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The Burial Act of 1853 finally brought an official end to the near blanket use of urban parish churchyards for regular burials. London had grasped the nettle a little earlier, but the Act of 1853 cast the net for the new way of life (or rather death) across the whole of England. An Order of Newcastle’s Council issued in 1854 took advantage of the governmental guidance, effectively forbidding the use of the town centre churchyards of St.Nicholas’, All Saints’, St.John’s and St.Andrew’s. They were rather full anyway, especially after the cholera epidemic of 1853.
The four ‘official’ churchyards weren’t the only burial spots in and around the town. A ‘commercial’ cemetery had been opened near the Big Lamp (Westgate Hill Cemetery) in 1829, and a similar affair popped up in Jesmond in 1836 (known initially as ‘Newcastle General Cemetery’, and latterly as ‘Jesmond Old Cemetery’). A few small Quaker and Jewish affairs had long been in existence, too. And, of course, there was the huge expanse of the Ballast Hills Cemetery on the east bank of the Ouseburn catering, in the main, for nonconformist burials.
And so four new cemeteries were “tastefully laid out and ornamentally planted” in the suburbs. To the north-west there popped up St.Nicholas’ Cemetery, on the southern edge of Nuns’ and Hunter’s Moors; St.Andrew’s Cemetery was laid out on the western edge of Jesmond, near the Great North Road; All Saints’ Cemetery was created off Jesmond Road; and St.John’s Cemetery was formed in the then empty expanses of rural Elswick. These were all speedily laid out during 1855-58, and proved to be a roaring success. Dead popular, you could say.
The massive change in direction for the disposal of the dead was supervised by the new ‘Burial Boards’, whose members were elected ratepayers - a democratic process which itself was overseen by the ancient parishes’ vestry committees.
The first of the four new ‘municipal’ burial grounds, that of the mother church of Newcastle, St.Nicholas’, amounted to a modest five acre site opened in 1857. Though it is now accessed from Studley Terrace to the north, when built entry was gained from the Newcastle-Carlisle turnpike down a minor road (now the back lane of Wingrove Avenue, known as Cemetery Lane). It was handily-placed (perhaps deliberately so) for the adjacent and recently constructed Newcastle Workhouse, latterly known as Newcastle General Hospital.
To the north, in 1854 the Burial Board of Jesmond merged with that of Newcastle St.Andrew’s to form a joint board. The following year land was purchased from the ancient Hospital of St.Mary Magdalene in order to facilitate the creation of the brand new St.Andrew’s Cemetery.
Also in Jesmond there already existed the private Newcastle General Cemetery, laid out in the 1830s between Jesmond Road and Sandyford Road. This creation came, in time, to be termed ‘Jesmond Old Cemetery’ following the formation of the even newer All Saints’ Cemetery across the road (Jesmond Road) in the mid-1850s.
St.John’s Cemetery, also known simply as Elswick Cemetery, was at the same time laid out in the open fields to the west of the town centre. Here many thousands of the working class fodder of the Armstrong Works and neighbouring industries and manufactories would find their final resting places over the coming decades. St.John’s is Newcastle's largest cemetery at some 28 acres, following its extension in the early twentieth century. Over 100,000 folk are buried there.
[For further reading on the subject matter the reader can do little better than Alan Morgan’s Beyond the Grave: Exploring Newcastle’s Burial Grounds, published by Tyne Bridge Publishing (2004)]
