New Year’s Day is the anniversary of some interest. This anniversary of January 1874 shows that Gothic may be nice to look at but as to living in it. Well that’s another matter.
On that day in 1874, the superintendent wrote to the Board and asked to leave the lodge. The superintendent, Edward Nequest, had lived in the lodge since the previous occupant had died.
The previous occupant was John Shields. He was the first superintendent of the cemetery and had died in 1866. However he had requested to move out of the lodge some time before this and moved to a house in Derringham Street.
After Edward Nequest had moved on the lodge was rented out to George Ingleby, the gardener for the Cemetery. Michael Kelly, the next superintendent took on the lodge. He too found it trying and asked to be able to find his own accommodation.
Just before its demolition in 1925 the chairman had referred to it at the AGM as, ‘the old, perished, insanitary lodge.
So, it’s quite possible that although the lodge was beautiful to look at, it was not a great place to live in.
Nequest said in a presentation to the Board that,
‘that the Lodge in which he resided was very damp and unsuitable to live in and having requested the Board to provide him with a residence outside the cemetery and the matter having been considered it was resolved that Mr Nequest do provide himself with a suitable house and that the Company allow him £20 a year towards the rent of such house and provide him with coals and gas heretofore.’
Census entries
That the Board accepted this demand so easily perhaps shows that they were fully aware of the force of his argument. After all they met in one of the rooms of the lodge and must have seen how bad things were.
Edward Nequest moved from the lodge to a house on Spring Bank. In the image above, taken from the 1881 census, Edward then lived at 7, Zoological Terrace.
By the time of the 1891 census this address had been renumbered to 183, Spring Bank. Edward continued to live there until his death in 1920. The house stood on the corner of Norwood Street only a few doors away from Peter Hodsman, the master stonemason of the cemetery. Stonemason of the Cemetery
This image was taken by Chris Ketchell just over 25 years ago. In the 1980s it was a butcher’s shop.
Pete Lowden is a member of the Friends of Hull General Cemetery committee which is committed to reclaiming the cemetery and returning it back to a community resource.