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Key Hill Cemetery

If you go here https://bmsgh-shop.org.uk/BIRM-Cemeteries you can download a list of Key Hill, Handsworth, Witton and Warstone Lane burials. The reference numbers are for the BMSGH site only and a re not grave references although you can work out if graves were common ones. If you add a bit more info such as dob or death dates and full names people will look for you.
 
hi franny quite possible if they died in that area...they could be buried at warstone lane or key hill cemeteries...they are next to each other..burial records for both are now online here is the link to it...hope you find them please let us know

lyn
https://www.jqrt.org/
 
If you go here https://bmsgh-shop.org.uk/BIRM-Cemeteries you can download a list of Key Hill, Handsworth, Witton and Warstone Lane burials. The reference numbers are for the BMSGH site only and a re not grave references although you can work out if graves were common ones. If you add a bit more info such as dob or death dates and full names people will look for you.
Found him. Many thanks, what a brilliant tool. BTW Windows 10 won't download it, but Google Chrome will.
 
hi franny quite possible if they died in that area...they could be buried at warstone lane or key hill cemeteries...they are next to each other..burial records for both are now online here is the link to it...hope you find them please let us know

lyn
https://www.jqrt.org/
Found him. Many thanks, what a brilliant tool. BTW Windows 10 won't download it, but Google Chrome will.
 
There is an interesting article posted on the Blog...Notes from 19th Century Birmingham, concerning "Mount Misery" a term given to the area at Key Hill and the Cemetery.

https://birminghamhistoryblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/mount-misery/

Donna quotes from Showell's Dictionary of 1885...

"Mount Misery.– At the close of the great war, which culminated at Waterloo, it was long before the blessings of peace brought comfort to the homes of the poor. The first effects of the sheathing of the sword was a collapse in prices of all kinds, and a general stagnation of trade, of which Birmingham made prosperous through the demands for its guns, &c., felt the full force. Bad trade was followed by bad harvests, and the commercial history of the next dozen years is but one huge chronicle of disaster, shops and mills closing fast, and poverty following faster. How to employ hundreds of able-bodied men dependent on the rates, was a continual puzzle to the Overseers, until someone, wise in his generation, hit upon the plan of paying the unfortunates to wheel sand from the bank then in front of Key Hill House up to the canal side, a distance of 1 1/2 miles, the payment being at the rate of one penny per barrow load. This fearful ‘labour test’ was continued for a long time, and when we reckon that each man would have to wheel his barrow backwards and forwards for nearly 20 miles to earn a shilling, moving more than a ton of sand in the process, we cannot wonder at the place receiving such a woeful name as Mount Misery."

I have added as a comment the reference made by Thomas Atwood MP to the Commons in 1834 which has slightly different figures.
 
There is an interesting article posted on the Blog...Notes from 19th Century Birmingham, concerning "Mount Misery" a term given to the area at Key Hill and the Cemetery.

https://birminghamhistoryblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/mount-misery/

Donna quotes from Showell's Dictionary of 1885...

"Mount Misery.– At the close of the great war, which culminated at Waterloo, it was long before the blessings of peace brought comfort to the homes of the poor. The first effects of the sheathing of the sword was a collapse in prices of all kinds, and a general stagnation of trade, of which Birmingham made prosperous through the demands for its guns, &c., felt the full force. Bad trade was followed by bad harvests, and the commercial history of the next dozen years is but one huge chronicle of disaster, shops and mills closing fast, and poverty following faster. How to employ hundreds of able-bodied men dependent on the rates, was a continual puzzle to the Overseers, until someone, wise in his generation, hit upon the plan of paying the unfortunates to wheel sand from the bank then in front of Key Hill House up to the canal side, a distance of 1 1/2 miles, the payment being at the rate of one penny per barrow load. This fearful ‘labour test’ was continued for a long time, and when we reckon that each man would have to wheel his barrow backwards and forwards for nearly 20 miles to earn a shilling, moving more than a ton of sand in the process, we cannot wonder at the place receiving such a woeful name as Mount Misery."

I have added as a comment the reference made by Thomas Atwood MP to the Commons in 1834 which has slightly different figures.

Key Hill House and the Quarry can be seen on the middle and right of the 1888 OS Map...

https://maps.nls.uk/view/115633215
 
Thanks Pedrocut, I knew it was a sand quarry but I hadn't realised it caused so much suffering.
rosie.
 
Nice map - Key Hill House has gone by then, and replaced with the buildings we see today in Key Hill Drive - (Used to be a private drive to a Large house previously) - sold off, demolished and all those houses built in place.
 
Is there are register of who is buried here? My ancestors were non conformists although I do know that some are buried in Witton.
 
Is there are register of who is buried here? My ancestors were non conformists although I do know that some are buried in Witton.
See post 861 above - Registered were photographed and computerised by the Birmingham & Midland Society for Genealogy & Heraldry - bmsgh.org
 
The map below is of 1892-1914 vintage and, as you will see, the cemetery then was not called Key Hill. It's only recently I learned that the area occupied by the cemetery is known as Brookfields which was also the name of the school lower left hand corner, which became Ellen St.
Peg.
Map Key Hill Cemetery.jpg
 
The map below is of 1892-1914 vintage and, as you will see, the cemetery then was not called Key Hill. It's only recently I learned that the area occupied by the cemetery is known as Brookfields which was also the name of the school lower left hand corner, which became Ellen St.
Peg.
View attachment 125614
Key Hill was indeed called The General Cemetery, when it opened - the first of its kind in Birmingham until Warstone Lane C of E Cemetery opened, than called Key Hill as that was where it was to differentiate. Always in Hockley, though. I was always taught Brookfields was after you had gone under the bridge and it was the area on the right bounded by Dudley Road?
 
We often wander around the Jewellery Quarter and found ourselves going in the back way to Key Hill cemetery. I thought it was off Hylton Street but I can't see it on the map. I think we went down an entry and then probably went down Key Hill Drive. Whatever, it was a nice 'old bit' of Birmingham.
 
We often wander around the Jewellery Quarter and found ourselves going in the back way to Key Hill cemetery. I thought it was off Hylton Street but I can't see it on the map. I think we went down an entry and then probably went down Key Hill Drive. Whatever, it was a nice 'old bit' of Birmingham.

I used that route last friday to drop off some jewellery for repairs in Vyse St. Parked in KH opposite rear of Postal Sorting office - stillthe best place to park for free (or in WL). Out the gate, up KH Drive turn at the top (Where Charles Edges house used to be - designer of KH), up the entry ans come out in Hylton st ((Entry still has a plaque above it showing it as a walking route), than back again in reverse to come home. Also dropped off some surplus seeds (Canterbury Bells), from the garden which I have spread around on grave area - hopefully to come up next year. Some leaves have been collected and a bit of the grass mown once this year - the reast has been left and it's growing taller than moany of the headstones at present!
 
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