Wrexham Cemetery

Wrexham Cemetery (Mynwent Wrecsam) is a Victorian garden cemetery in Wrexham, North Wales, which served as the main burial site for the city.

It opened in 1876, to the park-like designs of Yeaman Strachan, while its grade II listed chapels and lodge were designed by William Turner. The cemetery was laid out to serve as Wrexham's unofficial first park, while initially arranging graves by social class, now confined to the Victorian section of the cemetery. It contains memorials dedicated to servicemen from the World Wars, with a dedicated Polish servicemen memorial. It was also one of the first sites in Wrexham allowing burials to non-conformists, with it being not directly associated with one established church. The cemetery is listed on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales.

It was extended in 1890 and again by the 1960s, which form its modern (non-Victorian) sections. It underwent a refurbishment in 2016–2018, however has since limited new burial plots due to limited space. A World War II mortuary, only one in North Wales, was only re-discovered on the site in 2019.

History
The earliest record of the site where the cemetery now stands was from 1535, where it was mentioned in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, a survey under Henry VIII, on the finances of the Church of England, following the Acts of Supremacy. Part of the site was known as. It was also mentioned in a 1840 lease from the Bishop of St Asaph, which is it referred to as.

By the 19th century, Wrexham was in the need of a new cemetery, with the existing graveyard of St Giles' Church being full by the end of the 18th century.

In 1868, Wrexham Borough Council recognised that a new cemetery was needed, although initially had difficulty finding a new site. In 1874, 5 acre of land was purchased to the north of Ruabon Road. Unlike existing graveyards, which were attached to existing established churches, the new cemetery would allow non-conformist burials as it wasn't directly associated with one established church. The original 5 acre was divided equally between non-conformists, Roman Catholics and Anglicans.

The cemetery was laid out between 1874 and 1876, opening in 1876, to the layout design of local nurseryman, later mayor, Yeaman Strachan. It was laid out to function like a park. Additional land for extending the cemetery was purchased to its east to Empress Road in 1886, with it being extended by 1890. It was also extended west of Wat's Dyke, and continued being extended west until it reached its current western extent by the 1960s. Strachan continued to manage the grounds after it opened, and upon his death he was buried in the same cemetery. The first burial in the cemetery was for an eleven-year-old girl in April 1876, Ethel Irene Prichard, possibly of a wealthy family, which were later buried alongside her. Her burial occurred while the cemetery was still unfinished and was not consecrated yet. It was officially opened and consecrated by the Bishop of St Asaph on 3 July 1876. When it opened, Wrexham was said to have lacked a public open space of its own, so was claimed to be "in effect Wrexham's first park".

The cemetery's mortuary was built in the 1930s. In 1994, Cadw designated the chapels as Grade II.

By 1999, the western chapel (to the left of the cemetery entrance) was still used as a chapel, however the eastern chapel (to the right) was used as a gravediggers store.

In 2016 and 2017, restoration works were performed on the cemetery, using £1.2 million in funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The works followed calls for renovation since 2014, and were present on the council's at Risk Register, and subsequently closed prior to restoration. The restoration involved the removal of some trees, notably some poplar and cypress, with some of them being replaced by the winter. The chapel, footpaths and some key monuments were also refurbished, with the chapel being restored. It re-opened in July 2018.

From 2017, the western chapel is used for services, events and education, while the eastern chapel houses the cemetery's reception and research area. The lodge is privately rented.

In 2019, the cemetery's World War II mortuary was discovered, in an overgrown state. It was said to possibly be a tourist attraction due to its preservation and being the "only one of its kind to survive in north Wales".

While the last burial in the cemetery has "not yet taken place", current burials are largely limited to using existing family or pre-purchased plots, with the cemetery's burial registers accounting for burials between 1876 and 2016. While all records are in a database at the Pentrebychan Crematorium office and the cemetery's office. There were only a few plots remaining in the cemetery, when its replacement, Pandy's Plas Acton cemetery opened in 2009.

In March 2024, the cemetery's maintenance group "Friends of Wrexham Cemetery" had organised an Easter egg hunt in the cemetery to encourage local, in particular younger, people to be interested in genealogy and visit the cemetery. However, following backlash for organising the event in a cemetery, it cancelled the event "to safeguard the young people" that were expected to take part.

Description
The Victorian cemetery occupies a rectangular area in the western peripheries of Wrexham, next to the B5099 and A5152 roads, and the Great Western Railway (now the Shrewsbury–Chester line) to its west. It is located on gently rolling terrain. It is also surrounded by housing on its southern and eastern side, a college to the north, and an industrial estate to its west. Wat's Dyke, a scheduled monument, transverses the cemetery, following one of its internal paths, and was originally the cemetery's western boundary.

The cemetery is 7.2 ha in area, and is the main burial site of Wrexham. It can be divided into two sections, a "Victorian section" and a more modern section, divided by access paths.

Since it opened in 1876, 39,000 burials were performed at the site, with around 100 burials annually. Although as of 2023, no "new graves" are performed at the site, instead they are at Plas Acton cemetery, opened in 2009 near Pandy. The cemetery was originally 10 acre in size, from behind its chapel.

The cemetery had the layout of a public garden, containing curved and straight paths. It contained ornamental trees and shrubs, of both coniferous and deciduous, such as poplars, limes, acacia, horse chestnut, ash, oak, beech, weeping willow, cherry, pine, yew, and cypress. The cemetery is laid to grass, with older graves being kerbed, while newer sections are laid in rows. It was designed by Yeaman Strachan, who used the "Gardenesque style" of John Claudius Loudon, using geometric and symmetrical planting. Its pathways were aimed to allow visitors to "tak[e] the air", a common leisurely outdoors pastime of the Victorian era.

The cemetery's burial pattern was laid out based on social class, a representative of the importance it had in the Victorian era. First-class graves, were designed to face onto and perpendicular to the pathways; or be on high ground, or in prominent corners. They were usually in the form of large memorials, sometimes with statues. Second-class graves were directly behind the first-class, while third-class were in the centre of the sections. The cemetery also had some public graves, usually unmarked or with small headstones, containing up to 20 burials for families who could not afford a private burial spot. Eventually, the organised pattern of burials adhering to the original plan was not maintained when space became limited, with newer burials occurring wherever space was available.

Its main entrance is located on its south side, and is set back from the road. Its main and side gates are made of cast iron and flaked by stone piers. Just inside the gates is a small tarmacked forecourt, which is situated in front of two linked gothic chapels, in another design of Turner's.

The cemetery's chapel, lodge, gates, gate piers and railings were built in 1874–1876, and are all grade II listed structures. While the cemetery itself is registered as part of the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales.

The Friends of Wrexham Cemetery is a volunteer group established to maintain the cemetery.

Gates and memorials
The gates are aligned with the principal axis of the cemetery's chapels, while the original railings close the cemetery to the gates' east to Empress Road. The main gates have a pedestrian gate either side, and quadrant flanked railings with terminal piers. It is not clear who designed the railings and the gates, with them possibly being attributed to either Yeaman Strachan, Borough Surveyor of Wrexham who designed the layout, or William Turner, who designed the chapels, the lodge, and possibly the main entrance.

The cemetery's gate piers are made of ashlar and have a rusticated stone plinth wall, while the gates and railings are made of cast iron. The railings have trefoiled heads and quatrefoil bands from the top and the bottom. Terminal piers are present on the quadrant railings flanking the pedestrian gates. The gate piers are similar to the outer piers, which have raking copings and recessed panels, which are enriched with trefoiled spandrels. Although the gate piers have trefoiled panels instead. There is a plainer terminal pier at angle with Empress Road, while intermittent stone piers and scrolled-panelled plain railings are in set intervals along the cemetery's boundary with Empress Road.

There are two memorials in the cemetery, dedicated to local fatalities while actively serving in the British and Commonwealth armed forces. The 64 graves linked to World War I, were not grouped together, so are scattered around the cemetery, with a designated section only being established by World War II. There a designated section maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission containing 100 graves, and another memorial near the cemetery's entrance to specifically Polish service personnel, fighting alongside British forces in World War II. The Polish War Memorial is the resting place of 1200 Polish people, 40 of which were Polish servicemen.

Chapels
The grade II-listed Wrexham Cemetery Chapels are located just behind the Ruabon Road gates to the cemetery. They were designed by William Turner in the Gothic style and built in 1874. They are a set of two symmetrical chapels which are joined to each other by a central archway with a spire-topped tower. The heavily moulded archway in gable, is set against the tower's base, which has clasping buttresses and paired Early English bell chamber lights. The tower has a heavy broach spire, containing two pierced quatrefoils bands and cross finials. The chapels have long-wall entry plans and were built with random rock-faced rubble, containing ashlar dressings and terracotta crested banded slate roofs. They are of three bays, each divided by buttresses, and each containing a foiled single light window. There are small vestries which project from the chapel's inner sides, while there are paired windows to the east. They also each have a three-light east (liturgical) window in geometrical tracery.

The two chapels are an archetype of a Victorian cemetery's goal to cater to both anglicans and non-conformists. The western chapel is declared by the Anglican church to be sacred or holy, while the eastern chapel is protestant but does not conform to the governance of any established Church.

Lodge
Just inside the main entrance to the cemetery is a small two-storey stone lodge. The lodge was designed by local architect William Turner. It was built as a superintendent's residence and office. The lodge's exterior is made of rock-faced random rubble, containing ashlar dressings and terracotta crested banded slate roofs and finials. The lodge is in a L-plan with a gabled porch in angle with its left hand wing. Its doorway is shallow and segmentally arched, and there are pierced bargeboards to the porch gable. It has three-light wood mullioned and transomed windows, with each floor of the left wing having small upper panes, and a half-hipped roof over. In the north-facing gable and rear there are also some small upper panes. The lodge has axial and end wall stacks. The cemetery office is located on the lodge's ground floor, with it also housing two reception rooms downstairs, and a bathroom and two bedrooms upstairs. The lodge is privately rented.

Mortuary
The cemetery's mortuary is set at a right angle and above the level with Ruabon Road, on the western side of the cemetery's entrance gates, and can be reached through double-boarded gates in the cemetery wall. The mortuary has an associated forecourt bounded by simple concrete retaining walls and railings on the upper, north side, with concrete steps leading to the forecourt from the double-boarded gates.

The building is a brick structure with a single-storey. Its roof is made of diamond-pattern slates, although some were replaced with similar asbestos-cement slates. The building's front faces east, while the north gable end and western rear walls of the building are built into a steep slope. The building's openings have cambered brick heads and its windows have stone sills. The building's front has a doorway on its left, possibly double doors, and a two-pane sash window to its right, although missing the lower sash. Both the doorway and the window were protected by steel shutters when inspected by Cadw. There was a single small window at the southern gable end.

The building's interior comprises two rooms. The first room, accessed from its entrance, contains two coffin slabs on brick bases, located against the room's corners. While the other room contains a ceramic mortuary slab, with a drain hole, and attached to the wall is a ceramic double-basin. The interior's floor is made of concrete with integral draining gullies. Cadw attributed its listed designation to it being a rare example of a mid-20th century mortuary that was very-well preserved and associated with World War II.

It was built in the 1930s, and while on the grounds of the cemetery, it was not directly associated with it. The mortuary instead served the Wrexham and East Denbighshire War Memorial Hospital, with many fatalities from World War II being taken to the mortuary, including both British and enemy aircrew. After the war, the mortuary was apparently closed, with the building disused since. The mortuary was largely forgotten, until it was rediscovered in 2019.