Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T06:07:02.003Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Landscapes of memory: The nineteenth-century garden cemetery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Sarah Tarlow
Sarah Tarlow*
Affiliation:
School of Archaeological Studies, University of Leicester, UK
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

During the 1820s, 1830s and 1840s, garden cemeteries were founded in most cities in Britain. Their characteristic appearance owes much to a British tradition of naturalistic landscape design but has particular resonances in the context of death and mourning in the nineteenth century. This article considers some of the factors that have been significant in the development of the British landscape cemetery, including public health, class relationships and foreign influences (particularly that of Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris). It is argued that none of these things explains the popularity of this particular form of cemetery in Britain; rather, the garden cemetery offered an appealing and appropriate landscape for remembering the dead and mediating the relationship between the dead and the bereaved.

Entre les années 1820 et 1940, les cimeères-jardin étaient communs dans la plupart des grandes villes anglaises. Leur apparence caractéristique doit beaucoup à une tradition britannique de paysagisme naturaliste, qui a une résonnance toute particulière dans le contexte de la mort et du deuil au 19ème siècle. Cet article fait la revue de certains facteurs considérés avoir une signification particulière pour le développement du paysage des cimetières anglais, y compris l'idée de la santé publique, des relations de classes et des influences étrangères (tout particulièrement celle du Père Lachaise à Paris). Aucun de ces éléments ne peuvent individuellement expliquer la popularité de cette forme particulière de cimetière en Angleterre. Il semble plutôt que le cimetière-jardin offrait un paysage approprié et qui se prêtait a la commémoration des morts et agissait donc comme médiateur entre les décédés et les personnes en deuil.

Zusammenfassung

Zusammenfassung

Währen der 1820er, 30er und 40er Jahre wurden in den meisten Städten Großbritanniens Garten-Friedhöfe eingerichtet. Ihre charakteristische Erscheinung verdankt sich einer britischen Tradition des naturalistischen Landschaftsdesigns, hat aber eine besondere Resonanz im Kontext von Tod und Trauer im neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Dieser Artikel betrachtet einige der Faktoren, die als signifikant für die Entwicklung des britischen Landschafts-Friedhofs erachtet wurden, wozu öffentliche Gesundheit, Klassenbeziehungen und auswärtige Einflüsse gehören (besonders jene des Friedhofs Père Lachaise in Paris). Es wird argumentiert, dass keines dieser Elemente die Beliebtheit dieser besonderen Form des Friedhofs in Großbritannien erklärt; vielmehr bot der Garten-Friedhof eine ansprechende und geeignete Landschaft für das Totengedenken und die Vermittlung der Beziehungen zwischen Toten und Hinterbliebenen.

Keywords

deathemotiongarden cemeteriesmemorynineteenth century
Type
Articles
Information
European Journal of Archaeology , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , 2000 , pp. 217 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 Sage Publications 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aries, P., 1981. The Hour of Our Death (trans. Weaver, H.) London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Boore, E., 1985. Excavations at St Augustine the Less, Bristol, 1983–4. Bristol Avon Archaeology 4:21–33.Google Scholar
Brooks, C., 1989. Burying Tom Sawyer: heroism, class and the Victorian cemetery. Victorian Society Annual: 4–20.Google Scholar
Buckham, S., 1999. ‘The men that worked for England they have their graves at home’: consumerist issues within the production and purchase of gravestones in Victorian York. In Tarlow, S. and West, S. (eds), The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of Later Historical Britain: 199–214. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Campbell, C., 1987. The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cannon, A., 1989. The historical dimension in mortuary expressions of status and sentiment. Current Anthropology 30:437–458.Google Scholar
Colley, L., 1992. Britons, Forging the Nation 1707–1837. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Curl, J.S., 1972. The Victorian Celebration of Death. Newton Abbot: David and Charles.Google Scholar
Curl, J.S., 1975. The architecture and planning of the nineteenth-century cemetery. Garden History 3(3):13–41.Google Scholar
Curl, J.S., 1980. A Celebration of Death. London: Batsford.Google Scholar
Curl, J.S., 1983. John Claudius Loudon and the garden cemetery movement. Garden History 11(2):133–156.Google Scholar
Curl, J.S., 1984. The design of early British cemeteries. Journal of Garden History 4(3):223–254.Google Scholar
Douglas, M., 1966. Purity and Danger. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Ellison, P., 1993. 18th- and 19th-century gravestones: having the last word. In Carver, M. (ed.), In Search of Cult: Archaeological Investigations in Honour of Philip Rahtz: 193–200. Woodbridge: Baydell Press.Google Scholar
Etlin, R., 1984a. The Architecture of Death: the Transformation of the Cemetery in Eighteenth-Century Paris. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Etlin, R., 1984b. Père Lachaise and the garden cemetery; Journal of Garden History 4(3):211–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Francaviglia, R., 1971. The cemetery as an evolving cultural landscape. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 61(3):501–509.Google Scholar
French, S., 1975. The cemetery as cultural institution: the establishment of Mount Auburn and the ‘rural cemetery’ movement. In Stannard, D. (ed.), Death in America: 69–91. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Haden, F., 1875. Earth to Earth: A Plea for a Change of System in our Burial of the Dead. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Jalland, P., 1996. Death in the Victorian Family. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, M., 1993. Housing Culture: Traditional Architecture in an English Landscape. London: University College London Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, M., 1996. An Archaeology of Capitalism. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Jupp, P., 1990. From Dust to Ashes: The Replacement of Burial by Cremation in England 1840–1967, congregational lecture, 1990. London: Congregation Memorial Hall Trust.Google Scholar
Jupp, P., 1997. Introduction. In Jupp, P. and Howarth, G. (eds), The Changing Face of Death: Historical Accounts of Death and Disposal: 1–17. Basingstoke: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Laqueur, T., 1993. Cemeteries, religion and the culture of capitalism. In Garnett, J. and Matthew, C. (eds), Revival and Religion Since 1700: Essays for John Walsh: 183–200. London and Rio Grande: Hambledon Press.Google Scholar
Leone, M., 1988. The Georgian order as the order of merchant capitalism in Annapolis, Maryland. In Leone, M. and Potter, P. (eds), The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States: 235–261. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Loudon, J.C., 1843. On the Laying Out, Planting and Managing of Cemeteries and on the Improvement of Churchyards. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans.Google Scholar
Miller, T., 1852. Picturesque Sketches of London Past and Present. London: Office of the National Illustrated Library.Google Scholar
Mytum, H., 1989. Public health and private sentiment: the development of cemetery architecture and funerary monuments from the eighteenth century onwards. World Archaeology 21(2):283–297.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mytum, H., 1990. A study of Pembrokeshire graveyards: cultural variability in material and language. Bulletin of the CBA Churches Committee 27:6–11.Google Scholar
Pader, E.-J., 1982. Symbolism, Social Relations and the Interpretation of Mortuary Remains. Oxford: BAR S130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker Pearson, M., 1982. Mortuary practices, society and ideology: an ethno-archaeological study. In Hodder, I. (ed.), Symbolic and Structural Archaeology: 99–114. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Penny, N.B., 1974. The commercial garden necropolis of the early nineteenth century and its critics. Garden History 2(3):61–76.Google Scholar
Rahtz, P. and Watts, L., 1983. Wharram Percy: The Memorial Stones of the Churchyard. York: Department of Archaeology, University of York Archaeological Publications, 1.Google Scholar
Reeve, J. and Adams, M., 1993. The Spitalfields Project Vol. 1: Across the Styx. CBA Research Report 85. York: CBA.Google Scholar
Richardson, R., 1987. Death, Dissection and the Destitute. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Rotundo, B., 1984. Mount Auburn: fortunate co-incidences and an ideal solution. Journal of Garden History 4(3):255–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rugg, J., 1997. The origins and progress of cemetery establishment in Britain. In Jupp, P. and Howarth, G. (eds), The Changing Face of Death: Historical Accounts of Death and Disposal: 105–119. Basingstoke: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rugg, J., 1998a. A new burial form and its meanings: cemetery establishment in the first half of the nineteenth century. In Cox, M. (ed.), Grave Concerns: Death and Burial in England 1700–1850: 44–53. York: CBA.Google Scholar
Rugg, J., 1998b. Researching early-nineteenth-century cemeteries: sources and methods. The Local Historian 28(3):130–144.Google Scholar
Rugg, J., 1998c. ‘A few remarks on modern sepulture’: current trends and new directions in cemetery research. Mortality 3(2):111–118.Google Scholar
Schuyler, D., 1984. The evolution of the Anglo-American rural cemetery: landscape architecture as social and cultural history. Journal of Garden History 4(3):291–304.Google Scholar
Shackel, P., 1993. Personal Discipline and Material Culture: An Archaeology of Annapolis, Maryland, 1695–1870. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Simo, M., 1983. Review essay: John Claudius Loudon and the early nineteenth century in Great Britain. Journal of Garden History 3(1):59–64.Google Scholar
Strang, J., 1831. Necropolis Glasguensis with Osbervations [sic] on Ancient and Modern Tombs and Sepulture. Glasgow: Atkinson.Google Scholar
Taigel, A. and Williamson, T., 1993. Parks and Gardens. London: Batsford.Google Scholar
Tarlow, S., 1999a. Bereavement and Commemoration: An Archaeology of Mortality. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Tarlow, S., 1999b. Wormie clay and blessed sleep: death and disgust in later historical Britain. In Tarlow, S. and West, S. (eds), The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of Later Historical Britain: 183–198. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tegg, W., 1876. The Last Act, Being the Funeral Rites of Nations and Individuals. London: William Tegg and Co.Google Scholar
Walker, G., 1839. Gatherings from Graveyards, Particularly those of London, with a Concise History of the Modes of Interment among Different Nations from the Earliest Periods, and a Detail of Dangerous and Fatal Results Produced by the Unwise and Revolting Custom of Inhuming the Dead in the Midst of the Living. London: Longman and CO.Google Scholar
Williamson, T., 1995. Polite Landscapes: Gardens and Society in Eighteenth-Century England. Stroud: Alan Sutton.Google Scholar