When I began my research, I naively believed there would be a complete list of all the cemeteries in the UK and Ireland that I could use to underpin my research on public engagement. I was wrong, so I began one. This is a review of the interesting information I discovered whilst attempting this Sisyphean task; the lessons about the development of these sites that I learnt along the way – when does a cemetery start being a cemetery, […]

The Zoroastrian burial ground in Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey, was opened in 1862 and constitutes a continuing record of Zoroastrian presence in the UK. The only burial ground of its kind in Europe, it adds to a continuing narrative of how the Zoroastrian diaspora adapts to changing political and cultural circumstances. Accordingly, the phrase We are like sugar in the milk refers to how Zoroastrians will merge into, and contribute positively to, a host society. Whereas Zoroastrian burial practices in South Asia and Iran are carried out as sky burials in ‘towers of silence’, […]

Trinity Burial Ground on Castle Street, Kingston upon Hull, was opened in 1785 as an off-site expansion to the small graveyard that has lain around Holy Trinity Church, in the town centre, since the thirteenth century. Authorised by Act of Parliament in 1783, Trinity Burial Ground was one of the first civil institutions to be built beyond the town walls, as the corporation broke the bounds of the medieval defences. The period saw the construction of a succession of purpose-built docks and the rapid expansion of commerce, […]

We cannot overlook the primary function of our cemeteries, giving our dead their final resting place. However, the past few years, a lot of contemporary secondary and tertiary functions and uses have been developed on cemeteries in many European cities and municipalities. Local residents have discovered the secondary uses of cemeteries as places to find peace and quiet within their living environments, tourists and educational groups have discovered the historic cemeteries as places to discover the history of death and dying (tertiary). […]

This is a study of deathscapes at the margins of Europe, Denmark and Cyprus, focusing on cemeteries in their respective capitals. By employing comparison and situating the emergence of cemeteries within the two societies’ different socio-historical trajectories, we challenge key assumptions on cemeteries put forth by historians and sociologists related to cemeteries’ inexorable secularisation and the democratic prerogative of everyone, not just the elites, to their posthumous presence as named individuals. Specifically, we show how in Denmark’s case the predominance of social democracy entailed a preference for erasure in communal, […]