The Anglican Bath Abbey Cemetery, officially dedicated as the Cemetery of St Peter and St Paul (the patron saints that Bath Abbey is dedicated to), was laid out by noted cemetery designer and landscape architect John Claudius Loudon (1783–1843) between 1843 and 1844 on a picturesque hillside site overlooking Bath, Somerset, England.
The cemetery was consecrated on 30 January 1844. It was a private Anglican cemetery financed by W. J. Broderick, Rector of Bath Abbey.
The cemetery is on a site that was used for Roman burials, three stone coffins and Roman coins dating to Constantine the Great and Carausius having been found when the roadway to the chapel was constructed.[2] In 1952 a further Roman coffin was discovered during the removal of a tree root from a footpath.[3][4]
The eccentric William Thomas Beckford was originally buried here, but moved when his former retreat of Lansdown Tower came under threat of becoming a pleasure garden and was transformed into Lansdown Cemetery in the parish of Walcot. "The best monuments are slightly neo-Grecian with canopied tops, dating from the 1840s. Note that to S. M. Hinds d.1847 signed Reeves, the Bath firm of Monumental masons, that flourished from c.1778 to 1860…."[1]
The cemetery and mortuary chapel are Grade II* listed.[5][6][7] 37 monuments in the cemetery are Grade II or II* listed.[8][9] A general trend is that the most elaborate monuments belong to individuals formerly residing at the most exclusive addresses. An interesting trend seems that clerics get Gothic Revival style monuments and military men typically get Greek Revival style monuments.[1]
The Roman Catholic Perrymead Cemetery is adjacent to Bath Abbey Cemetery.[10][11]
Mortuary chapel
The three-bay double-height chapel was built in 1844 to designs by George Phillips Manners in the Norman Revival architectural style with a prominent west tower over a three-sided open porch / porte cochere. The chapel is built above a crypt and was planned to be flanked by open cloister wings containing a columbarium and loculi. Ever since the cemetery's closure, the chapel has also been closed and is in a deteriorating condition.[1] It was listed Grade II historic building on 5 August 1975,[7] but is now Grade II* listed.[6] It remains owned by Bath Abbey, although a lease or sale was considered to Bath's Orthodox church, which never materialized.
List of prominent memorials
Crimean War Memorial, c. 1855, an obelisk memorial of polished stone designed in the Greek Revival style.[1]
Robert Scott of 3 Duke Street, St James, c. 1861, a white marble memorial designed in the Gothic Revival style[1]
Elizabeth Hunt of 72 Pulteney Street, c. 1846, a polished stone obelisk designed in the Gothic Revival style[1]
Robert Harvey Forsmann of St Petersburg (records infant death), of 15 Bennet Street, Walcot, a white marble memorial designed in the Greek Revival style[1]
Doverton Chalmers Greetree Swan of Island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) (records infant death) of 36 Pulteney, a white marble memorial designed in the Greek Revival style[1]
John Gill (also Louise Gicnac) of 14 Bathwick Street, c. 1851, a white marble memorial designed in the Greek Revival style[1]
Gen. Paul Anderson of 10 Paragon Buildings, a polished stone memorial designed in the Greek Revival style[1]
Joseph Chaning Pearce of Montague House. Lambridge, c. 1847 (House became a museum to his 200 fossil collection), a polished pink granite, and polished stone plinth, designed in the Greek Revival style (Signed Rogers of Bath)[1]
Julius Hall of 45 Pulteney Street, c. 1869, a white marble memorial obelisk designed in the Gothic Revival style[1]
Charles Pratt of Combe Grove Manor, c. 1844, a white marble mini temple memorial designed in the Greek Revival style[1]
Henry John Sharpe, Merchant of New York, of Royal Hotel, St James, Doric Column on Pediment WM- designed in the Greek Revival style (Signed by Treasure Mason)[1]
John Collingridge of 57 Pulteney Street, c. 1855, a memorial designed in the Greek Revival style[1]
James Weeks Williams of 6 Claremont Place, Walcot, c.1848, a marble classical revival mini temple (signed White)[1] "The Williams Memorial[12] is a white marble miniature open Greek temple raised up on a penant stone pedestal. Four painted sets of fluted columns with lotus and acanthus leaf capitals support a canopy over a draped urn flashed by an angel and a female mowner. The equally elaborate inscription is to Jane Wiliams who died at her residence, 17 Kensington Place, Bath, in 1848 aged 88. One side of the base commemorates 17-year-old Henry Williams, ‘who by accidentally falling off the West India docks in a dense London fog was unfortunately drowned’ in 1853."[13] (Listed II*)[9]
Stothert (Family) of Hay Hill, c. 1855, a polished stone memorial designed in the Greek Revival style[1]
??daria Lady Hargood of Royal Crescent, c. 1849, a memorial designed in the Gothic Revival style[1]
Elizabeth Ingram of 11 South Parade, c. 1845, a memorial designed in the Norman Revival architectural style
Samuel Maxwell Hinds of 7 Raby Place, a white marble memorial designed in the Greek Revival style (signed Reeves)
Mary Ann Hunter of 7 Edward Street, c. 1869, a white marble cross memorial designed in the Gothic Revival style
Robert Neale of Butt Ash Cottage, Widcombe, c. 1873, a white marble obelisk designed in the Gothic Revival style
^"Bath". The land we live in, a pictorial and literary sketch-book of the British Islands, with descriptions of their more remarkable features and localities. 1856.
^Barry W. Cunliffe, ed. (1979), Excavations in Bath, 1950–1975, Committee for Rescue Archaeology in Avon, Gloucestershire and Somerset, ISBN9780904918038
