Restoration of St Sepulchre's Cemetery
The Friends of St Sepulchre’s Garden Group 2009–2025
St Sepulchre’s has always had its friends, but in 2005 with the development of the Lucy’s foundry site, Peter Strong, who was very involved with the Jericho Living Heritage Trust, recognised that the friends needed to come forward and be counted once the development had been completed.
As the city council no longer had the staff to maintain the green velvet lawns that Superintendent Fred Wort had cared for in the Sixties, parts were overgrown, giving cover for antisocial behaviour which made the cemetery unwelcoming. Peter contacted the city council cemeteries’ office, and with their encouragement and advice the work started.
So an informal group started on Sunday 29 March 2009 cutting saplings, brambles and ivy and by its final session on 29 January 2025 it had met on 330 occasions, usually with six or more volunteers working at the two-hour sessions. Ninety people had helped at one time or another, contributing over 4,250 hours of work to the restoration.
The main request from the city council and the police was to clear sight lines to the boundaries of the cemetery to make the atmosphere less threatening and to discourage drug and alcohol abusers from creating dens. This was done by cutting down the self-sown saplings, brambles and overgrown shrubs and by raising the canopies on the trees.
Before and after on 8 December 2009
As the city council were responsible for the maintenance they undertook the major tree-work and grass-cutting but the volunteers tackled the thickets and as these were being cleared it was obvious that many memorials had been hidden. The Diocese wanted each memorial to be accessible and that was achieved on 25 February 2015 when the grave of John Garbutt was cleared with a piece in the Oxford Mail of 27 February 2015.
A previous mention in the Oxford Mail was on 12 February 2013 when Stephanie Jenkins’s website of the cemetery was launched. She researched its history and hundreds of biographies of people named on the memorials, By making this information freely available on the website she helped families find their ancestors and at the cemetery this ranged from delighted finders, to people tidying up their family graves and to the professional restoration of others. It would be impossible to gauge how many family history researchers around the world have benefited from the accurate details that Stephanie sought out from obvious and not so obvious sources.
Stephanie recording an inscription in 2013, and the same view in March 2025
Apart from Stephanie’s work on the website, there were many other generous actions. There was a gift of 20 wooden bird boxes from a couple in the Lucy’s flats to encourage blue tits to move in and eat the leaf miners, which with blight and fungal diseases were attacking the only horse chestnut tree. Dr Judy Webb, ecologist, advised on planting to attract bees and butterflies, and local artist, Valerie Petts, drew a sketch map to guide visitors.
John Ashdown, formerly the city council’s conservation officer, pointed out the Grimsley memorials, terracotta gravestones made in the later nineteenth century near the junction of the Woodstock and Banbury Roads, and Nina Morgan and Philip Powell, geologists, each year led expeditions round the gravestones showing the development of the Earth from igneous to sedimentary rocks. Lucy’s and Councillor James Fry gave plants for the re-invigorated central beds and volunteers brought in plants and shrubs from their gardens.
Volunteers on 5 November 2013
The work continued and the Oxford Preservation Trust (OPT), which had been very supportive, suggested in 2015 that the cemetery be entered into their annual competition for the best in conservation and new design. It was entered and a Certificate for making the cemetery a more welcoming destination in Oxford was awarded to Oxford City Council Cemeteries Service and the Friends of St Sepulchre’s.
The city council continued to place emphasis on the city’s parks by entering the Green Flag Award scheme which recognised well-managed local green spaces and the cemetery won a flag each year from 2015 until the council withdrew from the scheme around 2019.
Each year from the start the cemetery had been part of OPT’s Open Doors scheme in September and hundreds have been introduced to its hidden calm, with many coming back in the spring to enjoy the carpets of flowers under the copper beeches. Trails were set up for visitors to follow using Stephanie’s researches. The first one was of the WWI people who were buried abroad but remembered on family stones in the cemetery, and the second was of Town and Gown notables.
The volunteers continued to work on, weeding, planting and pruning twice a month through the years. 2024 started well with some sessions having up to nine volunteers, nearly all older, but by autumn age had caught up with some and numbers dropped. When the council temporarily suspended volunteer work in January 2025 the decision was made to end the group for there were no younger leaders to take over. It was time to bow out as the objectives had been met of establishing clear sight lines to the boundaries and making every memorial accessible.
The Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 showed the importance of the calming influence of huge trees and green open space just a short walk from home and its continued regular use by dog walkers and others shows clearly that the restoration turned the cemetery from a neglected, threatening place into an appreciated community asset.
Views in March 2025:
Tribute from a neighbour of the cemetery
Photographs
Three atmospheric and evocative monochrome photographs taken by Dan Robinson in December 2016:
Some graves also restored
In addition to the gardening work, some of the old fallen graves have been restored by private individuals:
The Geology of Oxford Gravestones
This book by Nina Morgan and Philip Powell includes 14 graves from St Sepulchre's Cemetery, made of crinoidal limestone, Pennant sandstone, Welsh slate, Carrara marble, Hornton stone, and Cornish, Peterhead, Shap, and pink granite.
Details of how to obtain it here
- Oxford Mail, 25 August 2015:
“New book on city gravestone geology is a dead good read!” - Oxford Mail, 13 September 2014:
“Headstones clue to Oxford’s geology”
Above: the volunteers celebrate Christmas on 17 December 2013