Extra mural cemetery

A potted history

Reproduced with permission from the Encyclopaedia of Brighton by Tim Carder, 1990

Please note that this text is an extract from a reference work written in 1990. As a result, some of the content may not reflect recent research, changes and events.

Some seventy acres of land between Bear Road and Hartington Road are used by the town for cemeteries and crematoria. The area was formerly the open arable field of Scabe's Castle, a late-eighteenth-century farm with buildings in Hartington Road which were demolished in the 1900s when Hartington Place and Hartington Terrace were developed. {106,107,83}
The oldest of the three cemeteries is the:

a) EXTRA-MURAL CEMETERY: Originally a private burial ground, laid out on 28 acres in 1850 by the Brighton Extra-Mural Company, 6 acres being the gift of the Marquess of Bristol. The entrance was a castellated gateway with a round tower in Lewes Road, and there were two mortuary chapels designed by A.H.Wilds of which only the Anglican chapel remains, a large building in knapped flint with a turret spire; the Dissenting chapel to the south-west was a smaller building with a thin spire.

The cemetery was a favourite resort in the nineteenth century and even had a guide book published, but in 1956 the now redundant cemetery was purchased by the corporation and restored as an interesting and picturesque garden of remembrance which contains many impressive Victorian tombs, including those of several important figures in Brighton's history. In the driveway is the borough mortuary which opened in August 1962 and has between 600 and 700 admissions a year. {24,83,126,257}

Any numerical cross-references in the text above refer to resources in the Sources and Bibliography section of the Encyclopaedia of Brighton by Tim Carder.