The Victorian Cemetery
I love this book. And the weather is making me think of death, frankly.
found here - http://crimsonbooksinc.storesecured.com/items/book-publishers/shire/victorian/the-victorian-cemetery-srpsli481-detail.htm
The Victorian Cemetery - Sarah Rutherford
“A cemetery is a place for burials, other than a churchyard attached to a regular place of worship. Cemeteries are usually multi-denominational but may belong to a single denomination…This definition conveys no idea of the richness and variety of cemeteries, their place at the heart of a long-lost cult of death and mourning, nor their importance as a 19th century phenomenon.”
A new type of burial place was needed for a new age, an idealized garden (many were laid out in the style of a Pleasure Gardens), where those of every background mingled, if not too closely.
The Industrial Revolution that filled the cities with new workers led to massive overcrowding in the existing grave- and churchyards. Bodies were piled on top of bodies, and the conditions helped to spread disease. New burial areas were established, after the ancient Roman idea, on the borders of cites to allow more room for growth, as well as for hygienic reasons.
The cemetery movement began in the 18th century, spreading as far as Calcutta and French Louisiana. While England proper lagged behind, cemeteries were established in Scotland and Ireland. In the 1820s George Frederick Carden suggested the need for public cemeteries in England. The English, looking at the beautiful example of Pere-Lachaise in Paris, for once thought that the French may have had a good idea.
England’s first public cemetery, in Liverpool, was amazingly profitable. Soon cemeteries were a necessity to any city of size. Only London, with its horrifically high death rate, lagged behind.
In 1831 a great cholera epidemic in London, which was thought to have been caused by bad air from crowded graves, finally spurred the city fathers to action. Within ten years the ‘Magnificent Seven’ cemeteries of the London (Kensal Green, Nunhead, Highgate, Abney Park, Brompton, and Tower Hamlets) were established.
All cemeteries of the era featured a large, ornate gatehouse, which served a practical purpose by housing offices, and a more romantic one as ‘The Gates of the Abode of the Mortal Part of Man.’ The focal point of a cemetery was its chapel or chapels. The other large structure that was sometimes present was a catacomb - modeled on ancient Roman burial sites.
Most Victorian cemeteries were built between1850-91. A series of Burial Acts were passed at this time, establishing a system for public cemeteries run by the government and not by private ownership. A grid plan, which was more formal and less garden-like, became popular and allowed for more bodies to be placed in less space.
Monuments of all kinds began to appear, signifying the wealth and social standing of the interred. Pricing of plots insured those who lived together would be dead together as well. For the wealthiest mausolea, some larger than the cemetery chapel, could come in any form that stone would hold, or, in some cases, iron. Fanciful, even bizarre, monuments (there are wonderful pictures in the book) were available for the better off. More common were obelisks, broken pillars, draped crosses, and weeping angels. Pauper’s graves were given space, with many bodies placed in one plot, with no headstone. Slightly less shameful was the ‘One Guinea Plot,’ which gave the buyer up to thirty-six letters on a communal headstone.
Railways had special lines to carry workers, mourners and the dead to these necropolises, and special cars were designed to create a proper air of solemn mourning. Queen Victoria herself was taken to her final rest in a railcar, and interred in ground not linked to a place of worship.
“The cult of death declined in the 20th century, together with the cemetery as a prestigious amenity to visit deceased loved ones and for quiet recreation.”
found here - http://crimsonbooksinc.storesecured.com/items/book-publishers/shire/victorian/the-victorian-cemetery-srpsli481-detail.htm
The Victorian Cemetery - Sarah Rutherford
“A cemetery is a place for burials, other than a churchyard attached to a regular place of worship. Cemeteries are usually multi-denominational but may belong to a single denomination…This definition conveys no idea of the richness and variety of cemeteries, their place at the heart of a long-lost cult of death and mourning, nor their importance as a 19th century phenomenon.”
A new type of burial place was needed for a new age, an idealized garden (many were laid out in the style of a Pleasure Gardens), where those of every background mingled, if not too closely.
The Industrial Revolution that filled the cities with new workers led to massive overcrowding in the existing grave- and churchyards. Bodies were piled on top of bodies, and the conditions helped to spread disease. New burial areas were established, after the ancient Roman idea, on the borders of cites to allow more room for growth, as well as for hygienic reasons.
The cemetery movement began in the 18th century, spreading as far as Calcutta and French Louisiana. While England proper lagged behind, cemeteries were established in Scotland and Ireland. In the 1820s George Frederick Carden suggested the need for public cemeteries in England. The English, looking at the beautiful example of Pere-Lachaise in Paris, for once thought that the French may have had a good idea.
England’s first public cemetery, in Liverpool, was amazingly profitable. Soon cemeteries were a necessity to any city of size. Only London, with its horrifically high death rate, lagged behind.
In 1831 a great cholera epidemic in London, which was thought to have been caused by bad air from crowded graves, finally spurred the city fathers to action. Within ten years the ‘Magnificent Seven’ cemeteries of the London (Kensal Green, Nunhead, Highgate, Abney Park, Brompton, and Tower Hamlets) were established.
All cemeteries of the era featured a large, ornate gatehouse, which served a practical purpose by housing offices, and a more romantic one as ‘The Gates of the Abode of the Mortal Part of Man.’ The focal point of a cemetery was its chapel or chapels. The other large structure that was sometimes present was a catacomb - modeled on ancient Roman burial sites.
Most Victorian cemeteries were built between1850-91. A series of Burial Acts were passed at this time, establishing a system for public cemeteries run by the government and not by private ownership. A grid plan, which was more formal and less garden-like, became popular and allowed for more bodies to be placed in less space.
Monuments of all kinds began to appear, signifying the wealth and social standing of the interred. Pricing of plots insured those who lived together would be dead together as well. For the wealthiest mausolea, some larger than the cemetery chapel, could come in any form that stone would hold, or, in some cases, iron. Fanciful, even bizarre, monuments (there are wonderful pictures in the book) were available for the better off. More common were obelisks, broken pillars, draped crosses, and weeping angels. Pauper’s graves were given space, with many bodies placed in one plot, with no headstone. Slightly less shameful was the ‘One Guinea Plot,’ which gave the buyer up to thirty-six letters on a communal headstone.
Railways had special lines to carry workers, mourners and the dead to these necropolises, and special cars were designed to create a proper air of solemn mourning. Queen Victoria herself was taken to her final rest in a railcar, and interred in ground not linked to a place of worship.
“The cult of death declined in the 20th century, together with the cemetery as a prestigious amenity to visit deceased loved ones and for quiet recreation.”