22336

 

II  

Designated  

14/09/1999  

14/09/1999  

Main entrance gate, railings and flanking walls at St Woolos Cemetery  

 

Newport  

Allt-yr-Yn  

 

St Woolos  

329728  

187426  

N  

St Woolos Cemetery is located along the north side of Bassaleg Road. The main gate is prominently situated opposite the junction to Stelvio Park Drive.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

The site was purchased by the Newport Burial Board from Lord Tredegar in February 1854, the first burial being on 18th July of that year. The competition to design the Nonconformist and Anglican Chapels, together with the lodge and gates was won by Johnson and Purdue, architects of London, the buildings completed in November 1855. Towards the middle of the C19, growing urban populations coupled with increased cholera outbreaks meant that many parish churchyards became notoriously unsanitary. In 1850, the government passed the Metropolitan Burial Act, which was extended in 1853 to England and Wales. The purpose of the Acts, which spanned 1850-57 was to ensure that public cemeteries were laid out, bodies buried in a dignified fashion, and that all burials were recorded. The setting out of cemeteries with elaborate gates, lodges and chapels for various denominations had already been initiated by the London-based General Cemetery Company, a private enterprise, which laid out Kensal Green Cemetery 1831-37. Kensal Green received much publicity, fuelling the increasing sentimentality in commemorating the dead. Following the Act of 1853 came a boom in cemetery building, Newport being the first public cemetery in Wales. The Roman Catholics after some difficulty, gained an area on the north side of the cemetery by 1855, but it was not until c. 1880 that they built their own chapel, by which time the Jews had a small separate burial ground immediately to the north of the cemetery. The cemetery was extended to the SW by c. 1880, demarcated by the avenue of pine trees towards the W end of the site, and again in the early C20. The cemetery remains in use, the chapels are now used for storage.  

Tall steeply gabled arched entry of squared red sandstone with Bathstone detail, including quoins and copings. Arch of two orders, the outer with a hollow moulding, the inner dying into the arch at impost level, C14 style. Hoodmould with foliage finial. Empty niche above with crocketted ogee canopy. Pedestrian arch to left with parapet stepped up to centre over tablet containing blank shield. Arches separated by low buttresses, which have gablets with blind trefoils. Main gate has iron gates ramped down to centre. End buttresses stepped down to low wall each side, built of red sandstone with Bathstone chamfered copings: low iron railings with a simple pattern of trefoils within triangles. Walls and railings return each end to the street frontage, terminated by big broach stops, and piers with octagonal upper stages having blind quatrefoils and blunt spirelets.  

 

Listed as a prominent surviving feature of the first public cemetery in Wales.