'Guardians of the Dead'
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Hanley Cemetery (or perhaps ‘City Centre Cemetery’, as Jean Ball would no doubt probably prefer) is at the heart of the Potteries, and sits between the Caldon and Trent and Mersey Canals, and alongside Cauldon and Hanley Parks, forms a vital green lung for the urban core of the city. The cemetery is also a resting place for many of the area’s former soldiers.

In the early 1850s a number of prominent local residents proposed that the local authority should provide a park for the growing urban populace. However, the Shelton-based potter John Ridgway argued that provision of a cemetery was more pressing. When the Borough of Hanley was incorporated in 1857, Ridgway was elected its first Mayor and helped to form a Burial Board Committee. The following year, the Borough secured a site in Shelton, and a competition was launched for the laying out of the cemetery grounds and the design of new chapels.

Sixty-five architectural practices from around the country prepared designs, but the competition was won by local architect Henry Ward. Ward followed the cue provided by Hartshill and Longton cemeteries and designed a building that provided two chapels: one for followers of the Church of England, and one for Non-conformists. The cemetery grounds are also divided in a similar manner.

Hanley Cemetery Chapels

Ward was obviously hooked on Gothic at the time, and he followed the development of the Tudor Gothic Brook Street in Stoke with another Gothic masterpiece in the cemetery chapels, constructed of pink sandstone and plain clay tiles.

The cemetery was opened in May 1860, and Ward followed the cemetery and cemetery chapels with Nos. 1 and 2 Cemetery Road – lodges for the Head Sexton and Registrar.

No. 1 Cemetery Road

No. 2 Cemetery Road

The chapel building at Hanley Cemetery – which some consider to be the finest in the city – are in a perilous state, and have fallen victim to the usual public sector neglect, and shameful wanton vandalism. In lieu of a new use, they continue to deteriorate, though the building’s listed status will save it from the fate suffered by the chapels at Tunstall and Burslem cemeteries.

Mindless vandalism, Hanley Cemetery Chapels
note the National Front logo and swastika

Hanley Cemetery forms an important element of the city’s green infrastructure, and such spaces can play an extremely important part in the regeneration of the Potteries, as the image below clearly demonstrates.

Hanley Cemetery from Lock 38,
Countryside Properties’ redevelopment of the former Twyford works at Cliffe Vale Pottery

Other important cemetery buildings can be found in Longton and Hartshill. As with Hanley Cemetery these are listed, but are also in a very poor condition, and are crying out for new sustainable uses. Registrar’s Office, Longton Cemetery   Longton Cemetery Chapels   Hartshill Cemetery Chapels   Hartshill Cemetery Chapels c1900 before the spires were removed due to ‘safety’ reasons

Perhaps the most important ‘death’ building in the Potteries can be found to the south of the city in Trentham, the Sutherland Mausoleum.

Sutherland Mausoleum

The Sutherland Mausoleum is the city’s only Grade I Listed Building, and was built around the turn of the nineteenth century by Charles Heathcote Tatham for the Sutherland family, to a Neo-Egyptian design. The building is constructed of large blocks of ashlar to a plan that Neville Malkin believed was based on the Greek Cross, and it was the final resting place of descendents of the Sutherlands.

Despite the impressive nature of the mausoleum, Malkin described the structure as “sinister-looking”, whilst Pevsner felt that the building’s isolation by the A34 was “a shame”.

Neville Malkin’s sketch of the Sutherland Mausoleum,
from A Grand Tour

By the dawn of the twenty-first century, the building had dramatically deteriorated to a point where it needed urgent repairs. Fortunately, the City Council found the funds to enable the works, and these were matched by English Heritage.

Beautiful postcard painting of the Mausoleum
from the William Salt Library

There is a common theme that constantly reoccurs when considering such buildings, and that is neglect and deterioration, and this mirrors the state of many of the area’s religious buildings, which has been discussed previously. What is the cause of such neglect? Is it a loss of faith in the church and religion in general, and our hedonistic care less society, coupled with a less caring public sector, scared witless by the fear of health and safety bureaucrats and paralysed by the thought ambulance-chasing lawyers sliding writs beneath their doors?

Whatever is the cause, one thing is clear: whilst we may well respect our dead, we do not always pay the same respect to their resting places.

David Proudlove
12 July 2009