So special that I may have mentioned it in my blogs before. I find that is one of the problems of writing for a number of different publications, not remembering what you have written and where. I know with some certainty that I have written about the Rosary Cemetery for the Norfolk Family History Society where I am a trustee and editor of their quarterly magazine.
So let me explain. The Rosary Cemetery was laid out in 1819 and was the first Nonconformist municipal cemetery in England. It was established by Presbyterian Minister the Reverend Thomas Drummond.
A board of trustees was set-up in 1819 and shareholders were collected in 1824.
Rev Drummond’s wife was the first person to be buried there with her remains being re-interred from the Octagon Chapel in Colegate, Norwich. Between 1824 and 1884, 18,000 burials took place.
A lodge designed by Norwich architect J. S. Benest was built in 1860 and the mortuary chapel was re-designed by Edward Boardman of Norwich in 1879. Boardman is buried in the cemetery.
The cemetery was extended in 1903 with the purchase of additional land which was laid out in 1924. In 1954 the cemetery became the responsibility of Norwich City Council. The Friends of Rosary Cemetery was established in 1983.
The cemetery includes the graves of many Norfolk luminaries including mayors of Norwich, architects, artists and two of the victims of a train crash in September 1874.
The accident took place on a single track between Norwich and Brundall and involved a mail train from Great Yarmouth and an express travelling from London to Great Yarmouth. The trains were running late and both drivers were wrongly given the go-ahead to enter the single track at speed with disastrous consequences. Both drivers and fireman were killed along with 21 passengers. A further 73 passengers and two railway guards were seriously injured. The mail train driver John Prior and fireman James Light are buried in Rosary Cemetery.
Following the accident a tablet system was developed by which a token is given to the train driver. This must be slotted into an electric device at the other end of the single-track before another train is allowed to pass.
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My 3x great uncle (in other words my great great great grandfather's brother) Britiffe Edmund Dew was born in Salthouse on the North Norfolk coast in 1793. He married Mary Ann McKellar in Holborn, London, in 1813. They had 11 children and Britiffe Dew became the first superintendent of the Rosary Cemetary - a post he held from 1819 until his death in 1876. Previous to being the cemetery superintendent he was a schoolmaster, silk weaver and grocer.
The whole Dew family lived in the lodge at the cemetery which must have been a real squeeze. His tasks would have been everything from arranging burials, keeping records, gardening and even digging graves - in other words a jack of all trade.
In January 1860 for some unknown reason he was declared insolvent. His son Henry James Dew took over from his father as superintendent of the Rosary after his death.
Numerous other members of the Dew family are also buried in the Rosary which is a very peaceful place and somewhere I am drawn to time after time.