Liverpool's Dead Interesting - The Necropolis

The entrance to the Necropolis

Low Hill General Cemetery, known as The Necropolis, was the first purpose built cemetery in Liverpool and opened in 1825, near the corner of Rocky Lane, West Derby Road (formerly Rake Lane), and Everton Road. It was a compact, level five-acre site around which the Liverpool architect John Foster Jnr placed boundary walls and an austere but elegant Greek Revival entrance, while the grounds were laid out by Mr. Shepherd, Curator of the Botanic Gardens at a cost of £8,000. Its title 'General Cemetery' indicated that it was open to any who did not wish to be buried according to the rites of the Church of England so Ministers of different sects could officiate and, if required, the dead could be buried without any religious service at all.

The much needed cemetery was rapidly filled in the following 70 years with 80,000 burials, with the first burial taking place on the 1st of February 1825, and was used largely by nonconformists. The 13th of April 1845 saw the burial of one of the Ioway Indians, who died in the infirmary of consumption. Nine Ojibwa, from Canadian territory had arrived in Liverpool in November 1843. The Necropolis Burial Ground, as it came to be called, remained a popular burial place throughout the mid-Victorian period, until in the late 1890s it became full with eighty thousand interments and was closed by the City Council as insanitary. By 1896, the number of burials in the Necropolis had caused serious unsanitary conditions in the surrounding area which had led to the closure of the cemetery for interments on the 31st of August 1898. Responsibility for the site was transferred to Liverpool Corporation the following day, and in 1913 the lodges, gates & walls were demolished, monuments and large gravestones removed, and the area landscaped with ornamental gardens. The Liverpool Mercury reported on the 25th of January 1913, "Little time has been spent transforming the Necropolis, 4 acres in extent.The space at present bears the appearance of a nicely tilled field. All the monuments have been removed and the smaller slabs lowered and covered. Now the surface has been levelled, all in readiness for the design of the gardens. Shrubs are to be planted and a series of walls flanked with green. When the high walls are demolished and low railings put in the view from the roadway will be improved."

Grant Gardens - picture courtesy of 'Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times'

 

The buildings were demolished and the gravestones cleared, but the bodies remained in situ beneath the blank lawns that replaced the flower beds. On the 22nd April 1914 the Corporation renamed and re-opened it as Grant Gardens after Alderman J. R. Grant, J.P, chairman of the Corporation Parks and Gardens Committee. Nothing above ground survived of John Foster Jnr's design. Headstones from 'active' private plots at the Necropolis were relocated to Everton Cemetry with the majority in the centre of Section GEN6; however, there are a few of these headstones placed in other religious denomination sections of the Cemetery.

Noteable burials here were Hugh Stowell Brown ( see more on his life here - http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2022/06/a-liverpool-exemplar-hugh-stowell-brown.html ).

Also buried there, along with his first two wives, Elizabeth and Sophia, was Daniel James, a New York born businessman whose Liverpool end of the business, Phelps, James & Co, from 1833 to 1873, procured and exported over $300,000,000 worth of metal to America, whilst also importing and selling cotton to the mills in Lancashire. The company was to dominate the export market of tinplate from the United Kingdom for three-quarters of a century at a time when Wales was the centre of world production.

Finally we have Thomas Raffles, a London born solicitor, who was an abolotionist and minister of Newington Chapel, Liverpool from November 1811 with the prominent ministry of Raffles in Liverpool lasting until 24th of February 1862.

In February 2021 it was reported that a sinkhole had appeared above the former burial site after an old crypt collapsed. The Liverpool Echo said, "A video taken in Grant Gardens, previously Liverpool Necropolis and now a public park on Everton Road, shows the formation of the hole.The sinkhole is said to have formed over the site of a former crypt that was not filled in correctly. Footage shows a substantial hole which has exposed the underground area. A spokesperson for Liverpool City Council said: “Grant Gardens was originally a cemetery in the 19th century and was turned into a public park in the inter-war years. The sinkhole is the result of a former crypt that was not filled in correctly at the time. The sinkhole was reported as a cause for concern by a dog walker on Friday evening and the area was quickly cordoned off." A reader 'DaisyDD' commented, "Grant Gardens is well known for being haunted. Many people have seen and felt the hand of the little boy who walks beside you and holds your hand when you are walking through from the corner of Everton Rd and Low Hill towards Mill Rd. I'm amazed Tom Slemen has not written about it. It happened to both my nan and auntie when they were coming home from working in Royal Hospital many years ago on different occasions." 

see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2023/11/liverpools-dead-interesting-early.html