Public graves at Warstone Lane

[Trisha Hobson]

We have been told that my husbands stillborn sister was buried in Public grave 1 section J of Warstone Lane Cemetary. We found the Slab as in this photo, but were very confused how a child who died in 1955 could have been buried under this slab when everyone else seems to have been buried in 1918! Did they really open up this grave in the mid 1950's and add more bodies?

Yes they did. My late husband's twin brothers were stillborn full term in 1956. They are in public grave J 2 which has
People in who died in 1900 and the last inscription is 1918. It seems really morbid in this day and age but they reopened public graves and added bodies as the years went on.

 

[Key Hill Brian]

Almost ALL of the large Public Graves in Warstone Lane were used 2 and often 3 times, especially around the catacombs and Section P.
Churchyards did it all the time, once an area is full and no longer used, the area is cleared of Headstones (put against walls, oe on paths), the area excavated, All remains kept and reburied in a small area, than whole ground is used again.
No different in a Cemetery - they were running out of spaces, still hot lots of cheaper burials, so reopened the deep vaults, which had rotted down a bit, than filled them up again, and later, again.

Even family plots that had no headstone were re0possed and sold sold again (generally without a mention of a sitting tenant) Occasionally, a relative iof the earlier burial finds their relative and pays for a stone, really confusing relatives of the later burial who find it on the grave of their relative! who was a later burial

The big stones on J allowed people to pay extra to have their names inscribed, but once full, no further names could be added. These vaults can contain several hundred burials from 3 periods of time.