Plans for £3.8m Sheffield General Cemetery project approved
BBCPlans to improve Sheffield General Cemetery as part of a proposed £3.8m project have been approved.
Sheffield City Council wants to carry out conservation and improvement work at the historic site in the Sharrow area of the city.
It said the work is key to the cemetery coming off English Heritage's 'Heritage at Risk' list.
The scheme is subject to a Heritage Lottery Fund 'Parks for People' grant application being successful.
Plans for the six-hectare (15-acre) site include improving access, felling 54 of 360 trees as well as removing vegetation and carrying out conservation work on the cemetery's 10 listed buildings and structures, which include catacombs and a nonconformist chapel.
More than 87,000 people were buried at Sheffield's General Cemetery between 1836 and 1978.
It opened in response to overcrowding in the city's churchyards which was exacerbated by a cholera epidemic in 1832.
Among those buried in the cemetery are George Bassett, the founder of Bassett's Sweets, William Dronfield, whose United Kingdom Alliance of Organised Trades was a forerunner of the Trades Union Conference, and steel manufacturer, Master Cutler and Lord Mayor of Sheffield Mark Firth.
