2016

Our colleagues from Victoria Cross Trust have helped us with a number of tasks within Hyde Park Cemetery over the past couple of years. For example, they cleaned the stonework for Patrick Stirling’s grave restoration in 2015.  Yesterday, the Victoria Cross Trust paid another visit to the cemetery and, for the second time, cleaned the Cross of Sacrifice. They used their state of the art DOFF stone-cleaning system, as used and approved by Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Here are two photos taken before the cleaning and two taken after it.

When Hyde Park Cemetery’s former Lodge and entrance arch were bought by Adrian Welch, of Adrian Welch Glass & Glazing, in May 2014, the Lodge was it an extremely poor state. Although a temporary roof had been installed ten years earlier, the stonework was crumbling and the interior was bare. Thanks to Adrian’s vision and substantial investment, the exterior of the Lodge has been restored back to its former glory and the interior is now being fitted out.The arch has been under-pinned and its apex removed to ensure long-term stability. All this has been done within the added constraints of Listed Building status.

In a matter of a few weeks, we understand that tenants will be moving in to the two apartments that have been created in the 1855 Lodge, marking a new beginning for this historic structure.

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The Commonwealth War Grave Commission is responsible for the upkeep of 108 war graves at Hyde Park Cemetery. 82 of them date from WW1 and 26 from WW2. In order to discharge their responsibilities, CWGC makes regular visits to the cemetery. Today was one such occasion.

Today has been quite a day. As a result of an extremely generous donation by a Doncaster couple who wish to remain anonymous, the Friends are in a position to start installing new railings in to New Street boundary. You may recall that the wall along this boundary has recently been repaired by Doncaster Council, to meet their safety obligations.

Following a lengthy process of coming up with a suitable design, which blends with the existing railings on the Carr House Road boundary, while being more economical to manufacture, the Friends applied for planning permission and Listed Building Consent. Both these were granted earlier this year, allowing us start the procurement process. Today we have placed an order with local company, Thorndell Engineering Limited, to manufacture and install eight bays of railings. All being well, the new railings will be in position by the end of November.

We shall post updates here as work progresses.

The Friends of Hyde Park Cemetery had a steady stream of visitors to their stand at last Saturday’s Family & Local History Fair, organised by the Doncaster & District Family History Society. Our Secretary, Helen, and Treasurer, Margaret were on hand to answer visitors’ questions and promote our group’s activities. The Fair saw a larger attendance than last year, with visitors arriving all through the day, from the 10am start to the 4pm finish. Our Grave Finder Service was a particular subject of interest.

Yesterday’s Guided Walk, entitled “Doncaster’s Great & Good” was one of our most successful ever. Held in association with Heritage Open Days and the St Leger Festival, the walk attracted about 30 visitors. Many of them had never visited the cemetery before, so it was great to introduce them to this local history gem.

We shall be running more Guided Walks next year. Please keep checking our Events page for details.

We have just added a large number of images to the Gallery page of this website. We hope you like them. By clicking on any image it will be enlarged. You can then scroll through all images at the larger size.

Please let us know if you would like to see images of other particular subjects from Hyde Park Cemetery.

On the evening of Sunday 21 August, a pendant was found in the cemetery, near to one of the benches. If you have lost such item and you think that this may be yours, please contact us with a brief description of the pendant. All being well we shall be able to re-unite the rightful owner with their property.

We have recently obtained this photograph, showing the road junction immediately adjacent to the cemetery main entrance. It dates from the mid-1960s, before the dual carriageway of Carr House Road was extended to Balby Bridge. The north-east corner of the cemetery can be seen on the extreme left of the photograph. The street to the right of the corner shop was Cemetery Road: what remains of this street today is named Milton Walk. The road ahead was Green Dyke Lane and the road on the extreme left foreground is Carr Lane. The top of the railings surrounding the Corporation School can just been seen in the bottom left corner. These premises are now occupied by Adrian Welch Glass & Glazing.

For some reason, one of our benches seems to be prone to graffiti attacks and yet the others are untouched. The bench at the high point in the cemetery, facing towards the former chapels from Section B, has been vandalised this way on at least three occasions. This latest incident took place some time between last Saturday lunchtime and Sunday afternoon. Two of our volunteers cleaned off the offensive lettering on Tuesday. The lettering was in the Polish language, but we have nonetheless blurred the image on the left so as not to cause offence to Polish speakers. The image on the right shows the restored bench.