This paper aims to summarize the preliminary findings of a PhD research project analysing the materiality and spatiality of graves and grave markers on four selected cemeteries in the Luxembourg-German border region. By collecting an extensive set of data of the contemporary assemblage visible on these cemeteries and by analysing it statistically and geo-spatially, it is the intention to understand how this particular material and spatial assemblage came to be and, moreover, what historical archaeologists can learn from such data about the recent past. […]

The death of children is memorialised variously across cultures and generation, having moved beyond the cemetery in recent decades. When a child dies today there may be multiple material sites of remembrance – the home, the roadside following traffic fatalities, the school gates, central public places, online virtual memorials, as well as traditionally-commemorated places of burial such as cemeteries, graveyards and gardens of remembrance. This exploratory paper uses a spatial lens to seek to understand changing spaces and family practices associated with the public memorialisation of infants and children in urban England. […]

The Third cemetery of Athens (Greece) is an ordinary, fully-operating public cemetery. It was established in 1938; it is the third and last cemetery owned and managed by the Municipality of Athens; the only one located at the west side of the city; and the city’s biggest cemetery, the massive cemetery of the metropolis. This paper is based on primary sources data (Laws, Regulations, City Council minutes [1936-2003]) gathered and studied during the first year of the PhD research on the Third cemetery. […]

This paper is drawn from a case study which in turn forms part of a larger project on the religiosity of ordinary people in WW1, as seen through their headstones. The bulk of the project data lies in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) headstones, which form the first, mass, collection of British headstone inscriptions. The study of CWGC headstone Personal Inscriptions is itself threaded through with evidential problems, and contested information. For example, present research suggests that around 50% of identifiable graves have no inscription at all. […]

A very detailed study of about 1500 accounts of tours of Wales has shown that the custom of placing of flowers on graves was practiced over most of Wales probably as early as the 17th century and definitely during the 18th and 19th centuries. There is very little evidence for this custom in England, Scotland and Ireland until it became popular in England from the 1830s, probably as a result of the opening of large non-denominational cemeteries on the edge of towns. […]

Drawing from consultation responses and the policy guidance currently in progress, this paper will explore the likely short-term impact of the 2016 Scottish Burial and Cremation (Scotland) Act on cemetery management practices. In 2016, the Scottish Government updated the primary legislation governing burial and cemetery management. This Act ended the tradition of burial in perpetuity, enabled grave reuse and sought to clarify procedures for burial authorities to deal with ‘ownerless’ graves and gravestones across all types of burial sites. […]

This paper follows the same journey made through two WW2 military cemeteries located on the outskirts of the city of Luxembourg. These are the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial designed by the architects Keally & Patterson and landscape architect Alfred Geiffert; and the German Military Memorial Cemetery designed by the landscape architect Robert Tischler. The paper uses original plans, drawings and photographs to explore how the designers responded to very different design briefs that were inevitably shaped by their respective experience of victory and defeat. […]

This talk will draw on the conceptual framework underpinning my thesis, which analogises corpse materials as waste, otherwise known as ‘necro-waste’ (Olson, 2016). The thesis specifically asks ‘what is the value of “necro-waste”?’ In other words, it aims to understand how corpse materials can be recycled as the UK Death Industry develops alongside wider environmental social change. By taking a waste-orientated approach to corpse materials, the talk sets out to achieve two things. First, it will provide a comparative analysis of cremation and natural burial, […]

Highgate Cemetery was established by an Act of Parliament which regulated its operations. But how did they decide what should be in that Act? Was it based on earlier Acts establishing cemeteries? Tracing back to the first of such Acts, I realised that my question would remain: what did they base that one on? So my focus switched from finding the first cemetery Act to understanding how the first cemetery was governed. But which was the first cemetery? […]

This investigation originates from a project on the inscriptions on the headstones maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The Commonwealth War Cemeteries tend to be regarded as a cultural norm – even a British, or military tradition. Yet this phenomenon is not traditional, and is only British by virtue of the nationality of their founder and director, Sir Fabian Ware. His vision was in fact an international and Imperial one, and the ‘norms’ that the project produced were new both to the British Army and to the British civil polity. […]

Cemeteries and graveyards traditionally had one main role, however during the last 40 years many have evolved from burial space to visitor space. It is now possible to watch a film, view art, take a tour or watch theatre in a place of the dead. How and why did this transition occur? Is the presence of the human remains part of the draw to these sites, or a hinderance to their new uses? Drawing from experiences working in heritage sites and current doctoral research this presentation will share one case study that shows how the change can take place. […]

This paper suggests a new meta-narrative for understanding change in Westernised funerary practice over time, shifting away from the conception of dichotomised swings between periods when death was somehow hidden or problematic, and times during which death was regarded as ‘tame’, accepted and largely unproblematic. Instead, this it is proposed that funerary practice runs rather in a cyclical pattern, as innovation, gradually absorbed as a mass option, provokes new innovation. This pattern not seated within the desire for the lesser-status members of society to emulate the elite or garner ‘respectability’. […]

On the 25th October 1866, the family of four-year-old Jonathan Hope walked the two miles from Ancoats to bury their youngest son. He was the first person to be interred in a public grave at Manchester’s Philips Park Cemetery. By the end of the century the percentage of people interred in a public grave at Philips Park stood at just over 87% of all recorded burials. Despite the high numbers of public grave burials in municipal cemeteries throughout Britain, […]

Urban cemeteries in the Swedish city of Malmö witness a great variety of usages, and are not just limited to commemoration practices. However, the social acceptance of nonconventional activities on cemetery sites is still debatable. This paper aims to explore jogging as one among many activities in Malmö cemeteries and to understand people’s opinions about this activity. Three urban cemeteries, differing in size, location and design were examined through three methods: observations of activities, a study of social media and an online questionnaire. […]

The Burial Act 1852 created and empowered Burial Boards to provide cemeteries for the interment of those living within their parish. Financed by the fees from those interred, a higher non-parishioner charge was levied on those desirous of utilising the cemetery but not living within the Board’s boundary. Research has identified that although non-parishioner status remains today (and is now known as ‘non-resident’ burial), its intended purpose of preserving burial space through the deterrent of a higher charge has been subjected to wide interpretation. […]

‘He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.’ This statement of the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom James Harold Wilson in 1967, exemplifies the most common perception of cemeteries as being insusceptible to change. But cemeteries are not ahistoric places and like any other human institutions they are exposed to changing socio-cultural, demographic, political, and economic parameters to which they are bound to respond. […]

This paper examines the history of the convent cemetery of the English Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre, and associated changes to death, dying and burial practices within the community – physically, spiritually and culturally. Founded in Liège in 1642, where they lived as an English convent in exile for some 150 years, the Sepulchrines were forced to migrate from mainland Europe to England in 1794 as a result of revolutionary changes sweeping the continent. After arrival in England, […]

Archaeology students recorded one of the areas in Toxteth Park Cemetery as part of their archaeology field methods module. This paper described the process and assesses preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of this activity both as a pedagogic experience and as a contribution the recording and long-term management of the cemetery. Toxteth Park, as with most cemeteries in Liverpool, is managed by the local authority but is also supported by a friends’ group; it is listed on Historic England’s Parks and Gardens Register. […]

The cemetery and churchyard commonly present problems with maintenance issues, contentious memorialisation sensibilities, economics and allowing for an evolution of rituals and customs. If architecture began with the tomb, has the story line for cemetery design been lost along the way? This landscape interface between mortality and immortality could be seen as it has in the past, as the greatest design brief of all, but current design ethos is surely falling short. Is this landscape a place of exclusive use for the visiting bereaved and has it been so in the past? […]

George Alfred Walker was one of the very first sanitary reformers to be actively involved in the burial reform debate which took place in the 1840s in England. Although historical interest in Walker is not new, most historical works have focused on the sanitary reformer Edwin Chadwick. There are only a few academic articles specifically dedicated to Walker, and yet such articles never offer a thorough analysis of Walker’s contribution to the burial debate—although Peter Jupp had been calling for it since 1997 (The Changing Face of Death). […]