Since its closure in 1978, the General Cemetery in Sheffield has become a tangled exhibition of plants and undergrowth. The classically influenced buildings have long since been bricked up and fallen into disrepair, while the tombstones of Sheffield’s Victorian luminaries disappear into the undergrowth. Ironically, the final resting place of 87,000 people has become a tranquil haven where plant and animal life blossoms unhindered, and looks more like the land time forgot than its once neat arrangement of tombs and terracing.
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A dream location for historians and urban explorers, Sheffield General Cemetery opened in 1836 as a Nonconformist burial ground – then a popular movement among the city’s leading industrialists. It was one of the first landscape cemeteries to be developed and paved the way for a national movement away from overcrowded church yards. The original buildings, including gate house, catacombs and Nonconformist chapel, feature designs influenced by classical Egyptian and Greek Doric (by architect Samuel Worth).
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An Anglican chapel designed by William Flockton was added in 1850 adjacent to the Cemetery Road entrance. Built in the Gothic tradition, the abandoned chapel is notable for having a steeple that is oversized by comparison to the rest of the building. This feature is deliberate, as the chapel was designed to be noticed – rather ominous considering a good deal of the business conducted there was funerals…
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An interesting surviving feature is the Dissenters’ Wall, which runs from Cemetery Road to the Porter Brook near the main entrance. The wall marked the separation between the Nonconformist and consecrated Anglican burial grounds. After the cemetery passed into the ownership of the local council following its closure in 1978, around 800 graves were cleared from the Anglican section to make way for a park. Since then, the site has become completely overgrown, although it is both charming and mysterious as a result.
While a dove denoting the Holy Spirit is engraved above the General Cemetery’s main entrance, it has also been suggested that the location of the entrance next to the Porter Brook symbolises the soul’s final journey across the River Styx in Greek mythology. The General Cemetery is unique due to the decorative ironwork adorning many of the more affluent graves, highlighting Sheffield’s place as a national and global steel centre during the Victorian era.
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Famous residents include prominent industrialists Mark Firth and James Nicholson; George Bassett, inventor of Liquorice Allsorts; John Fowler, father of the man who designed the Forth Rail Bridge; James Montgomery, poet and publisher; John, Thomas and Skelton Cole, founders of Cole Brothers Department Store; Chartists Samuel Holberry and Isaac Ironside; Francis Dickinson, “one of the six hundred” taking part in the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War; and finally, George Partington, who ran off at the age of 17 to fight in the Crimea. One of the Heavy Brigade, he was badly wounded at Balaclava but nursed back to health by “the lady of the lamp” Florence Nightingale. Partington survived the battles of Balaclava, Inkerman and the siege of Sevastopol, but was later killed after being thrown from his horse.
But it’s not all wealth and heroism. The cemetery is also home to thousands of others whose grave stones tell the tragic tale of social and economic deprivation that accompanied the wealth of Victorian England. Many of the terraces are created from grave stones, either those of “paupers” or reclaimed from the cleared Anglican area. Today, the Friends of the General Cemetery work hard to preserve this historic place, while the untamed foliage bestows a look somewhere between gothic horror and Tim Burton… But what’s clear is that Sheffield’s premier Victorian cemetery has become one of the city’s most mysterious abandoned places. Find more fantastic photographs of the cemetery in this series by Decadence.me.uk.
