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The Social World of Nottingham’s Historic Green Spaces Church (Rock) The Forest Cemetery) Waterloo Promenade The Arboretum Elm Avenue, Corporation Oaks & Robin Hood’s General Chase Cemetery Bath Street Cricket Ground The Meadows Cricket Ground Queen’s Walk Fredrick Jackson’s Map, c ͘1882, reproduced courtesy of Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham THE GENERAL CEMETERY AND THE CHURCH (ROCK) CEMETERY Compiled on behalf of the Social World of Nottingham’s Green Spaces project team by Dr Judith Mills FOREWORD In 2013-14, the University of Nottingham’s project The Social World of Nottingham’s Historic Green Spaces saw a small group of academics collaborate with Friends, history and heritage groups as well as individuals interested in the city’s green spaces and the City Council which owns the spaces, to research the creation and development of Nottingham’s oldest parks and open spaces ͘ This was followed in 2016 by a Public Engagement project that resulted in a number of events including a play based on the research, a month-long exhibition, workshops for children, a website and some published articles. Conversations with representatives from some of the groups involved suggested that they would find it useful to have a simple listing of the sequence of events around the creation and development of the parks and open spaces. The results of these conversations are a set of reports - Fact Files - which summarise information about the spaces created as a result of the 1845 Enclosure Act. Sometimes the quantity of information is considerable, and sometimes it is quite scanty. As well as listing the facts, the reports also aim to illustrate some of the concerns and issues that surround the creation of the green spaces and give a flavour of contemporary attitudes to health, recreation and leisure which underlie their conception. At the end of each report is a list of sources and suggestions for further reading for anyone who would like to take their interest further. There are five reports The Arboretum The Forest The Public Walks The Smaller Parks/Former Cricket Grounds The General Cemetery and the Church (Rock) Cemetery They are summaries of research carried out during 2013-14, and are concerned mainly with the period 1845-1914. Judith Mills ACKNOWLEDGMENTS None of this work would have been possible without the support of the Green Spaces Project team, led by Professor John Beckett and the Parks and Open Spaces teams of the City Council. The contribution of and collaboration with the Friends of the Arboretum, Friends of the Forest, Mapperley and Sherwood History group and the other volunteers was also invaluable to the project as a whole. Also invaluable was the support of the staff at Nottinghamshire Archives and Nottingham Local Studies where many of the original documents are stored and cared for. All photographs and images in this report are courtesy of Picture the Past (https://picturethepast.org.uk/) and Nottingham City Council, unless otherwise stated. i THE CEMETERIES Contents page Introduction: The 1845 Enclosure Act 1 The local and national historical context - before Enclosure 2 The Cholera Burial Ground and General Cemetery 2 Special Conditions in the Enclosure Act 3 The Dissenters’ Cemetery 3 Managing the cemetery 4 Buildings in the Dissenters’ Cemetery 4 Planting and layout 5 Church (Rock) Cemetery Finding a location 5 Edwin Patchitt and Creating the Church Cemetery 6 1852: Completed work 7 1852: Unfinished work 8 Planting 8 Burials 8 The Cottage 10 Access 10 The Chapel and other Works 10 Sanitary Committee and Medical Officer’s Reports 11 Inner-city burial grounds 12 Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading 14 Tomb of Edwin Patchitt, architect of the Church Cemetery. Died 1888 Photo: David Severn ii THE GENERAL CEMETERY AND THE CHURCH (ROCK) CEMETERY Church (Rock) Cemetery Nonconformists’ Cemetery Quaker Burial Ground iii Introduction: The 1845 Enclosure Act At the beginning of the 19th century the boundaries of Nottingham were (roughly) from Castle Road in the west to just the other side of Huntingdon Street in the east. The southern border was the river Trent and Gregory Boulevard now approximates the northern boundary. Most of this area was farm land - some owned by the Borough Council but much in private hands. People lived and worked in the area surrounding the Market Place (now Market Square) and St Mary’s Church.e The northern edge was Parliament Street with Broadmarsh marking the southern limit of the town. According to the website A Vision of Britain Through Time, in 1841 the population of Nottingham was 72,309 people, living in an area about 1 mile wide and ½-¾ mile high, with the odd off-shoot along Mansfield Road and Derby Road (GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, URL: http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/datavalue/20702 ). Inevitably, this densely packed population combined with poor Staveley and Wood Map, c.1832, sanitation led to high mortality rates, especially infant courtesy of Manuscripts and Special mortality and Nottingham was used as a case study in Collections, University of Nottingham the 1840 Government Report on the Health of Towns. Other Government Inquiries promoted gentle exercise and ‘rational recreation’ as a remedy to some of the social problems of the period e An obvious solution was to build more houses on the fields surrounding the town but as well as many being in private hands, they were protected by ancient privileges held by the town’s Burgesses who, for example, had the right to graze cattle and sheep on the fields (whoever owned them) after the harvest had been collected. An Inclosure Act was required to overcome these rights - though today this is more commonly referred to as an Enclosure Act. Empowered by Government inquiries and a better understanding of how disease was transmitted, a group of Nottingham’s leading townsmen drew up an Enclosure Act which was - eventually - adopted by the Borough Council and presented to Parliament. It received Royal Assent on 30 June 1845. Two key clauses in the Act ensured that between 125 and 130 acres was set aside as recreational space to be used by the people of Nottingham. Although three Enclosure Commissioners were appointed to oversee the revocation of the burgesses’ rights, lay out the new roads and other infrastructure, and survey and sell building plots, it was the responsibility of the Borough Council to negotiate where the green spaces should be sited. Having agreed with the Commissioners on location, the Council then had to fence, lay-out, manage and develop them for public use. A number of sub-committees were set up: the Enclosure Committee (not to be confused with the Enclosure Commissioners), the Race Committee, the Arboretum Committee and so on. These eventually were united into the Public Parks Committee and then the Public Parks and Burial Grounds Committee. Today, they have become the Parks and Open Spaces service. 1 The local and national historical context - before Enclosure In the early 19th century, Nottingham’s population was growing rapidly despite a high mortality rate. The churchyards surrounding the parish churches of St. Mary’s, St. Peter’s and St Nicholas’s were already overcrowded, with little space available for new burials. Some smaller burial grounds had been created, e.g. on Mount Street and Barker Gate, but these were soon full, and were in any case surrounded by houses. The theory that epidemics were caused by miasma or bad air meant that living near a cemetery was not a popular choice. In 1855, in response to the 1853 Act of Parliament for Regulating Burials of the Dead, all the graveyards in the centre of Nottingham were closed. The Cholera Burial Ground and General Cemetery A cholera epidemic in 1832 led to Samuel Fox, a Quaker philanthropist, donating land on Bath Street which became the Cholera Burial ground, later called St Mary’s Burial Ground. In 1836 Parliament passed an Act of Parliament to establish a General Cemetery Company (1836) with powers to acquire land for the purpose of burials. Samuel Fox was one of the organisers and he also provided the land. A valuation made on behalf of the Council reads: We have valued the three Windmill Closes, situate in the Sand Field in the Parish of St Mary in the Town of Nottingham belonging to Samuel Fox of Nottingham, Grocer, containing respectively Three acres, two roods and five perches. Three acres two roods and seven perches and one Acre, one rood and seven perches adjoining on the West to Sion Hill [Canning Circus] and numbered respectively 43, 46 and 45 in the Corporation terrier, so far as regards the Common Rights thereon, and we are of opinion that the value of the said rights of Common in and upon the said three Closes, which contain together Eight acres, one rood and nineteen perches, is Two hundred and fifty one pounds one shilling and fourpence Dated this twelfth day of September 1836 [signed] Edd. Staveley Geo Sanderson The Corporation received £251 1s 4d to extinguish the common rights over the land and on 4 October 1836 the deed of ownership was transferred to the General Cemetery Company. In total 12 acres were acquired for £6,000 and the first interment took place on 9 February 1837. In 1840, a further three acres and two roods were added at a cost of £37 10s per acre for the common rights. The reason given for the extension was to provide affordable burial plots for the poorer classes: The sole object of the Company in their extending their ground is to provide room for separate graves for each poor family desiring to have one - the number of the poorer classes interred in the Cemetery have greatly exceeded the expectations originally formed.

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