Hull General Cemetery books

The last of the few

This is a short news item about the availability of the Hull General Cemetery books. These were written by Bill Longbone and myself regarding certain aspects of Hull General Cemetery history.

There is a side bar on this site. If you click ‘More’ a drop down menu shows a number of items. One of those items is ‘books’. It advises you that you can buy the books from Amazon.co.uk or The Head Gardener on Spring Bank.

Unfortunately this information is no longer accurate. The books are now out of print and there are no plans to reprint them. The Head Gardener does not have any copies and Amazon doesn’t either. Hull Central Library may have some copies as they bought some from us at cost to sell on. I wouldn’t know how many copies they have left if any.

There are copies of the first two books in some Hull City Council libraries. The Hull History Centre has the full set, so if you’re a bit short of the ‘readies’, and you’re desperate to read our ‘deathless prose’, you could try that option.

The good news is that I do still have a few copies left. And when I say a few I mean just that. There are two of the War Dead of HGC, one of the Public Graves etc and one of the Short Introduction to Hull General Cemetery and that is it. If you want to buy a copy of the War Dead, they are £8 each and the Public Graves and the Short Introduction are £5 each. As you know all monies go to the FOHGC.

Not clever marketing

This is not a clever marketing ploy. No one can ever accuse us of being clever! If we were clever we would never have had anything to do with the cemetery in the first place.

These Hull General Cemetery books are rare and will not come back, and if they do (very unlikely!!), definitely not in their present format. Factors such as time, inclination and general weariness are against their resurrection.

Brexit is, not surprisingly, another factor which may make the printing / publishing of them (previously done in Poland) either uneconomic or inflate the price. And we always wanted the books to be ‘pocket money’ priced. So grab them while you can.

Here’s how. Send an email to the website and we’ll arrange something from there. First come, first served.

Who knows, in a few years one of these books could be your pension nest egg! Well, maybe not. But, on balance, probably safer than Bitcoin. At least we guarantee, that whatever happens in the future, you will still have a book to read.

Pete Lowden

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.

petelowden.co.uk