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There is also a really useful link to an excellent dedicated site HERE
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This opened in June of 1856 at a cost of some £26,000
and was consecrated by the then Lord Bishop of Chester. The opening
ceremony was reported in the Northern Daily Times reoprted on the Old
Mersey Times website.
R.
A. Picton wrote about the cemetery less than 10 years after its
opening and, as his eloquent writing is as appropriate today,
as in 1875 when it was written. I will simply quote Picton (
'Memorials of Liverpool').
"It occupied originally thirty
acres, but was subsequently enlarged by further purchases
of about 10 additional acres. It is pleasantly
situated and laid out with taste. The chapels and entrance
lodges are considerably above the average of similar
structures.
It is curious to observe the tide of fashion
which sets from time to time in different directions
in the style of tombstones and monuments. At one
period ornamental headstones are all the rage, then
flat rectangular tombs predominate. The present taste
seems to run towards obelisks, very frequently of polished
granite, red and grey, than which no material seems
more suitable for a mortuary memorial.
It is a cause
of satisfaction that the hideous iron railings with
which formerly every tomb of any pretence was environed,
have either by order or by common consent been banished
out of sight, and the contemplative philosopher may
meditate amongst the tombs without any danger of being
impaled, and the virtues of the departed may be ascertained
and taken to heart without gazing at them through prison
bars."
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In 1881 Gore gives the address
as 56 Smithdown Road and states 46.5 acres. Smithdown Road addresses at this time do not agree with later details as these changed as the road was
built up later in the century.
Within 57 years of opening the old-mersey
times website reports that 144,464 people were interred here
(in turn extracted from the Liverpool Mercury May 31st 1913)
The cemetery has many notable internees including
Mary
Billinge, one of its first inhabitants who died aged 112 in
December 1856. James and Irvine Bulloch, uncles of Theodore
Roosevelt, who fought on the side of the confederacy in the US
civil war. There is a memorial to 243
Officers and men 'lost' by the 8th Kings Regiment in the Indian
Mutiny. Alfred G Rowe, a victim of the Titanic sinking, whose
funeral
is recorded on the encyclopedia-titanica website.
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