The government has designated Jewbury Medieval Jewish Cemetery in York, which today lies buried under a public parking garage, as a Scheduled Monument on the National Heritage List for England, granting it certain protections from development schemes.
Scheduled monuments include nationally important archaeological sites. Any development plans would need special consent from the state under a 1979 act protecting ancient monuments and archaeological areas.
“Although archaeology and important historic sites are all around us, monuments are added to the Schedule if the Secretary of State considers that they are of national importance and that the protection which comes with scheduling would assist the monument’s conservation,” Historic England states.
This week’s announcement of the decision said application for listing had been prompted “by pre-application planning discussions for a mixed-use redevelopment scheme” but the scheduling “will not affect existing structures above ground, which are excluded from the designation.” (This means the car park.)
It said the decision followed “consultation with key stakeholders” including the Office of the Chief Rabbi, The Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe, the Foundation for Jewish Heritage, York Liberal Jewish Community, and the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture, “all of whom supported designation.”
The listed area covers the remaining buried core site of the cemetery as well as an adjacent plot where the remains of some 500 individuals were reinterred after excavations conducted in the 1980s ahead of development work, plus a protective margin around the known extent of burials. Around 550 individuals remain buried in situ.
A plaque commemorates the cemetery and the reinterment.
“The scheduling of Jewbury recognises the exceptional historical and cultural significance of this site,” Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive Historic England, said in a statement.
Medieval Jewish Cemeteries are very rare, with only ten having been positively identified in England, and none are as extensively understood as this one. It represents an irreplaceable archaeological and cultural resource that deserves protection.
The listing states that the cemetery, located just outside the north-east side of York medieval city walls, was listed as a Scheduled Monument for several key factors:
* Period: the cemetery is of critical importance to our understanding of the small, but significant medieval Jewish population of York, where there is little other evidence for it;
* Rarity: medieval Jewish cemeteries are very rare, with only 10 having been positively identified in England, and none are as extensively understood as this one;
* Documentation: the site is very well documented through a range of post-medieval maps and medieval, and later, historic documents, in addition to it being the most extensively studied of all medieval Jewish cemeteries in England;
* Survival: late-C20 excavation demonstrated that the cemetery remains are well preserved and that about fifty percent of all graves remain undisturbed, associated with what are considered to be boundary features;
* Potential: given the exceptional nature of the population sample, the burial ground has the potential to inform a range of questions about the nature, extent and longevity of York Jewry, the cemetery layout, and burial practices.
Read the May 14 announcement of the listing
Read the official listing entry, with history of the site
Read a BBC article about the cemetery and listing