22nd March, 2019 History of Hull’s Cemeteries, 4.

To return, for a moment, to the Castle Street disused burial ground, Hull (closed for burials 1861, s.p.b.s), and to further the theme of the partnership between cemeteries and parks, it was minuted (Corporation, Miscellaneous Committees – Burial) in October 1887 that gardeners were to be appointed to ‘disused burial grounds in the borough’ and, with special reference to the Castle Street site, ‘so as to make it a more agreeable place of resort for the inhabitants’. Four years later (November 1891) the Committee decided to buy ten dozen young trees for planting in burial grounds and to build a greenhouse at the Castle Street site. Whether this was to be open to the public or just for gardeners to propagate plants for the flower beds is not clear.

In 1889 it was decided that the Castle Street burial ground should be kept open to the public until dusk during the summer months while the following year it was decided that the site should be closed to the public at 4pm on Saturdays (the Committee members were occasionally petitioned by members of the public and some organisations keen to maintain the principles of Sabbath Observance, also this was a time of pressure on employers to erode the six-day working week by reducing working hours on Saturdays).

This disused burial ground had a defined perimeter and an entrance gate(s) that could be closed and locked. The picture above shows a surviving section of its western brick wall now ivy-clad, a surviving headstone peeping through the undergrowth and a surviving ‘young tree’ of the 1890s.

Often bad weather must have deterred visitors from disused burial grounds, in 1892 it was decided to close the Castle Street site on Sundays over winter. Also illegible headstones were, at this time, removed to the side of the site.

(To be continued).