Council Support

Council support

There was an article in the Hull Daily Mail about a fortnight ago. In it Hull General Cemetery was touched upon. The article was the result, I suppose, of an interview with the sitting councillors of the ward. It could well have been a press release by them. I don’t really know. Here’s the link.

https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/life-avenues-hull-area-proud-4973918

The link was placed on FaceBook but soon had to be taken down. It prompted angry outbursts amidst claims that it was just electioneering.

Once again, I don’t know if it was electioneering. It was in February which is surely a little early for the May elections but no matter. What is beyond doubt is the simple facts as stated in the interview / press release. The councillors who spoke to the Hull Daily Mail were telling the truth. At least in terms of the part about Hull General Cemetery where Council support has been integral to the improvements on the site.

No, hold on. Don’t shoot the messenger. Yes, I know the old joke about how can you tell when a politician’s lying? When their lips move. And ordinarily I go along with that. But here was that rare example of the opposite of that.

Now, I can’t judge a councillor’s performance on other issues. Nor do I want to, until May comes around that is. But I can judge a councillor’s net worth to Hull General Cemetery so here goes.

In my time on the FOHGC I have had dealings with a number of councillors. None of them were bad although it was plainly obvious that to a couple of them, the condition of a derelict cemetery was pretty low on their to do list. That’s the way it goes, and I would be lying if, on some days, Hull General Cemetery doesn’t always make my top ten topics.

However, on the whole I feel the councillors have given a fair share of their time to this subject. Yes, I can’t complain about the level of council support.

Name names

But, and here’s where I suppose I should put my tin hat on, two councillors have stood out in their efforts on behalf of the FOHGC and, by default, the Hull General Cemetery.

The first is Cllr. Marjorie Brabazon. When the condition of the cemetery was first  brought up, even before the FOHGC was formed, Cllr. Brabazon took an active interest. She was one of the original attendees at the first meeting that set up the FOHGC. A regular attender at the meetings since then, she always offers support and guidance. She was also one of the people who took on the role of liaising with the local schools to form active links with them.

As the chair of the Libraries Committee, she enabled the books that were written about the cemetery by Bill and myself to be bought and put on the shelves of all the local libraries. To be read for free and make more people aware of the site. We reciprocated by selling them at cost price so that everyone won on that deal.

All of this whilst in the middle of a serious health crisis within her family.

The second is Cllr. Abi Bell. She wasn’t a councillor, at least in the Avenues Ward, when the FOHGC was set up. However once in post in this ward, she took on an active part in the work of the FOHGC. She was often the point of contact within the council that we used the most.

When the open meetings were taking place in 2019, she arranged for the leaflet printing and attended at least one of the meetings. She also attended other informal meetings outside the FOHGC formal setting when an issue arose that could not be dealt with on the monthly schedule.

On a personal note, her support and enthusiasm for the project often kept me going during some acrimonious times, never mind the other way around.

Both of these councillors have shown, at least to me, that when the subject of Hull General Cemetery comes up, politics doesn’t enter into it. They do what needs to be done.

Electioneering?

So, electioneering? Maybe, maybe not. Quite frankly I don’t care.

In fact, on this subject, I am apolitical. It’s not the political party that interests me, it’s what they bring to the party that is the Hull General Cemetery. Yes, I know that’s pretty shallow. Yes, I’m following my own self interests. What happened to being principled and not being selfish?

Well, come on, hand on heart, isn’t that the way many people have been voting in every democracy for the last few years? And I have to live with those petty selfish decisions which are and will be much more harmful to me and my family for generations.

So, cut me some slack here. And while you’re at it, try cutting the councillors some slack. At least in terms of Hull General Cemetery they’ve delivered.

Yep, that gets my vote.

P.S. The image at the front of this post is the monument to John Wilde in HGC. This man ‘used’ the electoral process so well during the 1850s in Hull that a Parliamentary Commission was called into being. It ruled that the Parliamentary election of 1853 was null and void. He was implicated in bribing the voters above and beyond what was seen to be acceptable in those days. As a result Hull did not have any representation in parliament for two years.

The practice during this election was over and above the level of corruption usually found in elections during this period. Take a moment here, and spare a thought for Thomas Perronet Thompson. He had been a Member for Hull in the past and was approached in 1854, as to whether he would stand in the 1855 election. He replied, and this speaks volumes for the heady level of corruption in the town at that time, that ‘he would as soon think of selling his daughter for a concubine in New Orleans.’ So, that’s a no then, Thomas?

Meanwhile back at Thomas Wilde.

As you can see, in the inscription on his tomb, this ‘issue’ did not merit a mention. In the long run politics is a very forgiving industry. Isn’t it?

The inscription on Tom Wilde's monument

 

Next month

.Next month I’m hopeful of having at least two lengthy articles for you. Unpublished anywhere and brand spanking new for your delight. Delight might be a bit over the top but I’m sure you know what I mean.

The first article is about how the Hull General  Cemetery Company was established and why it happened at that particular time. Complete with severed heads and dubious dealings on the part of the Church It could be the basis for a new Hollywood blockbuster. Or not as the case may be. Anyway I hope you find it interesting.

The second article next month  is about a man who worked for the Company. We know a great deal about many of the people who are buried in the Cemetery but not a great deal about the people who buried them. This is an attempt to redress this imbalance just a little.

I’m also going to serialise the ‘Catacombs and Crosses’ part of the third book. I’ve just come across some more information that I didn’t know at the time and therefore it isn’t in that book. So, I thought it might be good to post it here.

Plus any news regarding the Cemetery that comes my way. Any activities by the FOHGC that are fit to print, and, of course, the monthly anniversary post.

Your comments are always welcome. I can’t reply via this website but I always try to reply via email.

A Second Anniversary

5th March 1845

p 1 HGC minute books

Yes, two anniversaries for the price of one!

This anniversary is so important that it will be the basis for an article next month. Suffice to say that I’m just giving you all a ‘heads up.’

This date was the first meeting of some interested individuals who met up with the idea of founding a General Cemetery Company. From this meeting a provisional committee was formed and the rest, as they say, is history. As an anniversary its pretty special

A long, interesting life

The Company had a long life over an eventful period of time. From its beginnings in the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign when the waltz was deemed quite risqué. Up to when its final board meeting took place in 1972. Just about then David Bowie was performing Ziggy Stardust on stage. During which he regularly simulated performing a ‘sex act’ upon Mick Ronson. My, how times do change! I doubt if Queen Victoria would have been amused.

The cemetery saw the greatest epidemic that Hull ever suffered. The Cholera epidemic of 1849 makes Covid look like a bout of hay-fever. It also witnessed the greatest level of destruction that the city ever suffered. This of course was the bombing during the Second World War. Indeed the cemetery too suffered in its own way at this time. Compartments 71 and 72 were bombed. Accidentally one hopes otherwise the German bombers definitely needed further training. The cemetery lodge was damaged too at this time although that was through shrapnel from AA guns.

Eventually, as we know, the Cemetery Company finally succumbed. The cemetery though continued in a different way. It is now an historic and cultural resource for the city. It also is a fascinating piece of urban ‘woodland’ with a large variety of birds and small wildlife.

The cemetery has had a full life. Long may it continue.

Peck's map of HGC

A Monumental Loss

A momentous meeting

On the 25th of October 1977 a meeting took place that would finalise the future look of the Hull General Cemetery site. It was the culmination of a long journey for all the participants. The travellers on this journey were many and all wanted the best for the site. However the view of what that term meant was disputed. This is the story of that dispute. 

One of the results of the meeting was the eventual loss of 4,000 of the 5,000 headstones. A significant reduction of the natural environment of the site was also lost. As the title of this piece suggests, ‘a monumental loss’ took place. Of natural habitats and more severely, of irreplaceable historic monuments. So how did that happen?

To find out we need to go back to the swinging Sixties

Liquidation

The Hull General Cemetery Company Directors’ meeting on the 27th August 1968 had a specific item on the agenda, which was not one of the usual ones. The item to be discussed was the cemetery’s future. The directors had authorised their solicitors, Payne & Payne, at a previous meeting, to approach Hull City Council. Their aim was to get the Council to purchase the cemetery from them. This would be the final time for both parties to raise this subject. Put simply, since the late 1850s, the Company had wanted to off load the Cemetery to the municipal authorities. In the past, each time this was discussed, both parties found some objection to finalising the deal. Therefore the Company directors were not hopeful this time either.

At this same meeting though, the directors faced the future square in the face and realised that the Company’s time was at its end. So the first steps towards the liquidation of the Company began.

Deja Vu?

However, this wasn’t the first time the liquidation of the Company had been broached at this level. The Directors’ meeting of the 8th September 1965 had an agenda item entitled, ‘Disposal of the Cemetery’.

But by 1968 the company had hit the wall. Its finances were non-existent. Its main income stream was the rental on the two flats on Spring Bank West that it owned, rather than its primary function of selling burials. The Company could afford no staff other than a part-time secretary, who also undertook the cemetery supervisory duties, although those were sparse now. It also employed an 86-year-old man to perform odd jobs on the ‘as and when’ basis. The Company could no longer maintain the grounds. It could not upkeep its boundary fencing. The maintenance of the graves it was paid to maintain stopped. Its stone masonry business had been wound down long ago. It rented out the old stone yard to a builder to park his lorry. It was defunct as a viable business and it knew it.

This approach to the Council could be seen to be the Last Chance Saloon for the Company. Could it afford to buy a round?

Turned down once again

Sadly, the response from Hull City Council was as expected. The Council were not against taking over the cemetery. To do so would probably save the Council money in the long run. It knew it was only a matter of time before the site fell into their hands.

The problem however was the finances. The Council could not justify taking on the liabilities of the cemetery company, even for nothing, if the shareholders did not contribute to the costs of reclaiming it from its present poor state. As they said, they had a responsibility to the rate-payers, and they felt the first port of call for money to refurbish the cemetery should be on the shareholders.

This was known as a Return of Capital and it proved a stumbling block, and it had been, whenever the idea arose of the Council taking over the site. As most of the shareholders were dead or now lived away from Hull, the Company could not see how the Return of Capital could be accomplished. And so, the idea of the Council taking over the cemetery fell at the same fence yet again.

The Limited Company gambit

The Company though were determined that this time they would seek a solution. It may not be the Council who took over the cemetery, but the directors were sure that the responsibility for it was no longer going to be theirs. They, therefore, turned towards the liquidation route. But to do this the Company needed to change its structure.

In 1845 the Cemetery Company was set up as a joint stock company and in 1854 it became an incorporated company by Act of Parliament. Neither of these structures allowed the Company to dissolve itself. As such, a change to the Company’s structure had to be made.

To achieve this end, the directors organised an extraordinary general meeting of the shareholders. The scale of attendance at this meeting showed how far the cemetery’s fortunes had fallen. In the Cemetery Company’s early days the AGMs used to be accommodated at the Vittoria Hotel on Queen Street and were usually attended by a couple of hundred people.

First steps to the edge

This meeting on the 19th August 1970, at the offices of A.J.Downs, Solicitors at 77A, Beverley Road, was significantly different in scale

A.J.Downs had been a previous chairman of the Company, and although he was now dead, his company still had a residual interest in the Company’s fortunes. The other factor at play here was that the Cemetery Company would not have to pay for the room for the meeting. Yes, the Company were in such straits that such small points as this were vital.

The meeting was attended by 10 shareholders representing only 153 shares. Seemingly minimal, this was probably the majority of the shares in circulation at this time. Many of the Company’s shares had been surrendered by their owners over the years to the Company, in exchange for grave spaces. Over time the number of shareholders had decreased bit by bit and the result was plainly evident at this meeting.

Decision time

The decision reached at this meeting was that the directors of the Company should pursue the aim of becoming a limited company. This goal was achieved by early 1972, and the Company directors now proceeded to take steps to dissolve the Company.

At a further Extraordinary General Meeting of the shareholders on the 22nd May 1972, a resolution was put to the meeting by the chair. This stated baldly, ‘that the Hull General Company be desolved.’ (sic)  

At the last ever board meeting of the Company, held on the 6th June 1972, the chair told his fellow directors that the liquidation would commence when the liquidator was presented with the petition to liquidate the Company. He said he believed that would be in July and be completed by the October of that year.

The chair was a little optimistic about the timing. The final disclamation of the liquidation process was completed in October 1973.

Now we come to the involvement of Hull City Council in the future of the Hull General Cemetery site.  Ultimately this involvement led to the October meeting in 1977.

The Council steps in

On the 19th June 1974, Hull City Council completed the purchase of the cemetery for the princely sum of £5. As we’ve seen already, it’s extremely doubtful whether the Council wanted it. However if they didn’t buy it, who else would? 

Surprisingly, one interested group made a bid for it at the last ever board meeting of the Company back in 1972. That, however, may be another story for later.

Although the Council had bought the site, as the Hull Daily Mail said, the Council faced an estimated bill of around £60,000 to bring the cemetery into a fit state. That ‘fit state’ for the cemetery was based upon making the site into a ‘leisure resource’. The Town Clerk, A. B. Wood, said the cemetery was ‘a public disgrace’, a statement which obviously heralded some fundamental changes. Those changes would soon be evident.

However, some hurdles had to be overcome first. The Council had to apply to the Consistory Court, an ecclesiastical body, for what was called a ‘Faculty’. This would allow the Council to develop land that has had burials on it, without recourse to planning permission.

There’s going to be some changes

On 28th October 1975 the people of Hull were told by the Hull Daily Mail what the Council were planning.

Hull Daily Mail 28.10.1975

Under the headline, ‘Bid to clear Hull Cemetery’, the intimation that the term ‘clear’ involved large scale demolition of headstones was revealed by the newspaper item above.

The Friends’ site

Two days later, the Town Clerk wrote to the Society of Friends regarding these plans. What the City Council appeared to have forgotten was that the Friends had a 999 year lease on their part of the Cemetery. Any plans relating to ‘clearance’ with this part of the Cemetery needed careful handling.

Letter to SOF from Town Clerk

Later, during this process, the Council recognised that the Friends burial area was outside their remit. With the promise from the Friends that they would maintain their burial site, the Council shut its eyes and moved on. It had another 12 acres to ‘develop’.

Repeating the past

As the newspaper item above stated, the Council was to publish official notices of their plans for the site. This would enable people to raise objections to these plans.

To some extent this was a tried and trusted method that the Council had used before, during its programme of the levelling of the ground in all the municipal cemeteries. This programme began in the 1950’s and continued until at least 1974. This programme also included the development of other burial grounds outside their original control, that had fallen on hard times. These were Division Road cemetery, the Drypool and Southcoates burial ground, St Peter’s churchyard, Drypool and St Mary’s burial ground in Trippet Street.

Customarily from ancient times, graves were often ‘banked’ and ‘sodded’ and, of course, a large number of them had kerb sets erected on the grave plot. Thus a cemetery of the period often looked like a long series of hummocks interspersed with kerb sets.

The problem of grass

Maintenance was obviously a problem on a site like this. Grass cutting machines were nigh on impossible to manoeuvre over such ground. From the late 1950’s, the Council instituted the ‘lawn’ area development in both the Northern and Eastern Cemeteries. These were the only cemeteries still undertaking large scale amounts of burials at that time. This ‘lawn development’ was to be the pattern for new burials in those cemeteries and still continues in this way today. These areas could and are maintained by grass cutting machines.

This left the problem of what to do with the vast majority of the areas of all the municipal cemeteries that could not be ‘lawned’. Maintenance of the ‘banked’ graves was undertaken by scythe. It was, as I know from experience, an arduous task. One often felt that the grass was growing quicker than you could ever scythe it. Just using a scythe, sharpening it, keeping it sharp after blunting it on stones and clods of earth, and all on a hot day was a trial. And of course by the time you had finished the plot you were on, the grass you had first cut was already in need of a trim. We members of the workforce all thought it was the equivalent of the painting of the Forth Bridge but probably much less fun.

Michael Kelly's relative

A cunning plan

The Council came up with a solution to part of the problem.  They decided to level the ‘banked’ graves so they could be machine cut. The ‘sodding’ of graves was to be abandoned. However, the kerb sets would still present a problem to a straight run for the grass cutting machine. To solve this problem the Council came up with a plan. It would write to all the owners of graves that had kerb sets, large monuments or headstones on them. These monuments would hinder the proposed efficient cutting of the grass.

The Council offered to the owners a replacement headstone plus it also offered to meet the cost of erection of said headstone, if the owners allowed the Council to remove the kerb sets. It also offered to remove the kerb set and still leave the headstone that had been attached to the kerb set in situ, burying the bottom part in the ground. Just think of that. All of those old headstones you see in Northern, Western, Hedon Road and Eastern were once upon a time just the head of kerb set.

The Council also, rather cunningly, said in the letter, that not responding to the letter meant that the grave owner was accepting the offer.

Address not found

Now, when the grave was originally bought, the address of the purchaser was taken for the record. Over the intervening period, some of those addresses may have disappeared. This may have been due to Council clearances of unfit habitations, or possibly the result of aerial bombardment in World War 2. No matter, the Council still wrote to that address because, and to be fair, it was the only address they had for the grave owners.

However, it was also done in the almost certain knowledge that they would not receive as many replies and so could go ahead and remove the kerb sets.

Thus we have the cemeteries that we now know. And, as this system had worked so well for the Council in their own cemeteries, they now proposed to use it in Hull General Cemetery.

However, in this case they did not write to every relative. They simply posted a notice up in the cemetery for three months.

Objection overruled

Surprisingly, they did receive a number of objections. At the Consistory Court hearing in the second week of October 1976, there were 33 objectors, most of whom were relatives of people who were buried in the Cemetery.

A hand written copy of a reply from the Leisure Services Department to one objector was made by Chris Ketchell. I include it here. It shows that decisions about the cemetery had been made prior to the Court’s decisions and indeed those decisions were to be drastic.

That the Council thought that posting a notice in the Cemetery for three months was sufficient notice is also open to question. Many of the people whose relatives were buried in there were old, possibly infirm and probably couldn’t visit their relatives’ graves, especially as the Cemetery was in such a state.

Let’s not forget that the Cemetery Company had made an obligation to the families of those who were buried in there, when the grave was bought, that they would maintain the site.

No, I think that pinning a notice up in the Cemetery at that point was not the best method to inform people of the changes afoot.

Copy of letter of reply

The Court result

Unsurprisingly, with the Cemetery without ownership, the Company dissolved, the media speaking of it in terms of an ‘eyesore’ and ‘dumping ground’, and the general public seemingly uninterested, the Consistory Court approved the Council’s faculty bid. A flavour of the mood of the Court can be grasped by the comments of the Company’s liquidator and administrator at the time, Mr Galleway.

 

Liquidator's comment in Court

With such a ringing endorsement there is no wonder the Court took the decision it did.

However, the Court was also moved by the objectors, not least the Hull Civic Society, who were vociferous in their opposition to the plans outlined by the Council for the site. Indeed they had put forward other options taking into account both the historic aspects of the site and eminent naturalists’ views, such as Dr Eva Crackles. As such the Court’s  adjudicator, the Rev. Elphinstone, said,

Elphinstone 1976 comment

With the end of the adjudication Hull City Council were free to complete their task of developing the site. That plan was outlined by Tony Hawksley, Assistant Director of the Leisure Services Department, in the same article.

1976 Hawksley

‘I love it when a plan comes together’, The A-Team

The problem was that the plan, especially in relation to the removal of the headstones, was so imprecise. Using terms like, ‘the removal of the majority of the monuments’, gave little to no indication of what that actually meant. What was a ‘majority of the monuments’? It was questionable whether anyone actually knew how many monuments were in there in the first place. To speak about a ‘majority’ of an unquantified number was ridiculous. Perhaps it heralded a more sweeping change for the cemetery.

It wasn’t until December 1976 that a detailed plan of what was to be left and what was to be removed was drawn up. The results were shocking.

In essence, out of about 5,000 headstones in the cemetery, the plans showed that about 40 to 50 would be left. Two areas were to have headstones left in situ. One of these was the area known as Prim Corner. It held the last resting place of William Clowes, the joint founder of Primitive Methodism. Clustered around his tomb were a number of headstones of his adherents and supporters.

 

Prim corner plan

The second area that was to have stones left in situ was the area east of the ruined chapel as can be seen at the top of the plan above. This no doubt was to fit in with a nebulous plan for the chapel that the Council were deliberating on. That too is part of another story for another time.

It seemed like a good idea at the time

Finally, the Cholera monument, the large obelisk denoting the last resting place of some of the victims of the Cholera epidemic in 1849, was to be moved southwards on to a totally different area. The large C in bold on the plan below was the chosen site for this monument in the future. Of all the decisions made at this time one has to question the reasoning lying behind that particular idea.

cholera monument plan

And yet, none of this happened. What changed the minds of the planners?

The response

The Hull Civic Society, under the active leadership of its secretary, Donald Campbell and its chair, John Netherwood, wanted the Council to heed the words of the Consistory Court adjudicator.  As such they began to muster support. Letters were sent to other interested bodies ranging from the East Yorkshire Local History Society to the Victorian Society.

This rallying of support was not only confined to historical groups. Naturalist groups were also approached. The Hull Civic Society believed that the historic aspects of the cemetery were enhanced by the ones that nature provided. It was determined to protect the nature as much as the headstones. Dr Eva Crackles was approached. In her reply, having been at the meeting, she alluded to the Adjudicator’s comments,

Crackles 1976

 

Would the Council accept advice? As they had already outlined the plans for the site in the local press before the Consistory Court made its judgement that was unlikely. Still, hope springs eternal, as they say..

It is not a park. It is a garden of rest.

Correspondence between the interested parties continued for the rest of the year. The Council stating that plans had been costed and formulated. The objectors stating that these could be changed.

The Council offered the objectors the option, which they undertook, of meeting with the officers of the Council. These meetings appeared to be fruitful to some extent.  The outline plan of removing the vast majority of headstones, and the large scale cutting back of the woodland, was said however to be non-negotiable.

The Town Clerk, in a letter to Donald Campbell, accepted that the Hull Daily Mail’s use of the term ‘park’ was not accurate. He said the idea proposed by the Council was to be more a ‘garden of rest’. The objectors accepted this was an improvement. The Town Clerk also went on to say that the site was still zoned as a cemetery and would be treated as such. This, too, was promising.

The representatives of the people didn’t want to meet the people

Finally, in early March 1977, the Town Clerk replied to yet another letter from the objectors, and invoking the Chair of the Leisure Services Committee’s words, it appeared the door was now closed to further suggestions.

8 3 77 town clerk response

So, in essence, the plans were set in stone. It was pointless to place the objectors’ views before the Committee. And anyway, the Chair and the Committee didn’t want to meet them. Now that wasn’t promising.

Enter an historian

Providentially, a two page hand written letter arrived with Donald Campbell on the 13th of the same month. It came from John Rumsby, the keeper of archaeology for the city, and someone who worked for the afore-mentioned Leisure Services Department. The letter, reproduced below, outlined the beauty and uniqueness of the monuments in the cemetery.

Perhaps not all the officers were in agreement about the proposed official ‘vandalism’?

1977 Rumsby a

1977 Rumsby b

This letter, suitably anonymised, was sent by John Netherwood to the Council as evidence from an ‘historian’ as to the value of the headstones. Did this letter have some effect?

Probably not on the Council for its doubtful if they knew it had been sent. However, I believe it gave the objectors some heart and John Rumsby’s part in this story does not end with this intervention.

The Council were relying on their grant application being successful. The grant from the Department of the Environment would go a very long way to offset some of the costs in developing the site. The figure of £40,000 to £60,000 had been used in press releases. Concerns were now being raised as to what the Council would be able to do if that money was not forthcoming. The Council did not want the cost to fall upon the ratepayers.

The fight back begins in earnest

It was at this point that two more factors came into play. Both of them were connected.

The first was that a lecturer at the Hull School of Architecture, Par Gustaffson, became interested in the plans for the Cemetery. Par was an architect from Sweden and he had come to Britain to work on the Byker Wall project in the north east.

Gaining a teaching post at the Hull School it is said that his lectures were legendary.  They were so good the public often gate-crashed them. One student recalled that, ‘often one would find several old ladies in their best hats sitting on the front row’.

In regard to the Hull General Cemetery, Par, interviewed for an article in the Hull Daily Mail, in February of 1977, said that,

HDM article Par Gustafsson 1

 

Par went on say, and in retrospect, his warnings ring as true today.

HDM article Par Gustafsson 2

He said he had already contacted the Leisure Services Department with his ideas.

He also told the Hull Daily Mail that a final year student, John Waugh, had taken on the site as his final year project and had designed and incorporated many features that would enhance the site.

One particular feature was to have catered for the visually impaired. As John outlined this feature,

HDM article Par Gustafsson 3

Unfortunately I have never seen a copy of John’s plans, nor was this aspect ever implemented. Could it have been implemented? Could it be implemented now?

But, as the article went on to say, the Council already had its plans drawn up as we saw earlier,

HDM article Par Gustafsson 4

As The Hull Daily Mail went on to say, all of this depended upon the gaining of the grant from the DOE.

It also quite clearly stated that the plans of the Council were irreversible once put in motion and that the ultimate cost may well be paid in the future,

HDM article Par Gustafsson 5

The second factor

Par Gustafsson, having worked at restoring Victorian cemeteries in his native Sweden, contacted the Hull Civic Society and other like minded people and organisations knowing that they were already involved. He also realised that the public needed to be mobilised before it was too late.

The first step to mobilising the public was to organise a public meeting and to call upon experts in their fields to assess the cemetery. When it came to experts, luckily he knew one or two. In fact the best in the business.

Another site visit but this time by experts

On the 22nd June a site visit was undertaken. Jenny Cox, a landscape architect with an especial interest in Victorian cemeteries and Dr James Stevens Curl, later Professor, a noted biographer of Victorian Cemeteries and Victorian architecture were the visitors. Accompanied by students from the Hull School of Architecture they toured the site. They later spoke at the public meeting, held that evening at Hymers College.

In his book, The Victorian Celebration of Death, published in 2000, Professor Curl recounts his and the Hull General Cemetery’s experience at this time.

‘Spring Bank Cemetery (by then extensively vandalised) was acquired by Hull City Council after the Cemetery Company went into liquidation in 1974, and it was proposed to clear the cemetery in the teeth of objections from the Friends of Spring Bank (who put forward less drastic alternative proposals), supported by the Victorian Society. The local authority went ahead regardless; most of the memorials were destroyed, and for good measure the boundary walls and cemetery offices were also demolished in an act of official vandalism of a particularly dreadful kind.’

Jenny Cox, the originator of the Highgate Cemetery plan, helped design and put forward the plan that Professor Curl makes mention of in the quote above.

This plan was rebuffed by the Council. They had already made their plans and saw no reason to change now.

 

Prof Curl and Dr Cox in HGC June 1977

The public meeting, arranged for that very day, attracted a large number of people. It took place at the Hymers College.

As can be seen in the copy of the flyer for the meeting, both visitors were to speak as was Tony Hawksley for the Council.

, flyer for public meeting 22 6 1977

It was from this meeting that the Spring Bank Cemetery Action Group sprang. The group were unimpressed with the Council’s plans and mobilised in an attempt to thwart the plans the Council had put in place. Further meetings were planned and a determined campaign to enlist support from various sources, including celebrities, was put in motion.

However that is another story for another day.

The argument can be put forward that by this time it was far too late to materially affect the Council, and yet…

The power of the press?

On the 5th of July the Hull Daily Mail reported on the grouping later to be known as the Friends,

1977 HDM friends lobbying

‘The City Council representatives present were given a clear enough mandate on what sort of finished result should be achieved’. The Hull Daily Mail were stating, in a more pleasant way, that the plans as put forward by the Council were not what the people wanted. In essence, they were told to go back and think again.

The idea of cost had been introduced by Campbell some time earlier in the discussions. He had pointed out that removing the headstones was a cost that the Council need not take on. He also pointed out that once the headstones were removed, and the area grassed, the maintenance costs would be increased. In essence, removing the headstones would increase the ongoing costs for the site. The logic was irrefutable. Not a good night for the Council.

The lobbying mentioned was also beginning to have an effect on the wider audience, if not yet on the Leisure Services Committee.

The local press were now questioning the validity of the plans, at least in terms of cost. This ‘cost’ could well fall upon the ratepayers and questions were being asked if it really was necessary. The Hull Daily Mail columnist, John Humber, was also sceptical and put forward in his column the idea of a ‘balanced’ approach to the development of the Cemetery site.

A change of heart or a change of mind?

A letter from the Director of the Leisure Services Department on the 21st July indicated a potential re-think on the part of the Council. Not a wholesale one, but a slight chink in the plans as shown above.

The letter began, quite plaintively, by saying that the Council hadn’t really wanted to take on the task of restoring the site, which was quite true. Now that it had taken on this role, it was a little put out that its plans were being objected to. There was an element of ‘hurt and misunderstood’ about the first paragraph.

Letter from Council 1

So there!

It then went on to say that the plans were still open to discussion, something that the detailed plans, dated December 1976, and shown above, showed to be untrue. However, the change in tone in the local media had ruffled some feathers and this letter was the result.

letter retention of headstones

It may be noted that the member of the Museum Staff mentioned was the same John Rumsby who had written to Donald Campbell earlier, and who, bravely, was also one of the attendees of the public meeting and spoke there.

Later still during this sorry saga, he was one of the signatories of the later petition against the ‘development’ of the site. A brave man indeed or perhaps just a principled one.

‘Points of detail’

So, the letter suggested that  the ‘officers’ of the Leisure Services Department would be ‘receptive to suggestions on points of detail.’ Tony Hawksley, who wrote this letter, must have known that in putting this forward he was opening up the debate again. He may have felt that he was widening the debate a crack but the opposition would never be satisfied with that. But, to be frank, what could he do?

The issue may well have been done, dusted and dealt with in the Council chamber by December 1976, but that didn’t mean it was over in the wider world, as proven by the recent turmoil. Tony, being an experienced negotiator, also probably thought that due to the reception at the public meeting of the Council’s plans, a damage limitation exercise was needed. An olive branch here and there never hurt anyone, did it? Surely things couldn’t get any worse?

Still open to change?

About a month later, a letter from Mr Noel Taylor, the city’s chief planning officer, hit Chris Ketchell’s door mat. In it, Mr Taylor replied to a query from Chris regarding the possibility of the site becoming a conservation area. Chris had wondered if designating the site as a Conservation Area, in the legal sense, it then could provide some finance to develop the site more sensitively. Mr Taylor poured cold water on that idea. However, once again, the implication that the door was still open for modifications to the plans was put forward.

Taylor response to conservation area idea from CJK

The ‘retention of some headstones of all types’ was a sea change from the paltry amount stipulated on the plan of December 1976.

The Chief Planning Officer was now making the same argument that the objectors had been making, with regard to ‘class divisions of Victorian society’ being highlighted by ‘retention’ of some of the headstones. This must have been music to the ears of the objectors. It mirrored Campbell and Rumsby’s points that they had put forward in the past. A ‘sea change’ indeed.

It was now early August. The temperature of the debate was about to rise.

Dead Poets Society

The very next day, this parochial debate, about what to do with a derelict cemetery, reached national proportions.

Philip Larkin had long been the friend and neighbour of Donald Campbell. Campbell had written to him as early as July 1974, on the issue of the development of the site. Larkin replied saying that he remembered visiting the site in 1955, when he first came to Hull and he thought it, ‘was a uniquely beautiful spot in which I spent many happy hours.’  He went on to say that,

‘I don’t know precisely what kind of support you think I could give (I am not very good at arguing with people, as everyone in this university will know) but I do think that the burial ground as we knew it was a remarkable relic of nineteenth century Hull and if it could be restored to its former beauty that would be the best course to adopt. If not, then let the current abandonment of it to hooligans cease.’

Poet laureate

Some 11 months later, Campbell wrote to Larkin again. Campbell asked if he would attempt to enlist the Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman, to support the campaign. Larkin wrote to Betjeman and Sir John said he would support the campaign.

On the 17th August the Hull Daily Mail, as well as a number of national newspapers, printed the story. The Hull Daily Mail used the following headline,

 

1977 Betjeman Poet tries to save the cemetery

The article, which must have caused some anguish in the Council chamber, went on to state,

 

1977 Betjeman2

Well, no one had said before that the city of Hull was ‘lucky’ to have the Hull General Cemetery. Especially as it was, in all its splendid dishevelment. Surely the prevailing idea put forward was that it was an ‘eyesore’ and an embarrassment. The Council would address this problem in the future. It was this argument that would hopefully get the money from the government. The eye of the beholder is surely multi-faceted.

This intervention, on the part of two cultural icons, and on a national scale, was not in the script that the Council prepared. It really didn’t need this, not at this time.

Remember the DoE was still to rule on allocating the necessary grant money that was needed to put the Council’s plans in place. Bad publicity for the project was never to be on the agenda. Ignoring the wishes of a few like-minded ‘weirdos’ was fine and their objections could be brushed off. Not so the views of two of the most famous poets in Britain at the time. Time for a little back-tracking.

Another olive branch

The Council decided to offer a meeting. Not with the Leisure Services Committee. That could be viewed as conceding a point or two. No, a meeting was offered, but with the Director of the Leisure Services Department. A step in the right direction.

This took place on the 23rd August 1977. Donald Campbell and John Netherwood from the Hull Civic Society were invited to meet Tony Hawksley to try to resolve the differences that had arisen. Tony was only the Assistant Director but, for all intents and purposes, ran the Department.

Donald sent a letter to the members of the other interested parties on the 30th, describing how he saw how the meeting had gone.

campbell 30 8 77 response to meeting

So, how far apart were the two sides at this time?

We have seen a weakening of the position of the Council over this period but, as the letter above shows, the plan was still to have a wholesale destruction of the headstones.

Never the twain shall meet

Donald Campbell wrote to Tony Hawksley on the same day, outlining where the differences lay. Its worth looking at this letter in detail. Betjeman and Larkin were not the only ones who could soar poetically, but it also lays out quite clearly what could be lost forever if the Council failed to listen.

 

campbell letter to hawksley 30 8 77 a

The indication here was that the Council were now being guided on headstone retention by John Rumsby which was a positive point. At least the headstones were being evaluated on their historical importance and artistic value rather than, as evidenced by the previous plan, how nice they looked in a group at certain points on the plan.

Cemeteries are depressing

Campbell then attempted, as I’m sure he did in the meeting, to point out the inconsistency and subjectiveness of the Council’s previous plans for the site.

campbell letter to hawksley 30 8 77 b

One can’t help but applaud Campbell’s poetic use of language here.

And of course he is right. Thomas Gray’s, ‘Elegy in a Churchyard’, written in the 18th century, surely could have refuted this narrow parochial view of a cemetery as being depressing. Having met Tony Hawksley a few times in my working life, and he was a likeable chap, I can only suggest that he had reached a point in this discussion of having no other argument left and had to fall back on the old tired formula of cemetery equals grief and depression, therefore not enjoyable.

This line of argument I suppose can be excused to some extent. After all a cemetery can be a place where grief can be pervasive.

A lack of vision

However, what cannot be excused, is that the Council failed to grasp the significance of what they had to hand in the cemetery. It is sad that our local Council, in the face of expert advice from within and without, could not raise its gaze to look beyond its narrow plan and seek inspiration from the sensitive development of Highgate and Kensal Green. This really was a ‘once in a lifetime’ chance to preserve something that could not be replaced.

The problem, at least to my eyes, was how ‘progress’ was seen during that period. ‘Progress’ was usually defined as destroying something old, only to replace it with something new. So to destroy much of the cemetery’s habitat and headstones had to happen, if ‘progress’ was to occur. And ‘progress’ was defined by lawned areas. A poverty stricken definition of progress in my eyes. It’s not an approach that has necessarily gone away. However, it is a lot less evident these days and when it does occur it gets the response it deserves.

Another poet?

Campbell went on to say, and in my eyes, probably reached even more poetic heights…

campbell letter to hawksley 30 8 77 c

The words paint the picture so clearly. The masterpiece was in danger of being lost; the magic at risk of being thrown away into the skip. If only the people with the power could be convinced of this argument, if only they could see what he could see.

He ended the letter with this plea:

campbell d

Deaf ears

In response to this impassioned plea he received a brief letter. This said that his request for the survey results the Council had undertaken of the local residents was enclosed. This survey was supposed to show that the ‘public’ wanted the Council to go ahead and deliver on their plan.

This survey has not been seen by me so I cannot judge it. I do know from reports in the press that only 51 people responded to it. Of them, only 25% wanted the site fully cleared in accordance with the Council’s plan. So 13 people in the area, and I’m giving the Council the edge here in numbers, supported the plan. Hardly representative. Remember the historical clearing of the municipal cemeteries of their kerb sets and the notice hanging in Hull General Cemetery? Numbers only matter at election time. As long as you have been seen to do the ‘right thing’ and ‘follow the procedures’ there cannot be any backlash. The public were consulted and their views were taken into consideration; all 13 of them.

Hull City Council, at the time, had a way of working. Although appearing to take the public’s views into account, it was often skewed to get the result it wanted. And I’m quite sure that it did not differ from any other large municipal authority of the time.

A better response but little movement

A fuller response to Campbell’s letter arrived on the 16th September. In it Hawksley defended his idea that cemeteries were depressing places but went on to say,

hawksley 16 9 77a

Its interesting to see that the original plans that the Council had for the site did not include giving such plants mentioned above free rein and ‘dominance’. Those three species, the ‘usual suspects’ of sycamores, brambles and ivy are still there. Thriving. Sadly many of the other species and, of course, many of the monuments are not. That didn’t work out quite as planned did it?

The cheque’s in the post

The Hull Daily Mail of the 30th September reported the news. ‘Tidy Up Grant for Cemetery’ was the headline and a few days later, on the 13th October, it reported that the final figure granted was £64,000.

1977 DOE grant

But hang on, didn’t I see something in an earlier edition of the newspaper that work had already started?

That’s true. As soon as news that the grant had been secured on the 30th September work began on site. Even the normally servile Hull Daily Mail appeared slightly suspicious using quotation marks around part of the headline. The Council were certainly quick off the mark. Had they reached the point were they just wanted to get the whole thing over and done with now that they had the money? Let’s face it, it had been one headache after another.

1977 hdm 'tree doctors' 10 10 77

The librarian strikes back

The following day Philip Larkin sent his letter of support for the Cemetery’s survival.  He was arguing for a less draconian format than the Council had planned.

Larkin said in his letter,

‘The important thing is, as I see it, that whatever time and money the Council proposes to spend on the cemetery now should be devoted to preserving its character; first, by tidying it up, secondly by restoring and re-positioning all memorials that are not smashed beyond redemption, and thirdly by providing it with an unclimbable wall or fence that will enable it to be locked at night. To remove the graves, the trees or even the undergrowth in an attempt to impose on it a municipal respectability would be a disaster. The place is a natural cathedral, an inimitable blended growth of nature and humanity of over a century, something that no other town could create whatever its resources.’

Unfortunately, the letter landed upon the stolid desk of ‘municipal respectability’; Councillor Harry Woodford, the chair of the Leisure Services Department. Not a poet by nature, and I would suggest unlikely by inclination, to him such entreaties fell on stony ground.

Woodford’s reply was brusque to the point of being insulting.

‘Dear Dr Larkin,

Thank you very much for your letter of the 11th October, 1977 on the subject of the Spring Bank Cemetery. I am pleased that you have taken the time and trouble to write to me and am very grateful for your interest. I will of course record and note your comments along with all the other letters and comments I have received on this subject.’

If he had written at the end, ‘and don’t call us, we’ll call you’, it couldn’t have been any more blunt in its dismissal.

The objectors had probably managed to get as far as they could go. They had done well in the limited time and with the limited weapons they had. If the site was to be saved from wholescale destruction it all depended upon the site visit of the Leisure Services Committee – under the guidance of its chair, Harry Woodford.

In the immortal words of a later politician, ‘the world has had enough of experts’ and that’s exactly what the councillors of the committee probably thought. No outside experts were needed here. What could possibly go wrong?

The Site Visit

And so we arrive at the day the members of the Leisure Services Committee visited the site. The image at the top of this posting is taken from the Hull Daily Mail of the 27th October. I can name one or two people in the photograph. I’m sure others could probably name more.

The man declaiming in the centre is the Assistant Director of the Leisure Services Department, Mr Tony Hawksley. A thoroughly nice man, at least in my dealings with him as a union rep. He was blessed with a good sense of humour, which always goes a long way with me. Tony had also risen through the ranks from apprentice gardener up to the dizzy heights of No.2 in the department. He fully understood that he implemented the decisions of the Council; he did not make them.

To the extreme left of the scene is Dave Wilkinson. He was the manager of the Leisure Services western half of the city, into which Hull General Cemetery was about to fall. His view of the site, as he told me at the time, was simple. He would, ‘level the site and grass it all’. I’ve modified this sentence for the faint hearted. Dave, too, had risen through ranks. He knew the score and what was expected of him.

As you can imagine, a plain speaking man. He once vaguely complimented me. In some tense negotiation I once said to him that the workforce weren’t happy with something or other, and changes needed to be made, otherwise there may be some disruption. He leant back in his chair, fixed me with his gimlet stare and said, ‘Pete, your members are behind you like Scotch mist. They’ll disappear once the sun comes out. You’re a bright lad, don’t waste your time bluffing me. Now let’s get on.’

He was right of course, about the Scotch mist part. I learnt that later, in another dispute but that’s another story. He may have been right about the ‘bright lad’ bit too, but it’s too early to tell yet. I’m only into my seventieth decade, but I’ll keep you posted. O.K.?

The Chairman

To the right of Tony Hawksley is a short and stout man. This is Councillor Harry Woodford. The archetype of the gruff,  self-made man who won’t tolerate any nonsense. He could have been created as a character in any of J.B Priestley’s work. Whenever I saw him the phrase, ‘Where there’s muck there’s brass’ sprang into my mind. He would probably have fitted in to the Victorian period better than the modern day, but an effective politician nonetheless.

Peeking out from behind Hawksley, is, if my memory recalls, Councillor Nellie Stephenson. I may be wrong here as I had little to do with this lady. I only met her once and that was well over 40 years ago.

Who’s the person in the nice suit and tie? He’s standing just behind Woodford and staring intently, if not murderously, at Hawksley? Why it’s a young man you may have heard of before. His name was Chris Ketchell.

What petition?

Prior to this photograph being taken Woodford was presented with a petition. The petition’s aim was simple. It wanted to restore the site as sensitively as possible with no removal of the headstones. It had been started in the August and now, two months later, had garnered over 5,000 signatures. A far cry from the survey undertaken by the Council.

So the site visit went ahead. The councillors ‘investigated’ the issue.

Well, as much as they felt they had to. The result of this investigative trip was a foregone conclusion, as evidenced by the press release the next day.

1977 hdm plan to go ahead

The plan to remove the majority of the headstones was to go ahead. However the question what the term ‘majority’ meant had come a long way. Without the campaign that was waged, it would have been more destruction. Of that there is no doubt.

Today, there are now just over 1,000 of the original 5,000 headstones and monuments left on the site. 80% lost. A sad indictment on a council department more used to handling bowling greens and swimming pools than history. On the plus side we still have 20%, and for that we must thank Donald Campbell, John Netherwood, Par Gustafsson, Chris Ketchell, John Rumsby and many others.

Look on my Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair!

We are left now with the consequences of that short sighted action by the Council almost half a century ago. Long gone are the ‘lawned areas’. Nor are the ‘sycamores, brambles and ivy’ constrained. Indeed activities constraining such plants are frowned upon in some quarters. Fashions change, and not just in clothing.

So, perhaps it’s time to ask a relevant question. Where now, in Hull General Cemetery, are any elements of the original plan as approved by the Leisure Services Committee that bleak October day back in 1977?

Not much. Some of the planting survives along the northern and southern edges of the site. The benches that were sited were destroyed by fire and vandalism. No litter bins ever appeared. The paths, which I vividly remembering maintaining with dumper loads of gravel, are now quagmires at this time of year. The lawned areas, once favoured spots for families to picnic and play, are now covered with brambles, ivy or cow parsley. The proliferation of sycamore and ash saplings is probably at the level it was prior to the clearance in the seventies. I would guess so is the ivy. I do not remember in the past, and the site has been in my personal past for a very long time, the ivy being so strongly wedded to some trees that it brought them down, but it does now.

Ivy on tree

ivy on tree 2

Surprisingly, the most constant factors that the original plan featured, are the mature trees and the headstones. Ironically, it was some of those things that the original plan wanted to remove. I suppose it just goes to show that there’s still life in the Hull General Cemetery. If you know what I mean.

Protect and survive

It’s at times like this that the desire to have a time machine grows. I would love to whisk the Leisure Services Committee from their site meeting back in 1977 to today and show them the site now. I think I would enjoy it, but I don’t think they would. Knowing them, they would probably be thinking, ‘we could have used that £60k on something else if this is what we ended up with.’

But I don’t have a time machine, so it’s only us today who can harbour regrets about what happened all those years ago. The clock can’t be turned back; we cannot rescue what we’ve lost. What we can do though is conserve and protect what we have left. Surely we owe that to the people who took on the Council back in the seventies.

As Donald Campbell said in his letter, ‘We owe it to future generations not to destroy the magic’. My children enjoyed the ‘magic’ of the site as they grew up, and my grandchildren are doing that too. And sometimes, when I’m in there, I can still feel a little bit of that ‘magic’ rub off on this tired old man.

So yes I think it’s something worth fighting to preserve. What do you think?

I wrote an article six years ago about the events leading up to the founding of Hull General Cemetery. In it I quoted words from Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi. ‘You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone’. We lost something back in 1977. What we have left is neither the ‘dream plan’ that the Council of that time envisaged, nor is it what was destroyed. Like many compromises it just feels a bit ‘second best’. What a shame.

Postscript

I was leaving this story with the sentence above. However, a chance find by the volunteers yesterday, February 27th, prompted me to add this part. The volunteers had found a part of a headstone. A small part with just enough letters remaining so that Bill Longbone could identify who it had belonged to. It was a fragment of what must have been a larger headstone. It wasn’t found in the Monumental Inscriptions books that the East Yorkshire Family History Society produced. It was a ‘lost’ stone for a ‘lost ‘ family.

Now this remnant and indeed quite a few other headstones have been found by the volunteers recently. None of them were recorded. Anywhere. Let me explain how that happened.

You may remember that the inscriptions on the headstones would be recorded. The Council told the Consistory Court that is what they would do. Indeed they advertised for recorders to come forward. Chris Ketchell was turned down when he applied..

Throughout the turbulent period discussed above, the main thrust of the Council’s argument with regard to the headstones was that this recording would happen. Nothing would be lost in terms of information even if the monuments themselves would be. A devil’s bargain. The historic value would be diminished but not lost forever.

We left the Leisure Services Committee in October 1977, having had their perfunctory site meeting, telling the press that they were to go ahead with their plans.

On the 12th November Donald Campbell received an anxious letter from John Rumsby. John had been given the task of co-ordinating the recording of the inscriptions of the headstones. Just a fortnight after the site meeting things weren’t going to plan.

Letter from John Rumsby asking for help with the recording of the inscriptions

Donald Campbell, replying on the 16th, summed up his, and probably many others, feelings for the whole sorry mess that was now the Hull General Cemetery project.

Donald Campbell's reply

At the first hurdle, the promise the Council had made in the Court and at public and personal meetings was dead. Adhering to a timetable that they themselves had imposed upon the DOE grant, yet failing to actual quantify the work to be done the Council were reneging on their part of this devil’s bargain. If they had planned it properly as they were advised to do so, to tread sensitively; ah, but that would have meant waiting. The Council were not going to do that.

As they had been told by many others, the work to ‘clear’ the cemetery was huge, if done properly. The thought that should have gone into this project was lacking from the start. And as such there was a period of about six months were vandalism took place. Yet under the banner of Hull City Council.

Men with sledge hammers in their hands hit the stones. Crowbars levered them over to break upon hitting the ground. Tractors, with their blades, levered them up and dumped them into waiting lorries. The lorries then ferried these historic pieces of art to parts of the city that needed hard core for other ‘developments’. I was there; that’s what happened. And if those stones had been recorded or not wasn’t the responsibility of those workmen. That blame lay much further up the chain of command.

So that’s why some parts of headstones turn up and they are not listed anywhere. Because the Council didn’t keep to their part of the bargain.  In not doing so, they let part of this city’s heritage slip through their fingers. Irreplaceable and gone forever. As I said earlier, what a shame.

Thanks

I hope you enjoyed this short history of a sad mistake. I’m indebted to Liz Shepherd and the Carnegie Trust for access to some of these documents. The collection of material is available to research at the Trust’s site in the Carnegie building on Anlaby Road.

I must say a word of thanks to Chris Ketchell. His earnest clipping of many of these newspaper articles was a work of selflessness and dedication. A thoroughly nice man. He is sadly missed.

The Victorian Celebration of Death by James Stevens Curl, (2000),  is available at all good book shops, probably in a newer revised edition than the one I have. I do recommend it.

Mortal Remains; The History and Present State of the Victorian and Edwardian Cemetery by Chris Brooks, (1989) is long out of print but it also includes a quite refreshing and bracing tirade on the stupidity of Hull City Council in its ‘development’ of Hull General Cemetery.

With the rise of genealogical and heritage ‘tourism’ one can’t help but feel that the Hull City Council of that period was terribly short sighted with regard to many things, not just Hull General Cemetery. That’s why we need to care for what we have left. Let’s try to be far-sighted. It’s much better in the long run.

 

An Anniversary

7th March 1901

This month’s anniversary is perhaps the first indication that the Cemetery’s position and land was becoming more of an asset than their role as a cemetery. The image is taken from minutes of the 55th Annual General Meeting. This was held at the Grosvenor Hotel, one Thursday evening on the 7th of March, 1901. It records that one of the directors of the Company raised an issue. James Oldham was one of the original shareholders of the Cemetery. At this meeting he floated, for the very first time, that perhaps the Company should consider thinking about selling their Princes Avenue frontage.

james oldham 7 march 1901

Interestingly, James Oldham, had come to this idea, as he said, by recognizing the urbanisation of the Avenues area. He said  how the area needed servicing with shops. By 1901, when this comment was made, the construction of the Dukeries area was well underway. The the eastern ends of Marlborough, Westbourne and Park Avenues were also under development.

The end result of this thought bore fruit some six years later.  Part of the frontage was sold for the construction of the row of three storey shops that still stands today. This transaction gave a welcome cash boost to the Company’s finances. Unfortunately that was rapidly squandered with an extra-ordinary dividend distributed to the shareholders. Just one more mistake in a sad catalogue of them made by the Company.

view along princes ave

Meeting with Yorkshire Wildlife Trust

Follow up meeting

On the 17th February Andrew Gibson of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust met with the more active volunteers of the FOHGC. These included Bill Longbone, Karen Towner, Russell Moore, George and Chris Wilson.

The meeting was called by Andrew to follow up on the items discussed at the recent Zoom meeting. It was felt by both sides that clarification was needed and that an actual site visit would provide that.

Here are the minutes of that site visit.

Minutes

Meeting in Hull General Cemetery with Andrew Gibson YWT 17 Feb 2021

 

Reason for meeting: Follow up meeting from ‘Zoom’ meeting, as suggested by AG

Those Present:     Karen Towner, WL  (Russell Moore, Geoge and Chris Wilson part time)

Meeting:

The group took an anti clockwise, circular walk around the cemetery to identify any conflicts of interest between FoHGC and YWT, and obtain guidance.

The area behind the Princes Ave shops to be allowed to rest, establish bramble/thicket area around fox den. Maintain clearance around immediate areas of monuments as features. Possibly plant 3 or 4 of the saplings from the Woodland Trust to conceal shop area, not too close to premises. AG noted the HCC proposal to fell the 2 ash trees and will pursue separately.

Cut back some of the dense laurel ‘drug den’ area to expose the south frontage and block off access from the western side.

Keep ground ivy in the majority of the central areas, with no cutting back.

Keep the area wild where the white poplar tree was pollarded by the council, let trunk decay naturally, trim laurel around base of poplar, as trunk is also probably decayed.

Possibly plant ivy on rear breeze block wall near old chapel to cover unsightly graffiti covered wall.

Leave Dixon & other ‘soldiers’ area at rear of cemetery ‘as is’ allowing access.

Cut the green dogwood back at rear adjacent to path.

Generally leave ivy on the trees unless it is new growth on ‘specimen’ trees.

Contact council to cut back 4 or 5 established ash saplings to rear of bungalows on Welbeck St, as they could become a problem to the building fabric.

Wildflower meadow

Maintain wildflower meadow in centre, add some butterfly loving plants, as this is one of the few sunny areas in the cemetery. Extend the cutting of the brambles at the NE side and stack cuttings behind to decay naturally.

Cut back brambles near Thompson, Sahlgreen and Kemp monuments to form feature (in autumn). Stack cuttings at rear for wilding.

Dahlgreen and Thompson

Possibly adopt the ‘old original path to the west side which is currently a walkway but could be kept as a ‘soft’ winding path.

Plant a few shrubs such as buddleia in eastern side of Butterfly area, and let nettles re-establish, as this area is still shady and mossy. Plant up butterfly loving plants with plug plants and seeds as proposed by Friends. Possibly plant ivy to grow up wall.

Workhouse area

Keep workhouse area as is, ensure the recently planted buckthorn, hawthorn and blackthorn are kept in check when they grow. Possibly plant holly/yew tree on hillock in workhouse area. Ensure that the brambles are not cut back too much, and place any cuttings to infill gaps as we are currently doing

Trim the raised bank on the pathway leading past workhouse section from Western Cemetery.

Clear area around specimen graves near the old horse chestnut tree, but create wild areas at rear to compensate.

Advise HCC of diseased horse chestnut near roadside near Quakers. Possible potential hazard of falling branches.

Clear area around Wilson’s/Rollits grave to form feature, but create wild area around.

Remove cuttings from around main gate area, maintain recent plantings. Keep watchful eye on recently planted Staghorn tree.

Create soft ‘grave interest’ sections along paths, but keep wild to rear.

Clear around Thos Stratten monument, request permission from HCC to remove tree that is damaging monument and has no ecological merit. Keep wild to rear.

Request permission to remove tree nr Kelly’s grave, cut back holly and soften area,

Plant established ‘defensive’ planting on SBW entrances to reduce number of access points.

Trim pyracanths ‘hard’ where over-growing pathways.

Remove rhododendrons near Gow grave.

Cut back brambles around Blundell monument and soften/wild area behind. Ensure ‘red’ dogwood and snowberry bushes are retained.

General Overview

Although Andrew stated that the only way to have a ‘true’ wildlife area is to keep humans out of the cemetery, he accepts that this is not an option. However, it is essential that there has to be a balance with the needs of historical and recreational groups.

AG used the analogy of a ‘swingometer’, whereby whenever the Friends are planning to carry out work in the cemetery we should question if we are doing it for wildlife or humans. If we find we are doing too much in either direction it can be redressed. The object is to ensure that we do things in a balanced manner.

It was agreed that we are now entering the nesting season, and the disturbing of nesting sites is not allowed. However, we can still work in the cemetery doing localized grave tending etc, with a constant concern for the wildlife implications

AG to chase chippings for paths, he also requested that we should ask HCC not to cut up logs when removing trees, leave as full trunk.

Subsequent to the meeting AG sent WL a link for plant sourcing.

Summary

It is accepted that there has to be a balance of wildlife requirements with the needs of historical and recreational groups.

We should always consider wildlife implications when carrying out any work, it is acknowledged that we can clear around graves to make ‘focus’ areas, but we should balance this by allowing the surrounding area to become a natural woodland.

Some areas can have further clearance, but it must be compensated elsewhere. Ground cover ivy and tree ivy is an important part of the woodland habitat, and should not be cleared, the majority of the monuments are now ivy free, and we can carry out maintenance of this work.

All pruning’s and cuttings should be put in large piles out of sight rather then leave them in smaller piles along the path.

WL agreed that he would prepare small ‘activity’ plan when working in specific areas, these maps would be correlated with the large ‘tree location/compartment’ map to provide overall plan.

WL 18 Feb 2021

13th January 1942

An anniversary

The 13th January 1942 was the 79th anniversary of an act of destruction that we could not conceive of happening today.

A Board meeting for the Company took place in the Cemetery Lodge on the 13th January 1942. Michael Kelly, superintendent and director, informed the other directors of  a decision he had taken. This decision was understandable at the time but for later historians of the HGC it was disastrous and tragic.

Below is a photograph from Bill Longbone’s family album of Michael Kelly, his wife and one of his daughters standing outside the rear of the renovated Hull General Cemetery Lodge. The renovation took place in 1906/7 which dates the photograph reasonably well. You may notice that the Lodge does not have its turret at the front of the building which was taken down during the widening of the entrance to Princes Avenue.

Michael Kelly and family standing outside the back of the lodge in HGC

Kelly’s actions

At this board meeting Kelly said that, ‘responding to the appeal from the Government for waste paper for War needs’, he had collected various documents dating back to the founding of the Cemetery and taken them to the collection point run by Hull Corporation. In other words he was recycling historic documents for the war effort.

The documents he collected for disposal can be seen in this entry from the Minute Books.

Minute book entry describing Kell's actions in destroying the Company's records.

The old journals and all of the ledgers lost. I could weep. Lost for what? To make paper for forms in triplicate for the use of various government departments. Sacrilege.

I think I may be a bit biased here but this ranks with the destruction of the Library of Alexandria to me. Another black mark against Churchill. Not only the iron railings that decorated the city but also the history of the Cemetery. All gone by his decrees. Words simply fail me. And that doesn’t happen often.

Nature and heritage

This is the third and final article of the series that is loosely following the same theme. The theme is related to nature, and heritage, the concept of rewilding and the protection of the site. This section deals with the graves, and indeed, the bodies laid to rest in there.

This whole series was prompted by what I saw as the unfair criticism of the work that the volunteers had been doing in HGC. The argument has been made that the work has destroyed habitats of the wildlife in the site.

Hmmm, well, I would suggest that one loss of some habitat for one species is the creation of a habitat for another species. And of course, it’s arguable whether any habitat was destroyed. The work that appears to have ‘destroyed’ this habitat is obviously not of a permanent nature. Anyone who has ever tried to remove blackberry bushes from a garden or an allotment will know too well that they cling to life. The site may look bare but check back in the spring, that will be an entirely different story.

Bodies and graves

Now I would suggest that the natural aspect of the site is important. Unfortunately, it appears to me that perhaps too much emphasis upon this feature is to the detriment of the graves and bodies in there. In my view this approach is to weaken the protection of the site.

Without the presence of the bodies and graves lying within the site, I would argue that every habitat of every creature on the site would have gone a long time ago.

The graves and their inhabitants are often seen as also-rans in terms of importance in the site. Here’s why they are one of the most important reasons why the site was never built on or used in any other way.

Sanctuary

As Charles Laughton would have shouted from the tower of Notre Dame Cathedral in the movie, ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’. Surprisingly, the presence of the dead in HGC offers a similar protection to the site from developers. Not a fool proof one as we’ll see later.

Let’s face it, HGC is a good site for development. I can see the brochure now.

“Here’s your chance to buy on the new development of Necropolis Gardens. In the sought after Avenues / Princes Avenue area. Close to a good public school and a good primary Academy.

Excellent public transport links, only 10 minutes from the city centre. Close to the bars and cafes of the Princes Avenue area and a stone’s throw from two large municipal parks and the KCOM stadium.

Come and see the detached show house on Cholera Close and marvel at how we can fit 4 bedrooms (only 2 of which can accommodate a bed) into such a small space. Complete with integral garage.

Pick your own plot soon”.

I think I’m probably under-selling it.

Yes, I am having some fun here but behind it I am deadly serious. It is a good site. It does offer great potential for a serious investor with deep pockets. Especially to a local council who, as reported in the previous posts, has lost 50% of its funding over the last decade. If that investor undertook to take on the necessary legal expenses to ‘develop’ the site, undertook to pay a decent rate for the site, and then proceeded to build ‘executive’ houses on the site, I’m pretty certain that the developer would make a decent profit. The council, for its part, would get a site off their hands that they have no budget for and, apart from some woolly idea about a proposed nature reserve, have no plans for.

Enon Chapel

Dancing on the Dead

It wouldn’t be the first time that profit has overtaken reverence for the dead. The image above is that of Enon Chapel in London. Notorious for the disposal of the dead entrusted to the minister there. He provided a cheaper burial than the nearby burial grounds and thus attracted considerable customers. He was only caught in this practice because a new sewer was to be dug beneath the building.

As Catherine Arnold, in ‘Necropolis’ recounts, the minister, ‘had succeeded in burying around 12,000 bodies into a space measuring 59 foot by 12 foot’ (1) The depth was 6 foot. Some bodies were removed but the rest were allowed to remain in their basement graves.

The chapel site is now the site of the LSE and when it was being modernised in 1967 skeletons were still being unearthed. The chapel later became a place of pleasure, and dancing parties were organised for a sect of tee-totallers, who rented the property for this purpose. Locally they were known as ‘Dances with the Dead’. A far cry from the way we are led to believe the Victorians revered the sanctity of death.

But back at HGC, as I see it, the major reason these savvy developers haven’t moved in to ‘develop’ HGC is the presence of the dear departed dead. Definitely not because it is a place of natural beauty, home to birds, bats, foxes and other creatures. The presence of such creatures didn’t deter Trump from extending his Scottish golf course on to a site of Special Scientific Interest. The presence of ancient woodland (not the young stuff in HGC) and the creatures living there has not stopped HS2 from bulldozing its way through it.

No, as The Sun (yes, that one) would probably put it, “It’s the bodies that won it”. But let’s not get too carried away.

Progress

There are so many lessons we should heed from our own local history never mind London’s Enon Chapel. The sanctity of burial does not stand in the way of ‘progress’, nor it must be said, has it ever done.

Human remains were found during the digging of the Junction Dock, now Princes Dock, in 1827.

When development work took place in Whitefriargate, at around the same time, the discovery of skeletons did not hinder the completion of the work. The skeletons, presumably buried in what would have been the Carmelite Priory’s burial area that had stood on the site, were simply removed.

The finding of a skeleton under the Carmelite Friary that used to stand where Whitefriargate now stands 1

The above extract is taken from The Sun ( no, not that one) of the 7th August 1829. The extract below is from the Hull Packet of the 9th of the same month and year.

The finding of a skeleton under the Carmelite Friary that used to stand where Whitefriargate now stands 2

 

According to the Hull Advertiser, 12 skeletons were eventually unearthed. The skeletons were later reburied in St Charles’ crypt.

There is no evidence that the bodies that were buried in the western half of St Mary’s churchyard, now under Lowgate, were ever relocated when the street was laid out. They may well still be under the tarmac and pavement of this road.

The bodies that were buried in the Augustinian priory, where the Magistrates’ Court now stands, must have been continually disturbed by the building work that took place on that site during the 400 years after the priory’s dissolution. It was known that bodies were buried on this site as one was found there in the 19th century. The Hull Advertiser, in one instance, recorded the discovery of a skeleton under the cellars of the Cross Keys Inn in 1819.

It took until 1974 and work by archaeologists to give the buried of this site some respect and reburial.

When Beverley Railway Station was being built in 1846 a number of bodies were discovered. It was thought that these too were burials related to the local Friary in Beverley just a little to the south.

Beverley Station skeletons, September 1846

Drains and sewers

Drainage work appears to have been the major culprit in finding human remains in 19th century Hull as it expanded beyond the old walls.

In 1848 at the corner of Chariot Street and Carr Lane a discovery of human remains was made.

hull advertiser 1 sept 1848

A mere 8 months later, in March 1849, a similar discovery in Spring Street was reported.

Hull Advertiser 2 March 1849

And close by, in the August of 1856, a more interesting discovery took place.

Hull advertiser 9 Aug 1856

So, taking all of the above into account, I’m pretty sure that non-discovered human remains from the earlier periods of history are pretty common in our area, it’s just knowing where to look ….or not as the case may be. The conclusion that can be drawn from these extracts is that the burials of the past did not stop ‘progress’

More recently

Let’s look at more recent developments.

Air Street churchyard

These images are of St Mary’s church yard, or as it’s commonly called now, Air Street cemetery. It is one of the oldest burial places in Hull although it started its life in Sculcoates. It dates back to the mid-13th century. Older than The Minster’s churchyard and also St Mary’s in Lowgate. Its only rival in age is probably St Peter’s, Drypool. Burials have been discontinued here since 1855 although in truth the only burials after 1818 would have been in tombs and vaults already existing.

Another view of Air Street churchyard

It’s not great in terms of area, probably about a third of an acre in total. The church that stood on the site was taken down in 1916. The new one was consecrated in the June of that year a little further away, on a site Sculcoates Lane. For a long time the church tower was left standing forlornly until final demolition in the early 1960s.

What is not commonly known is that Hull City Council received enquiries about using this site for industrial purposes. The Council, after the war, and obviously wanting to boost local industry, encouraged this interest as can be seen by this letter.

Air Street church yard to be built on

I’m sure you’ll be glad to know that the Church Commissioners and the Diocese of York were opposed to such a move and the scheme went into abeyance. The costs would probably have been prohibitive to the Council at that time. However, if a developer dipped their hands into their pockets in the future….well, who knows?

Earlier this millennium archaeologists were busy again. The churchyard, now known as Trinity Square, which in past times reached as far as King Street, was excavated by the Humberside Archaeology Unit in 2017. There were a number of bodies discovered, complete with coffin remains, most of them from the late 18th century.

It’s interesting, if a little morbid, to think that perhaps the patrons of Bob Carver’s stall were eating their fish and chips over the remains of their ancestors. The churchyard of Holy Trinity was cleared and paved over in the 1840s but obviously the clearance was not very thorough.

Bob Carver's

Bodies were also found during the development of the St Stephen’s Centre. These were the remains that had failed to be removed when the St Stephen’s churchyard was cleared after the bombed church was removed in 1960.

And how can anyone fail to notice that the Castle Street cemetery is suffering a truncation, which includes the removal of human remains? Evidence surely that the presence of human bodies does not give complete protection to sites when there is deemed to be a need for change. Or do I mean ‘progress’?

HGC is safe though, isn’t it?

I’d like to think so. After all it is in a conservation area. Strangely, so is Castle Street cemetery. Am I just splitting hairs by putting that in?

Hymers College is in the same conservation area that HGC is in, yet there has been a plethora of new buildings erected in its grounds since the conservation area status was granted. Yes, I’m sure, in this case, that everything is above board and the Council granted permission for this work. The point I’m making is that Conservation Area status does not exclude changes that the site owner deems necessary.

A conservation area does not confer immunity either. In much the same way that having a building or structure ‘listed’ does not stop it from being destroyed. We’ve all seen examples where some building was listed with one or other of the various bodies that supposedly care for such things.  Then, whoops, it has ‘inadvertently’ been reduced to rubble. To paraphrase myself from an earlier article, ‘nothing lasts, change is constant.’

In other words, nothing is really certain about the future of the HGC. Let me give you an example.

Dual carriageway

Back in 1977 we bought our first house. It was a small terraced house in Mayfield Street, just off Spring Bank. We had some difficulties in buying it. This was due to the fact that when our solicitor did some searches on the property it was deemed to be at risk of demolition. This demolition was going to take place because an orbital road was planned. A dual carriageway was proposed, running along the old Hornsea railway line until it reached Wincolmlee. This road would have demolished most of Louis Street, Middleton Street and Mayfield Street. The top of Mayfield Street is to the left of the photograph below.

Top of Mayfield Street

At the other end it would have joined onto Spring Bank West leading up towards the railway line crossing. This stretch would  have been ‘upgraded’. This upgrade would have been transforming the road as it is into a dual carriageway. Now how could that happen?

Simple, the plan was that a part of both of the cemeteries, HGC and Western, would have been taken for this road widening. As one letter writer to the Hull Daily Mail put it,

Hull Daily Mail, Road Widening of Spring Bank West 17th October 1979

By late 1979, this idea had been shelved. But this doesn’t mean that this idea cannot ever be resurrected. If someone, say Highways England,  came up with the money, as they did with the Castle Street development, who can say what would happen?

Council dual purpose in clearing headstones?

The other issue that needs to be borne in mind here is that the idea was actually brought to the then Humberside County Council and they deliberated on it. This was a definite project. Surveys were made, budgets were calculated. This project would have taken all of the pavement and at least another 50 yard strip of both cemeteries  from the railway crossing to Princes Avenue corner. This plan would not only widen the road but would then have to replace the pavement further back. I’m not even taking into account the excavation work for the sewerage, gulleys and drainage.

What a dismal prospect. It was discussed, debated and voted upon by Humberside County Council. What is hopefully coincidental is that this proposal occurred whilst Hull City Council were ‘developing’ HGC. Strangely almost all of the headstones that once stood close to the road were removed in the clearance. That would have been extremely helpful if the road widening took place. Yes, I’m sure it was a coincidence but sometimes you do have to wonder.

Firstly; the woodland

So, now I come to the grist of these articles. I’ve come to believe that HGC is precious. In essence it is a one-off in Hull in two ways.

Firstly, it is the closest one can get to a woodland in an urban setting. Unplanned by humans for the last 40 years it has happened as nature intended. Nature abhors a vacuum as they say. This isn’t to say that nature doesn’t need a helping hand.

Woodland in cemetery1

Left to its own devices the site would be a wilderness with no place for humans. And by that I mean that humans would not be able to enter it after a while. The paths would be impassable. The blackberry thickets would grow bigger every passing day, the rubbish would accumulate just as if by osmosis.

No, not a pretty sight. I believe that all such areas need managing. There are no areas of countryside that are not managed to a greater or lesser degree to meet the needs of the owner, consumer or visitor. And this management also assists the site and its wildlife inhabitants.

I’m pretty concerned when I hear people arguing against management of HGC. I’m sorry but we’ve seen where over 10 years of the policy of ‘managed neglect’ delivered HGC. A haunt for drug users, alcoholics and rough sleepers. A sex playground / brothel, rubbish dump and sometimes, sadly, a serious crime scene. When people talk about ‘wildlife’ I’m pretty certain they don’t mean that kind of wildlife. So management is key.

Secondly; the heritage

Secondly, it is the only private cemetery that ever existed in Hull. On that basis alone it is precious and irreplaceable. It is the last resting place of numerous Victorian and Edwardian people who died and were laid to rest in there. It is a vivid  representation of the social class structures that prevailed in Victorian society The class divisions of that society are frozen in time and made more tangible to us than any textbook could ever do. Those divisions are laid bare by such things as the burial area for the workhouse inhabitants and the massive monuments to the more privileged inhabitants. But this heritage needs as much protection as the nature in there.

Below is a photograph of some headstones in HGC completely covered in ivy, which is systematically destroying them.

Headstones covered in ivy

Here’s a headstone with the ivy removed and showing the damage done to the stone.

Damaged headstone

Some of the people buried in there wanted to be remembered, or perhaps their relatives wanted to memorialise them. In doing so they had erected some beautiful sculptures. Those sculptures are irreplaceable. More irreplaceable than blackberry bushes and sycamore saplings.

They are, like the cemetery itself, original and special, and as such also need our support. In fact they need it just as much as the wildlife.

A middle way

Taking all of the above into account, I would suggest that a middle course is the way forward. A way that does not put forward the claim that nature is more important than the heritage or vice versa. Both strands and elements of HGC are vital to each other’s self interest. Together the arguments against the site ever being lost to development are that much stronger combining nature and heritage. It really is a case of united we stand, divided we fall.

So perhaps, on this point, we should place the work of the FOHGC in context. The FOHGC attempts to take on board both of the two elements mentioned above, and works to accommodate both of them. It doesn’t favour one or other. It takes the hard road and seeks a balance between nature and heritage.

Try to remember that when you want to have a little moan about something that offends you. It just might be something that offends some of the people of the FOHGC but that’s the way it goes. The FOHGC have to try to get the balance between nature and heritage right. No one said getting that particular balance right is easy. No, what’s easy is criticising; the hard part is trying to do something positive.

 

  1. Catherine Arnold, Necropolis. Simon and Schuster, 2006. I do recommend this book as a good overview of burial through the ages. It obviously has a tendency to look at London more than anywhere else.
  2. It would be immodest of me to mention that A Short History of Burial in Kingston Upon Hull from the Medieval  to the Late Victorian Period by Lowden and Longbone deals with the subject more locally. Sadly out of print but copies are in the Hull History Centre.

 

 

Rewilding

This article follows on from the Nature v Nurture one. It involves the concept of rewilding and especially the rewilding of HGC. If you’ve read the previous article you’ll know that Bill Longbone and myself were congratulated by a young man on our efforts to tidy the cemetery of litter. He then said he supported rewilding of the HGC and then left us, leaving us both somewhat bemused. Were we doing that?

Neither of us were 100% certain that picking up the detritus of others was actually ‘rewilding’ except in its loosest sense. We both shrugged and carried on.

I’m also very sorry that this article is a bit technical and bolstered by footnotes and cited evidence. Unfortunately evidence must be used here as without it people make ludicrous claims without the slightest shred of evidence. For example ‘rewilding’.

History is bunk

I was thinking about the idea of the rewilding of HGC much later. Quite some time after I had met this young man. I thought how far fetched the concept of doing such a thing to the HGC site was. And this is where the historical aspect that I mentioned in the previous article comes to the fore.

I suppose I should say here what my problem with his statement was. I’m pretty sure that the young man’s idea of ‘rewilding’ went something like this. HGC is a cemetery but has been allowed to become a woodland. This should be encouraged by more trees being allowed to grow. If more trees grow the site becomes ‘wilder’ and therefore it encourages more wildlife.

Simple isn’t it?

Its a nice simple plan. I think I’ve addressed the problems you can have with simple plans in the previous article but I’m pretty sure that was the sum of his idea about ‘rewilding’ of HGC. So foresting is the way to go.  The more trees grown on the site will return the site to its pristine state before it became a cemetery. Great, let’s do it.

Well, its not quite that simple. Let’s have a closer look.

I’m pretty sure that most people who read stuff on this site have an interest in history. That interest may be small or large depending on the individual but it will be there. So what I’m going to say may be well known to some but not to others. For you antiquarian experts please be patient and let others catch up.

Fresh water

The history of Hull was shaped by many factors. Not least of them was the search for fresh water. Charles 1st laid siege to Hull in 1642 at the beginning of the Civil War. He thought that he could, if not starve the inhabitants into surrendering, he could bring them to heel by denying them fresh water. The vast majority of the fresh water that was drunk in Hull at that time came from Anlaby. Charles, in throwing a siege around the town, deliberately interrupted that source. We’ll discuss how this source came about later.

Charles, unfortunately for him, was told that his plan was stupid. Probably not as bluntly as that but just as clearly. Ex-Governor of Hull, Sir Thomas Glenham, said that the people of Hull need only dig down a little way for the hole to fill with fresh water. A little brackish, yes, but still drinkable. Charles was also told that at low tide the River Hull was a fresh water source and all the people needed to do was dip their buckets in it. Indeed Glenham went on to say that, ‘they cannot bury a corpse there but the grave drowns him ere it buries him.’ (1) A feature I know too well from past experience.

So, when it came to emergencies, like being under siege, the citizens of Hull could get by on the fresh(ish) water on site. However, when the choice was between fresh spring water and the brackish water, well, that was a different matter entirely.

Water courses

Wyke, later to become Kingston upon Hull, had a fresh water source about two miles to the west. This was at Springhead, known then as Julian Wells. This spring, followed a natural path to the emerging town. This water course was first recorded in 1293, some six years before the town of Hull was graced with attention from Edward 1st.(2) The spring was said to follow a circuitous course eventually reaching the town at what is now the end of Whitefriargate.

Map of Wyke and Myton about 1293 from J.Travis-Cook 1903

As can be seen from the above sketch map, made by Hull historian J. Travis-Cook in 1903, the ditch ranges from the top left of the map  until eventually emptying into the ancient moat.

Eventually, after many tribulations, the course of this spring was fixed in 1401 and a ditch was dug to a depth of five feet, five feet wide at its bottom and twelve feet wide at the top.(3)

Julian Dyke

This water course, known as the Julian Dyke, later Derringham Dyke, and later still Spring Ditch, emerged at Springhead. It then followed the course of the present day Spring Bank West, Spring Bank and Prospect Street. The dyke eventually flowed into a basin called the Bush Dyke. This was approximately where Prince’s Dock and the old Queen’s Dock would have met. This was the first primitive reservoir for the town and Bush-Dyke men went around the town selling fresh water from barrels that they carried.

Map of the Hull Valley taken from Sheppard 1958

Of interest in the above map, taken from Sheppard’s ‘The Draining of the Hull Valley’, is the line of higher ground. Cottingham, along the line of Castle Hill to Keldgate was probably the nearest high ground above the flooding of the River Humber. In fact, if you bother to stop at Keldgate today and look south, you can see the entire southern Hull valley, now occupied by a large city. A thousand years ago it would have  been a marshland with reeds and the odd misshapen tree as the tallest structures in it.

Farming

So, why am I telling you all this in the context of rewilding?

Because of a very simple reason. The presence of managed water courses, and the Julian Dyke was managed very thoroughly and efficiently by the Court of Sewers, suggests, that the land on either side of it was constantly being drained. In a predominantly wet landscape, a drained portion of land would not have been left long before humanity took advantage of it.

Farming would have been the role for the land that eventually became Hull General Cemetery, from the medieval period, up to 1846. Prior to its change to farmland it would have been marshland, used for pasturing in summer, and fishing and trapping in the winter. Due to its nature its highly unlikely that there were many trees in it. The consensus of opinion is that, after the last ice age, trees were initially abundant, but by 1000 BCE the forest coverage had been much reduced. This reduction has continued up to the present day.(4)

Evidence

The evidence all suggests that the site of the present HGC was firstly marshland up until it was drained sometime in the 13th and 14th century. After that it was farmland. It continued to be farmland until taken over by the Hull General Cemetery Company in 1846. It was at that time that forest trees were planted on the site. These were probably the first on the site since before Roman times.

The Company planted a lot of trees and shrubs. After it’s downfall those trees and shrubs best suited to proliferate without maintenance began to predominate. Thus we have the site as it is today. An urban woodland. That’s good.

Finally

Yes, I can hear your sigh of relief from here.

What the present state of the HGC is not is a return to how it ever was. Especially in the idealised past that the term ‘rewilding’ used here conjures up. It’s present state is not some happy chance that has returned it to its roots (pun intended). It is man-made.

If we want a true rewilding of HGC then we should destroy the site’s drainage system.  The Company dug this system 14 foot beneath the site’s surface back in 1846. We should destroy the woodland. We should eradicate the present woodland wildlife. After that we can re-wild the site back to its marshy status. Imagine the clumps of solid earth infrequently poking above a wet landscape populated by wading birds.

Lots of luck with that. If you don’t mind I’ll sit this one out thanks.

Notes

1 p.2, Mary Fowler, “River and Spring“, 1997

2. p.42, E.Aylwin & R.C.Ward, “Development and Utilisation of Water Supplies in the East Riding of Yorkshire.“, 1969

3. p.42-3, Edward Gillett & Kenneth A. MacMahon, “A History of Hull“, 1980. If you’d like to know all about the ‘tribulations’ mentioned above, one of which included the Pope becoming involved, may I recommend the three books cited and also “The Victoria History of the County of York, East Riding, Volume 1“, Ed. K.J.Allison, “Hull; Culture, History, Place“, Eds. Starkey, Atkinson, McDonough, McKeon & Salter, “Yorkshire from AD1000“, D. Hey, “General and Concise History and Description of the Town and Port of Kingston-Upon-Hull“, J.J.Sheahan, “ Becks, Banks, Drains and Brains“, The River Hull Valley Drainage Heritage Group, 2013 and of course the wonderful EYLHS booklets by June Sheppard, “The Draining of the Marshlands of South Holderness and the Vale of York” & “The Draining of the Hull Valley“. 1966 and 1958 respectively.

4. Numerous sources. pp-6-7, Eva Crackles, “The Flora of the East Riding“, 1990 states that the forest coverage was at its maximum ‘some 7000 to 5000 years ago’.

The River Hull Drainage Heritage Group, already cited, states on p.8, ‘This meant that spring fed right bank tributaries originating on the Chalk Wolds to the west of the pre-glacial cliff line all flowed out across low-lying carrs and ings to reach the River Hull (….) This landscape chaos was what the Norman conquerors beheld as they secured their conquest in the 11th century A.D. This was a tract of land to skirt, unless your business was wild-fowling or fishing.’

J.R. Flenley in ‘Vegetational History’ in “Humber Perspectives: A Region Through the Ages“, 1990, states that around 1000 BCE, Elms began to decrease, possibly due to a variant of the recent Dutch Elm Disease but more probably due to humanity chopping the young growth to feed livestock. He also states that, in the iron age, with the stronger plough, ‘The resulting clearance of forest in Holderness is beautifully demonstrated by the Roos Pollen count again suggesting mixed farming’.p.51. There are other accounts to validate this evidence. In essence forest land in the Hull valley from, at the very latest, the Roman period, was quite rare.

 

 

Nature versus Nurture

Yes I know the phrase ‘Nature versus Nurture’ is not usually used in this context. Going back in time I seem to remember it being a common phrase that was used in late 19th century American Literature when I was studying for my first degree. Going forward I came across it in my work when I was a social worker. It related to children’s upbringing and the environmental factors that could affect it. Here I’m afraid I’m using it to describe the tensions that erupt when changes occur within Hull General Cemetery. Nature versus nurture? Let’s have a look.

Re-wilding

About two years ago Bill and myself were, as usual, going round the site picking up the litter. Plastic bottles, empty beer cans, sweet and crisp wrappers and more unpleasant things were our lot. During this task we always made a point of saying hello to the visitors to the site. This day a young chap responded to our greeting. He said it was great what we were doing and he supported re-wilding. I remember we both looked at each other, then at the litter in our bags, and smiled and nodded.

The young man was busy and rushed away but I would have liked to discuss this idea further. Re-wilding was probably quite far from the ideas Bill and I had for the cemetery. I think we thought it was pretty ‘wild’ in there as it was and that’s why we averaged 5 or 6 bags of litter every two days. You see, ‘wild’ in this context meant uncared for and not maintained.

From that premise, judging by the debris we collected, it was also fine to drop your litter in it. It was also the perfect place to leave your unwanted mattress, your stolen bicycle, your excess kitchen sink and your empty calor gas bottles. This isn’t mentioning the used Durex, human excreta still plastered on toilet paper, used sanitary towels and nappies, maggot ridden food and the ubiquitous hypodermic needle. Yes, it was pretty wild. Nature versus nurture? I don’t think either was winning at that time.

Rubbish at the back of the shops

No! Not that kind of wild

Ah, but of course the young man was speaking about a natural re-wilding. You know the kind. Planting of willows and alder to drain boggy areas, allowing other areas to become wetlands, planting species that are native and rooting out the invasive non-native ones. It can also include the re-introduction of vanished species. Otters and beavers are thriving in some parts of the country after being re-introduced and the population of the Red Kite and Golden Eagle are also on the rise. Someone recently suggested the re-introduction of the Grey Wolf but the farming industry would probably resist that.

It sounds great. In the HGC there are a couple of points against this. One, the historical point, I’ll deal with in another post called Re-wilding. The other point is that, at least to my mind, ‘re-wilding’ is not simply planting lots of trees, shrubs etc and then expecting it to prosper. We’ve just come through an age of austerity when council funding for such schemes is low. Again I’ll touch on this more later. No, re-wilding is a lot more complex than just getting your spade out.

Whose job is it anyway?

The overriding problem of a re-wilding project, at least to my mind, is the continual maintenance of the project. This maintenance is necessary to keep it in perfect health. I’ve seen many photographs of schemes where people from the communities, schools, etc get really involved in the initial stages of the scheme i.e. the physical work of the planting. And after that ballyhoo, what then?

Well, if they are organised they will have some plan as to how it will be cared for after the ballyhoo dies down and the community goes back to getting on with its life. You see, like any garden or woodland, it needs to be maintained. That’s where the dedication, and the true costs of the scheme come to bear. Because it’s a lot harder work to keep looking after something than to simply start it up. And I’m quite sure that when that young man was talking about re-wilding he wasn’t thinking about the long term work and running costs to maintain the re-wilding scheme. It was less nature versus nurture than simply nature pure and simple.

As we all know, when it comes to complex problems, you should never, ever, go for the simple solution because it really doesn’t work. Just think about the difference between voting for Brexit, and what it actually turned out to be, to see how a simple solution can cause you more problems. Problems you had no idea were there. Complex problems need a lot of thought and a lot of work to solve them.

No, it’s the Council’s job isn’t it?

Council funding. In a talk I had with an elected councillor and a council officer a couple of years ago I was told the full extent of the budget for Hull General Cemetery. The officer held up his index finger and thumb. He made a circle with those two digits and said, ‘that’s how much the budget is for HGC’. He went on to say that any work that needed to be done in there came from other budgets which obviously made it popular with the other budget holders. This has been the case since the 2010 election.

All in it together

You surely must remember that? David Cameron and George Osbourne telling us we had to tighten our belts and that, ‘we were all in this together’. Well, some of us were more ‘in this’ than others as it turned out.

Large urban centres, especially in the north, suffered drastic cuts to their budgets. In Hull the council funding was cut by about half. As the Hull Daily Mail reported in 2019, ‘Hull City Council has seen £131 million pounds worth of core funding removed since 2010.’ It went on to say that, ‘with the authority’s budget for day-to-day services being more than halved in that period.’ So, now you can see where that HGC budget came from.

Let’s face it, who can seriously argue against that Council decision? Surely the care of young children, the elderly, the rough sleepers, and the people who have fallen through the cracks that central government widened by their savage cuts should come before the interests of a derelict cemetery. I mean Food Banks for the employed. How can that be right? So, yes, Hull City Council has to step in but with less cash to spend. Good call Hull City Council, spend your money where it’s most needed.

But it was always like this, wasn’t it?

One of the refrains that is often heard, especially recently, is that the FOHGC are ‘destroying’ the natural habitats of the the wildlife. That we should leave it as it is. This usually comes from people who want HGC to look like how they first encountered it. It’s a very human reaction. None of us like change especially as we grow older. We cling to familiar things, probably as a valediction that we still exist. I’m just the same but maybe my memories of HGC go back a little further than some.

Back to the future

This photograph was taken in 1977 just as the redevelopment was taking place. The chap on the left is about where the pelican crossing is now and the other chap is waiting at the bus stop. Note the large amount of headstones that were all removed. The infamous Blue Container was sited just behind where the gent waiting for the bus is stood. And, on a less pleasant note, I buried a dead dog, killed in a road accident and left in the gutter, in 1979 under that laurel bush to his left. My memories of HGC go deep. At least a metre.

HGC 1977

I remember walking past there in the 1950s. Holding my mother’s hand because it was a creepy place. We were visiting my recently deceased maternal grandmother’s grave in Western Cemetery. She was buried not far from the Workhouse portion of HGC. In those days there was a wicket gate at the end of the fence of HGC but we couldn’t use it because the HGC was fenced off from Western Cemetery and we had to walk all the way round to the Chanterlands Avenue entrance. My grandmother died in 1956 and my little legs were tired.

When I walked past HGC on the way to Hull Fair it was different story of course. My little legs were full of beans but I still held my mum’s hand passing it because it was even more scary at night!

Heady Youth

In the 60s it was a fantastic place to play truant. No police or ‘board man’ would ever catch you in there. In the late 60s and early 70s it was a great place to take acid and look for places where you could grow marihuana…. or so I’m told (added on legal advice). By 1974 I was a gravedigger and my first foreman, Frank Coulson, was the last gravedigger that HGC employed in the 1940s. In 1976 I followed the debate around the cemetery which you’ll find fully described in ‘A Momentous Meeting’ on this website next week.

Responsibility

By 1977 I was a shop steward and took an active interest in the safety of the workers in HGC and in 1978, with the introduction of the Health and Safety Act of 1974 finally, I was now the safety representative for the workers in HGC. Unfortunately, the wholesale destruction was now over, and the small gang left in there were planting shrubs on the perimeter of the site next to Spring Bank West. By 1979 I transferred to Western Cemetery and the work force in HGC were disbanded. Any work to be done in there fell to the staff of Western.

Family times

In 1981 I went to university but my involvement in HGC was now more family based. My two boys learnt to ride their bicycles in there. Much safer than on the roads. We had picnics with other families in there. Impromptu cricket games between numerous families were played on the grassy parts. Dogs were walked. Benches were placed in there.

By the beginning of the millennium my involvement lessened. Our dog had died and we have never ever thought that we could replace him. The kids had left Hull for other parts. We walked in there less and less, seeing it become less managed. And more worrying to be honest. This could have been the end of my relationship with HGC.

It wasn’t, but that’s another story. The point of the above is that I have seen HGC in many guises. It has changed many times in my lifetime and will again I’m sure. I try not to see change as a problem but rather as a natural development for us all. After all I’m not the lad I was when I worked in there back in 70s. A little thing called aging has changed me. I can’t do a thing about it. I have to accept those changes. Change is the only constant in the entire universe and those who fail to grasp that are doomed to disappointment.

More immediate angst

And so we come to the recent refrains about some of the work the FOHGC have done recently. They seem to centre on the fact that what they felt was constant was not. That a dense thicket of blackberries along the back of the shops was ‘always there’ and therefore was immovable. In some sense their argument seems to not grasp that nature itself changes but we’ll leave that one.

The Rear of the Princes Avenue Shops in 1996

Here’s the area in question in 1996. You may notice a complete absence of blackberry bushes. You may also notice that the grass was cut. The absence of litter should also hold your attention.

Rubbish bagged up

Here is a recent picture of the same scene from a different standpoint with a collection of rubbish picked up before the work started. Is this the bedrock upon which the ‘naturalists’ base their arguments upon? This is the end result of blackberry bushes being allowed to grow without management. How natural!

No. That’s not what I meant

I’m sure that’s what the cry will be. And I’m equally as sure that the cry is heartfelt. But the reality is clear. To achieve having a thriving natural habitat it needs a degree of management. And sometimes that management has to be severe. It needs the rubbish that has accumulated to be cleared. To clear that rubbish it needs a degree of cut back. And that cutback leaves debris that then has to be cleared.

I spoke with one of the people who criticise this kind of management just last year, before Covid struck. He put forward a plan of annual staggered clearances based upon an area by area approach. I thought the plan had merit. It worked within the limits that the volunteer group could achieve. It also would allow regeneration on a scale that should allow the wildlife to recover. Both of us thought, looking at the size of HGC, that it would probably be a plan for between seven to ten years to cover the entire site. At the end of that cycle we could begin again at the first area and this approach would be less disruptive to the wildlife. I told him that the volunteers had earmarked the area behind the rear of the properties on Princes Avenue for this kind of work, and perhaps this could be the first area that could fit into his plan. He thought this was a good idea and readily agreed.

The pandemic has changed us all, of that there is no doubt. But I’m struck by the fact that the proposer of a plan is now being critical of his own plan. It just goes to shows how insidious the virus must be. Well, that’s the only valid and rational reason I can see for someone morphing from a cheerleader for a project to being an outspoken protestor against it.

A rare sighting of the armchair naturalist

If anyone really thinks that cutting back the blackberry bushes has killed them and that they won’t return then they should take time out to do some research. They will, of course, regrow but without the human filth all about them. How can that be seen as bad?

No, I’m afraid that fundamentally we have here the sad tale of people frightened of change. And of course I have yet to see any of these ‘armchair naturalists’ actually in HGC scraping the excrement off their gloves whilst trying not vomit and crying, ‘Gee, isn’t nature wonderful?’

The motto of all of this should be that it is not nature versus nurture at all. It should be that nature needs nurturing. Instead of carping, why not lend a hand?