A new audio guide to the historic Old Jewish Cemetery in Plymouth, England is being prepared by the Ripple Theatre, a theatre collective that over the past several years has already created several audio productions about that cemetery — the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in England outside London — and other Jewish heritage sites in southwest England.
According to the collective, the new Cemetery Audio Trail should be ready for this year’s Plymouth History Festival, held in May.
The audio performances are part of a project called Hidden Stories: Hidden Places that focuses on the Jewish heritage of Plymouth and elsewhere in southwest England. The productions use archival and other sources to tell stories and dramatize events and personalities, focusing on the people buried in the cemeteries and/or connected with Jewish history and heritage in these places.
The Theatre writes:
In 2017 we were commissioned to create an audio trail of the Old Jewish Cemetery on Plymouth Hoe for The Plymouth Synagogue. This was produced to be included in the Plymouth History Festival in June of that year and repeated in September for the Plymouth Art Weekender Festival. We received considerable press coverage for the event and were overwhelmed with visitors. Due to the success of this project we secured funding from Exeter City Council, FEAST and the Arts Council to expand our project to include The Exeter Jewish Cemetery and The Falmouth Jewish Cemetery and Dissenters Burying Ground.
You can access the cemetery tours and other tracks on Soundcloud — or via the Soundcloud App on smart phones, to be listened to on the go, including to be used as audio guides.
Here’s a video made in 2017 by Ripple Theatre members Derek Frood and Ruth Mitchell, describing the project:
The project has been supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, Exeter City Council’s Small Grants scheme and Feast Cornwall.
The Old Jewish Burial Ground at Plymouth Hoe was founded in the first half of the 18th century and is the oldest extant Jewish burial ground in England’s southwest. Located off Lambhay Hill, it was long abandoned and overgrown behind its tall walls. Clean-up began in around 2015, although a full documentation had been made years earlier — see a lengthy publication on the cemetery’s history, and the tombstone inscriptions.
Historic England listed the cemetery as a Grade II historic site in 2017.
Click here to read Historic England’s detailed description of the cemetery and its history.
Click here to access the SoundCloud page with Ripple Theatre audio presentations.