Nottingham Road Cemetery, Derby (1855): A Historic Victorian Cemetery

Description

Nottingham Road Cemetery (1855) is Derby’s greatest Victorian cemetery. This tour explores how and why it was created and how it changed.

Nottingham Road Cemetery, Derby (1855) and the Development of Victorian Garden and Arboretum Cemeteries: A Guided Tour

Like many growing industrial and manufacturing centres, Derby faced problems by the early nineteenth century associated with overcrowded churchyards and the burial of the dead. Rising population, and fears about the spread of disease, fuelled these concerns. To take the pressure off overcrowded parish graveyards, new specially-designed burial grounds were created. Many were inspired by the garden and arboretum cemetery movement which associated the new type of burial ground with beautiful public walks and parks. However, the design and management of these new cemeteries caused some controversy and faced opposition from those who believed places for the dead should remain sacred, associated with churches, not be designed like pleasure parks, and never run as businesses. This tour explores the greatest of Derby’s Victorian garden cemeteries on Nottingham Road. It examines how and why the cemetery was created, how it was designed and planted and how social class and religious divisions shaped these elements. We will consider the religious, landscape gardening and civic ideas which inspired it, and how and why the cemetery changed through time (including the addition of extensions), examining these within the context of the development of Victorian urban burial grounds more broadly.

The tour will cover the historic parts of the cemetery and take place on 17 June 2026, lasting for an hour and half (including opportunities for questions). It will begin outside the main entrance lodge, Nottingham Road Cemetery (DE21 6FN) at 2PM and conclude back there at 3.30PM.