PGW(Gt)38(NPT)

St. Woolos Cemetery  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Newport  

Allt-yr-Yn  

329434  

187527  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Landscaped garden cemetery.  

1850s; 1949.  

St Woolos cemetery is registered as a well-preserved example of a mid-Victorian landscaped garden cemetery and the first public cemetery in Wales. The original area was laid out in the early 1850s with additions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, extended further in 1949. The registered area has group value with its associated buildings, structures and funerary monuments, including the listed chapels, entrance lodge and entrance gates. St Woolos Cemetery is a large landscaped cemetery of about 85 acres situated on a south-westward facing slope on the western edge of Newport. Following the extension of the Metropolitan Burial Act, in 1853 to England and Wales, the land for St Woolos cemetery was purchased from Lord Tredegar in 1854 and laid out by the Newport Burial Committee. The first burial was that of Able Seaman Cooper on 18th July 1854. Initially, the cemetery extended a short distance to the west of the main entrance. Before the 1880s a further area had been taken in to the south-west, defined by the avenue of pine trees which runs NW-SE towards its west end. The cemetery was further extended in the early twentieth-century, and the grid pattern of grass plots planted with trees and shrubs in the far western part was established in 1949. The cemetery retains its original layout of a grid pattern, softened by a serpentine path that winds through the cemetery between the main entrance gates (LB: 22336) and the entrance gates on the east (LB: 22342). The layout is shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map (1887). Opposite the main entrance the path encircles an area laid out as a War Memorial, originally this circular garden was planted with trees. On either side of it are two funerary chapels, that on the west is the former Nonconformist Chapel (LB: 22338) in Romanesque style and contrasting with the Gothic former Anglican chapel on the east (LB: 22339). The competition to design the Nonconformist and Anglican Chapels, together with the lodge (LB: 22337) and gates was won by Johnson and Purdue, architects of London, the buildings completed in November 1855. A Roman Catholic area on the north side of the cemetery was included by 1855, but it was not until c. 1880 that the Roman Catholic chapel was built (LB: 22340) towards the northern boundary. To its southeast is the former mortuary chapel (LB: 22341). The cemetery is planted informally with trees and shrubs, in particular evergreens. Yew, cypress and pine predominate, with rows of pines along present and former boundaries. The circular garden between the two chapels is flanked by two cedars on the south and two redwoods on the north. Land in the south east corner of Coed Melyn (to the north of the main cemetery) was acquired for the purposes of a Jewish burial ground. The land was a gift from Lord Tredegar in 1859 with the first burial being in 1861. A small hexagonal synagogue stands at the east corner facing onto Risca road. A second door to the rear of the synagogue provides access to the cemetery (a plaque above the door records a date of 1928). This cemetery was supplemented with a new burial ground in 1946, with a small brick Ohel being added by c.1951. A public footpath runs alongside the synagogue and old burial ground to the new one. The synagogue and attached burial ground are situated in an attractive woodland setting. Coed Melyn, is a long established area of woodland (tithe 1841; Ordnance Survey 1887) and appears to have been a place of public recreation since the early twentieth-century when a walk was provided through the woodland with a circular shelter near the centre (O.S 25-inch 1921). Sources: Cadw 1994: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Gwent, p.113 (ref: PGW(Gt)38). Ordnance Survey 6-inch map of Monmouthshire, XXXIII (1887) Ordnance Survey 25-inch map of Monmouthshire, XXXIII.3 (1921)