Cemetery Landscapes and the Changing Face of Death: A Study of Huntingdon’s Priory Road and Primrose Lane
To me, nothing is more personal than death. Cemeteries have evolved to be landscapes for the dead and the living to co-exist, paying respect, and acting as final resting places. Typically, cemeteries are sites used to inter the dead, often featuring markings to identify the placement of their remains. The study of two case studies, the Victorian Priory Road and modern Primrose Lane Cemeteries and their layout, headstones, and site features, will highlight how attitudes towards death have shifted from personal and symbolic representations of the deceased to regulated spaces in an increasingly secular society.
The cemeteries selected for this study are notable for two reasons:
one is an open cemetery, and the other is a closed cemetery. Priory Road Cemetery
was established in the 1850s and was later expanded upon by Robert Hutchinson.[1]
The site is home to a ‘closed’ cemetery, meaning plots are unavailable for
purchase. Meanwhile, Primrose Lane Cemetery, established in November 1982, is
an ‘open’ operating cemetery with plots available for sale and interments regularly
occurring. These contrasting operations of the site allow us insight into past
attitudes towards death and contemporary perspectives.
Both cemeteries act as spaces for the living to interact
with the deceased. By ‘interact,’ I mean the actions of the living, such as
visiting the site or a grave or just walking through the cemetery. Notably, Priory
Road Cemetery is used by members of the public as a shortcut on their walk to
and from the town from the neighbouring houses. The same use as a shortcut is seen
at Primrose Lane, where people walk to their allotments around the site's
perimeter. Location is a crucial factor as to why I have chosen these sites –
they encourage use for both intentional purposes (such as visiting a loved one’s
grave) and unintentional purposes (like passing through).
Layout – The Shift to Regulation
Being opened over a century apart, these two cemeteries
indicate how attitudes to death have shifted. In this section, the study of the
spatial use of each cemetery will help us to build a comprehensive account of
how attitudes to death have been viewed with respect to their sites. As such, differing
attitudes will become apparent through the shifting use of land and its spatial
relationships on these two sites.
Strikingly, both sites are laid out very differently. Priory
Road is more fluid, centring the mortuary chapel, whereas Primrose Lane is
structured in neat rows. Hutchinson’s design sees the graves face a multitude
of directions, and this could be seen as significant considering the chapel's
split. What is important to note about the chapel is that it features both a
conformist and nonconformist side. Victorian England represented the diversity
of English religious practices following the non-conformist religious movements
from the 17th and 18th centuries. Hutchinson’s chapel and
the layout of the graves could, as such, be viewed as a deliberate choice for
the conformists and non-conformists to face their respective chapels even in
death. Contrastingly, Huntingdon Town Council in 1982 designed Primrose Lane to
be standardised with rows in the main section facing towards Priory Road. Whilst
additions to the cemetery site in 2009 saw further expansion into spaces
opposite the allotments, some variation in layout can be seen.[2]
Notably, the orientation of the rows changes in the extension section, and the
layout likely reflects both spatial constraints and consideration for how
visitors move through the site. For example, we can presume that interaction
was a factor for the extension's layout due to the logic it makes for the new
graves to face the current section, having the headstones ‘look’ out to the
visitor instead of away. Organisation was a fundamental consideration for using
space in these cemeteries’ designs.
Furthermore, within each cemetery, there are subdivisions of
organisation that we must take into account. For example, beyond the
orientation of the rows at Primrose Lane, there are also clear square sections
of burial reserved for different groups (see Figure 1). Whilst most of the space
is reserved for adult burial, there is a children’s section, an Islamic faith
section, and a section for the interment of ashes. This is in direct contrast
to the layout of Priory Road, where the sections are of varying sizes and have
almost no distinguishing features. There is also no ashes interment section in
Priory Road. This is important as it highlights how attitudes towards individuals
dealing with the deceased have changed. When Priory Road was opened in 1852, it
wasn’t until the late 19th century that cremations started to become more
widely practised, and it was only added to legislation under the 1902 Cremation
Act.[3]
The variety in the size of sections at Priory Road (see Figure 2) establishes
that spatial use gradually expanded over time. The sites' layout can tell us a
vast amount about the development of attitudes to death, such as interment
practices within Huntingdon in the Victorian and contemporary periods.
Figure 1: Diagram of Primrose Lane Cemetery (drawn in
Microsoft PPT by the author) based on satellite images from Google Maps [https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3339479,-0.1761087,176m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e1?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDUwNS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D]
Figure 2: Diagram of Priory Road Cemetery (drawn in Microsoft
PPT by the author) based on a map from Huntingdon Town Council [https://huntingdoncrematorium.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Notable-People-Leaflet-1.pdf]
Headstones – Personal and Social Markers
One of the most notable features of a cemetery is the types
of headstones present. The distinct styles of headstones across both sites help
us trace how attitudes toward death and commemoration have evolved. In this
section, I examine Commonwealth War Graves at Priory Road, alongside individual
civilian burials at Primrose Lane, to explore how relationships and
representation shape attitudes toward death.
Despite the layout of the sites and their extent of fluidity,
which may show the attitudes of the living towards death, the inclusion of
Commonwealth War Graves suggests some ideas of categorisation at Priory Road. The
Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) was established in 1917 to
commemorate those who died during the First and, later, the Second World Wars. Many
buried in Huntingdon were not locals but service members who died nearby. Local
interments were practical, as it was cheaper and easier to bury them where they
died rather than transport their bodies home. At Priory Road, there are 28
interments from the CWGC.[4]
Whilst not all interments are located in one section, most are in a section of
the top left of the cemetery. These graves are particularly well-maintained and
ordered. This could suggest that the CWGC influenced how grave space must be
used for such military graves, ordered and in line with their regulations (Figure
3). However, as Kelleher has convincingly argued, the placement of family
memorials undermines the CWGC’s overall belief that it had control of all
military graves, with some families placing their style of markers, as can be
viewed in Huntingdon.[5]
Yet, based on her study alone, Kelleher’s
thesis focuses solely on the First World War, limiting how far her argument
accounts for changing attitudes across the full twentieth century. As such, we
must consider the layout of the cemeteries and their integration of public
opinions, such as familial grave markers, in our analysis of changing
attitudes. Over time, cemeteries can be seen to reflect evolving attitudes
toward death through the interplay of layout and physical features like
headstones — vessels for personal memory and mourning.
Figure 3: One section of CWGC graves at Priory Road
Cemetery. This section shows both family memorials and CWGC-style ones. (Photo
by D. Cushman, 2021)
Historians have widely studied headstones. They act as
markers of permanence and status and reflect the buried individual.[6]
Beckham's study of York cemetery highlights the ability to study gravestones as
a source material for differing attitudes through their typology, size,
material, and profile shape.[7]
Due to the Council regulations of grave markers in Primrose Lane, Beckham’s approach
can only be applied in a limited form for our study. Huntingdon Town Council
has dictated that only “simple headstone type[s]” may be used at Primrose Lane.[8]
Substantially limiting the range of designs which can be used to commemorate
the deceased. Meanwhile, at Priory Road, there is greater diversity of grave
markers – from simple headstones to kerbed headstones to large ornate sculptures.
Notably, graves like that of Walter Coote in Priory Road show how the status of
an individual can be inferred through their grave marker (Figure 4). Whilst
little is known about Coote’s status in life, we can infer from the grandeur of
the marker, which includes a highly decorated Celtic cross and border, that to
his family, who buried him in 1890, remembrance after death was a significant
duty. The grandeur of such a marker
would be visible to those passing it. Thus, headstones act as key markers of
attitudes towards death.
Figure 4: Grave marker of Walter Coote, buried in
Huntingdon’s Priory Road cemetery, died 25th March 1890 (Photo by
the author, 2021)
For Victorian society, death was an important social event. Markers
were crafted as performative art to represent individuals' status or to
fabricate a status for them.[9]
It provided society with ample opportunity to spend money on funerary culture
to give their loved ones a respectable funeral in such a religiously charged
period.
However, headstones are limited as a source for
understanding attitudes towards commemorating death. As already touched on,
Huntingdon Town Council has significant regulations for the styles of grave
markers permitted in sites like Primrose Lane. This limits how families commemorate
the deceased, as they must adhere to the rules. Unlike the earlier variety of headstones
seen in Priory Road, Primrose Lane has a much smaller array due to the
restrictions on size. The argument that we can infer attitudes through how
large a headstone is, as Buckham argues, is far more complex than ‘big headstone
means big status in life and a need to commemorate this in death.’ Headstones
can only tell us so much about attitudes, such as preservation of status. Priory
Road and the example of Walter Coote suggest a sense of social importance being
preserved through the location of the grave, near the path, and through the size
of the marker. This is more so the case in Priory Road but not in Primrose
Lane, where one could go as far as to argue that headstones here act more as
markers than social commemorative pieces. Judgment of attitudes must, therefore,
be considered within the context given of the site, period and society in
question.
Whilst headstones invite reflections on the public
expressions of loss, they do not reflect on the private grief that may also be
experienced. The graves at Priory Road are interesting to consider in this
context. These graves vary significantly in size, presence and location across
the site. Rows of graves with more substantial markers are seen closer to the
paths, and perhaps wish to gain visitors' attention to the site. However, when
placed, these graves were a symbol of status and a sign of familial grief. They
became markers of loved ones' representations of the individual, and prominent
signs for when their families visited. Over time, their families would have
died out, and as such, we must ask ourselves how often we attend the graves of
our loved ones today. In my case, I live about five hours away from the graves
of my maternal grandparents, and so the answer is typically annually. As such,
the perception and reception of graves can be inferred to shift over time.
The differentiation of markers themselves highlights the
complexity of attitudes towards death. Headstones act as commemorative pieces
for the deceased to be recognised and for their family to visit them. As such,
it can be argued that headstones are crucial markers of attitudes towards death.
Features of the Sites
It would be unthinkable to neglect the presence of key
features of the sites, such as chapels. At Primrose Lane, there is no such
chapel; only Priory Road features one (Figure 5). Robert Hutchinson designed it,
and as I have shown above, featured both a conformist and non-conformist side.
Religion was more of a focal point in the landscape of Priory Road than at
Primrose Lane. It was encompassed through the presence of such a chapel. Almost
as if the presence played into the strong religious ideals of the Victorian
period, compared to the contemporary attitudes in which religion plays less of
a significant part in societal actions, such as the performative actions towards
death. This would support the argument for societal attitudes towards death
shifting in this period due to the presence of a religious focal point and then
the later design not featuring one. Thus, through developments to religious
structures and their presence in the cemetery landscape, attitudes towards
death have developed within Huntingdon.
To conclude, cemeteries are vital spaces for encompassing
the relationship between the living and the dead. They act as spaces of
commemoration and reflection, and sometimes as everyday spaces. Huntingdon’s
two cemeteries, as used in this post, highlight the changing attitudes towards
death in the Victorian and then later 20th and early 21st
centuries. Space, its use, and the markers present in space can all be combined
to understand the importance of death within society. Whilst earlier cemeteries
used space to indicate the significance of individuals and solidified this
through their choice of markers, later cemeteries were regulated and reduced in
their ability to represent the deceased through various marker sizes and
positioning. Thus, two cemeteries facing one another highlight how attitudes
have shifted over time.
Figure 5: Priory Road Mortuary Chapel (Photo by
author, 2021)
[2]
Petition for consecration of an extension of Primrose Lane Cemetery in
Huntingdon in the County of Cambridge, 21st April 2009, Huntingdon
Crematorium and Cemetery, Huntingdon Town Council, (Ref 7151/PFBB/ISB)
[3]
Cremation Act 1902, 2 Edw. 7c. 8. Available at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Edw7/2/8
[4]
Unknown., (Undated)., Huntingdon Priory Road, https://www.cwgc.org/visit-us/find-cemeteries-memorials/cemetery-details/2077680/huntingdon-priory-road-cemetery/
[5] M.
E. Kelleher, The Commemoration and Care of First World War Dead Buried in
the United Kingdom through the lens of Organisational Culture of the Imperial
War Graves Commission, 1917-1939 (PhD Thesis, University of Kent, November
2022), p.97
[6] S.
Buckham, ‘Commemoration as an expression of personal relationships and group
identities: a case study of York cemetery.’ Mortality, 8 (2), p.161
[7]
Ibid., p.164
[8] Unknown.,
(Undated)., Huntingdon Cemeteries. https://huntingdoncrematorium.co.uk/hutingdon-cemeteries/
[9]
Parker Pearson, 1982; Cannon, 1986; Mackay, 1989; Mytum, 1993, 1994; Tyson 1994,
in, S. Buckham, ‘Commemoration as an expression of personal relationships and
group identities: a case study of York cemetery.’ Mortality, 8 (2), p.165
Thank you to Elliott for proofreading.
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