his son the architect Horatio Nelson Goulty, and fellow architect Amon Henry Wilds.〔 In 1850, they formed the Brighton Extra Mural Company for the purposes of acquiring land and establishing a private cemetery for Anglican, Roman Catholic and Nonconformist burials. They bought east of the Lewes Road and near Race Hill. Apart from a small section for non-Anglican burials, the land was consecrated by Ashurst Turner Gilbert, the Bishop of Chichester, on 14 August 1851, and burials took place from November that year.〔 The land formed part of Scabe's Castle Farm, established in the 18th century.〔 The Marquess of Bristol owned much of the land surrounding the old farm, and in 1856 he gave the Brighton Extra Mural Company adjoining the northeast side of the existing cemetery. It was consecrated for Anglican burials on 14 November 1857, and was known from the start as the Bristol Ground.〔 He also helped with the founding of Brighton's second purpose-built cemetery. When the Government prohibited any more burials around St Nicholas' Church in 1853, the Vestry (who were responsible for the administration and running of the parish church) needed land quickly to carry out new burials—in particular of paupers, who became the Vestry's responsibility when they died.〔 The Vestry asked the Brighton Extra Mural Company to sell the new Extra Mural Cemetery to them, but they were quoted £25,000 (£ as of ) and a five-shilling charge (£ as of ) per pauper burial.〔 The Vestry considered this unacceptable. In early 1856 they had the chance to buy of land opposite the Extra Mural Cemetery, on the west side of Lewes Road, for £7,500 (£ as of ), but the Vestry again refused—despite the recommendations of the newly formed Brighton Burial Board.〔〔 Then in April 1856,〔 the Marquess of Bristol and the tenant of the land, Mayor of Brighton William Hallett, gave the Vestry of land adjoining the south side of the Extra Mural Cemetery. It was run by the Burial Board under the name Brighton Parochial Cemetery, and was designed and consecrated in 1857.〔〔 It was taken over by Brighton Borough Council in 1902, and is now called Woodvale Cemetery.〔 The north ends of the two cemeteries reached as far north as Bear Road, a steep road which was part of Brighton Borough's boundary until 1928. Immediately north of the road, a third cemetery opened in 1868 on a site. It was known as Brighton Borough Cemetery or Bear Road Cemetery.〔〔 A fourth large cemetery opened in the same area in 1886. The privately owned Brighton and Preston Cemetery Company Ltd laid out the Brighton and Preston Cemetery on the remaining of the former Scabe's Castle Farm land between Hartington Road and the south side of the Brighton Parochial Cemetery.〔〔 The villages of Hove and Portslade lay to the west of Brighton. Their neighbour's growth and fashionable status, and the opening of a connecting railway line in the mid-19th century, stimulated rapid residential development, and the ancient parish churches of both settlements faced similar problems to Brighton's St Nicholas' Church. The graveyard around St Andrew's Church in Hove had been used since the 1530s, and by the 1850s the authorities realised that more space would be needed. To compound the problem, Hove's other Anglican churches lacked any burial space of their own. (The church of the recently built Brunswick Town estate, also called St Andrew's, had burial vaults, but the Public Health Act 1848 and subsequent Acts of Parliament prevented their further use.)〔 The churchyard at the parish church was extended in 1860, but the Hove Commissioners soon started searching for land for a municipal cemetery. In 1878, they decided to buy in the parish of Aldrington, between the railway line and the Old Shoreham Road. A dispute with the Dyke Railway Company, which operated a branch line from the main railway alongside the proposed site, delayed the purchase until October 1879, during which time the land continued to be farmed. The Hove Commissioners paid £8,750 for the site, and were laid out in 1880 (of which were consecrated by the Bishop of Chichester on 27 May 1882). The rest of the land continued in agricultural use until the cemetery was gradually extended over the next decades. Hove Borough Council bought more land north of the Old Shoreham Road directly opposite the original cemetery in 1923: the site, on sloping ground, cost £6,450 (£ as of ). More land was bought several miles outside the borough in 1955 in case it was needed for more burials, but the tree-covered site at Poynings has not been required because cremation has become more popular since the 1950s. The small churchyard at St Nicolas' Church in Portslade was closed to new burials by 1871, when the Portslade Burial Board was founded. While the Board searched for land for a municipal cemetery, the priests in the neighbouring parishes of Hangleton and Aldrington allowed burials of Portslade residents to take place at the parish churches of St Helen and St Leonard respectively. A second Anglican church, St Andrew's, was built in Portslade in 1864, and the Burial Board intended for some adjacent land to be turned into a cemetery. The donor of the site refused this, though, and the Board had to seek land elsewhere in the parish. Resident John Hooper Smith sold for £1,000 (£ as of ), and Portslade Cemetery was consecrated on 9 November 1872.〔 An extension was added in 1896〔 and fully laid out in 1924–25. Some land at the south end of the cemetery, alongside Victoria Road, was controversially sold for housing development in 1936 after several months of debate.〔 Cremation became more socially acceptable in the 20th century, and in 1930 the first crematorium in Sussex opened in one of the twin chapels at Woodvale Cemetery. It was adapted for this purpose by the addition of a chimney and other structural alterations. Originally known as the Brighton Borough Crematorium, it is now called the Woodvale Crematorium.〔 In 1941, another crematorium was opened at the far northeast corner of the Brighton and Preston Cemetery, alongside Bear Road. The Downs Crematorium is privately owned and run.〔〔 Brighton's urban area expanded from the late 19th century with a series of boundary extensions, some of which brought surrounding villages and their parish churches into the borough (which was established in 1854). Parts of Preston parish were added in 1873 and 1894, and some of Patcham parish was annexed in 1923. The Brighton Corporation Act 1927, enacted on 1 April 1928, added the parishes of Ovingdean and Rottingdean and parts of Falmer, Patcham and West Blatchington, and Preston parish was absorbed into the Borough rather than being separate for ecclesiastical purposes. Rottingdean, Ovingdean, Patcham, West Blatchington and Preston parish churches and their churchyards became part of Brighton at that point. Stanmer and its church were included in 1952.〔 Meanwhile, Hove expanded to take in Aldrington parish and its church in 1894, and achieved borough status in 1898. Hangleton, most of West Blatchington (including St Peter's Church) and part of Preston parishes were added in 1928.〔 In 1974, the parish of Portslade—3½ times larger than the original parish of Hove—became part of Hove Borough. The Boroughs of Brighton and Hove were first united as a unitary authority in 1997, and city status was granted in 2000. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cemeteries and crematoria in Brighton and Hove」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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