2018

Please visit this link to read our latest newsletter outlining some of our activities over the past few months.

Click here to view the –  Newsletter summer/autumn 2018

Alternatively this and our past newsletters can be viewed on the downloads – click here to view

We have come to the end of a week in which two groups of young people on the National Citizen Service (NCS) scheme have carried out excellent work in Hyde Park Cemetery. Their activities have included rejuvenating shrub beds, weeding, mulching with wood-chip, litter picking, raising tree canopies and general tidying and gardening. Here is a selection of images of the groups and their work.

One of the lovely things about being involved with Friends of Hyde Park Cemetery is when we help people to find the graves of their loved ones. This often also leads to revealing information about their family history that they were unfamiliar with. Today, the cemetery was visited by a lady who now lives near Nashville, Tennessee, whose grandmother is buried at Hyde Park Cemetery. We had the privilege of showing her the grave where not only her grandmother was laid to rest, but also her infant aunt (d.1931, aged 2yrs).

Today we welcomed the first of this year’s groups of youngsters undertaking the National Citizen Service (NCS) programme during the school summer holidays. This is the fifth consecutive year of NCS groups volunteering in Hyde Park Cemetery and all groups have produced valuable results over that time. We shall look forward to reporting on this year’s activities.

Following on from our previous post, we can report an improvement in the bin situation. Thank you those at Doncaster Council and Suez Recycling and Recovery for responding. The burnt out bin at New Street has been removed and the area tidied. A new bin now sits there. The bins near to the other gates were emptied a few days ago.

Please note that the dedicated bins for dog waste have now been removed. Placing bagged dog waste in the large wheeled bins has been permitted for some time, so the dog bins were unnecessary. All the large bins now carry signs to say that litter and dog waste can be placed in them.

We shall continue to monitor the situation.

We are currently experiencing severe problems regarding the bins in the cemetery! Four weeks ago, the large wheeled bin near to New Street was set alight and destroyed. (A similar incident occurred with the Green Dyke Lane bin last year). Despite it being reported by ourselves via the correct channels on the day of discovery, it had not been attended to by the time of our last inspection yesterday. The loss of one large bin has exacerbated the issue of overflowing bins elsewhere in the cemetery.

We have been in regular contact with the site’s owner/operator, Doncaster Council Bereavement Services, and they are doing what they can to resolve the matter. However, action is needed by other departments, who manage the waste collections. We are continuing to monitor the situation and to press for action.

Problems such as this set back our cause significantly. We have striven for years to make Hyde Park Cemetery a welcoming, tidy and pleasant place to visit. The current problems can cause immense harm to the reputation of the cemetery and to our group. We are doing everything we can to ensure that those responsible for waste management at the site discharge their responsibilities properly, without further delay.

Helen, our group’s Secretary, ran the first of this years guided walks today (Saturday 24th March 2018), with Phil a long standing friend and volunteer of Friends of Hyde Park Cemetery.

Helen and Phil took a group from the Friends of the Museum around 14 very different grave sites containing individuals who had all led quite unique and fascinating lives, showing the wealth of history contained within the cemetery. The individuals presented included a Mayor, an Actress, a Sports Woman with a Heroic Husband, 2 Chief Constables, a Train Driver killed in a tragic accident and a prominent Railway Steam Engine Designer to name a few.

The consensus, at the conclusion of the walk, was extremely positive and a very enjoyable experience was had by all. Helen was thanked openly for the hard work carried out researching individuals lives and preparing the presentations in her own time, for the benefit of the visitors.

We are running a number of ‘themed’ guided walks this year and if you would like to attend one of these, then please visit our events page for more information.