Cemetery restored with its own wild section
A FORGOTTEN piece of St Peter Port history will be reopened to the public next month for the first time since the gates were last locked in 1970.
Rue des Freres cemetery is the final resting place of more than 8,000 islanders.
Opened in the 1650s, the cemetery was used for more than 300 years and, up until falling out of favour in the 19th century, it was St Peter Port’s most popular cemetery and the final resting place of Guernsey’s oldest ever woman, Margaret Ann Neve, who died age 110 years and 322 days in 1903.
In 2011, with the cemetery abandoned, the constables applied to the Ecclesiastical Court to remove all of the vaults and turn the land into a grass park.
A group of volunteers, headed by States archaeologist Dr Phil de Jersey, objected to this for historical and personal reasons.
The court sided with the volunteers and they were left with the challenge of restoring the graveyard to its former glory.
‘We started in 2012 to restore the vaults and remove rubble where needed,’ said Dr de Jersey, ‘In 1954, the constables demolished all but three of the headstones, of which there were hundreds.
‘It was essentially an act of vandalism and I have no idea how they got away with it, but they did, and it gives the image that the cemetery is less crowded than it actually is – there are thousands buried here.’
By 2017, the volunteers had cleared the vaults and completed remedial work where required, so they began to focus on the biodiversity.
‘Working along with La Societe, we have left half of the site to go to nature so we can create a natural biodiverse habitat right in the middle of town. The other half we have an arrangement that it is kept neat and tidy by States Works while we maintain the wilder side. Interestingly, the land here is still consecrated so you could be buried here in theory, but the last burial was in 1951.’
The cemetery is due to reopen to the public, summer through to autumn, from 1 July.
