(JHE) — Restoration of the historic Ponsharden Jewish and Congregationalist Cemeteries complex in Falmouth, Cornwall is under way thanks to a new grant of £45,000 from Historic England, on top of nearly £300,000 in funding last year from the National Heritage Lottery Fund.
In an announcement on its web site, Historic England said its grant was part of a £500,000 project to
repair the gravestones, tombs, walls, entrance stairs, and boundary walls of the cemeteries, and to create a secure, safe, natural green space for the community and visitors to enjoy. This will include virtual access, with a new interactive 3D reconstruction of the site giving unprecedented access to the cemeteries as they would have looked when in use.
Falmouth Town Council and the Friends of Ponsharden Cemeteries organization had received £296,500 National Lottery funding last fall, and in 2018 the project received £50,000 in National Lottery funding to develop restoration plans.
The Jewish cemetery dates from 1780 and is one of only around 25 extant Jewish burial grounds in the UK founded before 1830. The Congregationalist cemetery immediately adjacent was established in 1808. (Congregationalists, or “Dissenters,” were Protestant communities that were opposed to the Church of England.) Both have been long out of use — the last burial in the Jewish cemetery took place in 1913, and the last in the Dissenters’ cemetery in 1935 — and until recently both were very neglected and overgrown.
“The fact they were established next to each other tells us how society was increasingly accepting minority religious groups outside of the Established Church during the 18th century,” Historic England states. “They are not only an important reminder of how different faiths commemorate their dead, they can also tell us about the growth and change in England’s religious communities and how this shaped the country.”
Volunteers began working to clean up the cemeteries in 2011 and formed a civic group called Friends of Ponsharden Cemeteries. The group drew up a restoration plan in 2017.
“Since 2012, literally thousands of hours of volunteer time has been invested in this project, physically clearing the overgrown scrub, researching the history and parish registers to shed light on the burials, raising awareness and of course fund-raising,” Henrietta Boex, Director of Falmouth Town Council Cultural Services, said in the Historic England announcement.
Historic England said the restoration project should begin in the coming weeks and take around two years. It said work will entail
careful pruning of trees and essential site investigation before the crumbling roadside boundary can be reinforced. Doorways will be repaired and made safe so that visitors can once again access the cemeteries by their historic entrances. One of the most significant works will be to construct a path through and between the cemeteries, to help protect graves and create a symbolic bridge between the different faith communities.
“The Ponsharden project is now launched,” Boex was quoted by the Falmouth Packet news site as saying. “We’ve got a design team in place and we will be committing be starting work on site with some tree work. Full tree surveys were done anyway, so this should should be taking off now.”
The cemeteries together were protected as a scheduled monument in 2002 and placed on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register in 2009.
In 2018, the Jewish cemetery joined churches, a mosque, Canterbury Cathedral, and Stonehenge on Historic England’s list of Top 10 Places of Faith and Belief.
The Top Ten were chosen by the Faith & Belief category judge, The Very Reverend David Ison, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, from a long list of public nominations as part of the project “A History of England in 100 Places.”
The aim of the project was to engage the public in creating “a list of the 100 places, buildings and historical sites that tell the remarkable story of England and its impact on the world.”
See the Historic England listing for the site, with full description of both cemeteries
Friends of Ponsharden Cemeteries web site
The web page on the Cemetery Scribes web site lists burials and has photos of many of the gravestones and epitaphs.
Gravestone Inscriptions from the cemetery
Read about the history of the Jewish cemetery and Jewish presence in Cornwall