Steve Waller - Ayresome Gardens Cemetery Revealed at 1pm TODAY

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Many of you may recall the gravestones that used to piled up on the side wall at Ayreomes Gardens as we passed through on the ways to Ayresome Park.
Model Man Steve Waller, the creator of the St Hilda's Model - built a scale model of Ayresome Gardens showing the former cemetery. Steve wants to guide us around his now rarely viewed model in the Dorman Museum at 1pm before crossing the road to show us exactly where some of the graves are buried.
Steve has researched the cemetery in detail and I think it is incredible to hear his findings about those still resting beneath our feet,

15 Oct ayresome gardens 1.jpg
 
Over thirty people came along and were fascinated by Steve's model and his equally painstaking research. Over 11 000 buried in the cemetery from its inception in the 1850s and nearly half of those buried were infants. A shocking fact that reveals just how harsh conditions could be in Victorian Middlesbrough. Steve also had plans of the former burial ground with plot numbers, one of which he had reproduced on two big sheets of wallpaper. By referencing a lever arch file of burial records it is possible to say just who was born when and where.
Walking out in to Ayresome Gardens Steve could indicate the sites where various people were laid to rest. These included members of the ironmaster families of the Vaughans, Gjers, Gilkes. Sir Hugh Gilzean Reid was buried after his death in 1911. A friend of Mark Twain, King Edward VII, a former MP and the founder of the Evening Gazette, the first half penny newspaper in Britain, Sir Hugh is resting in an unmarked grave, beneath park grass by Parliament Road.


Ayresome Gardens Model.jpg
 

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Spent my whole childhood playing in the cemmy as we called it,remember older people saying your playing on top of dead bodies.Later when I was older reading there were people buried there in the forties and we were playing there in the sixties they were probably right.
 
the_dormouse said:
Spent my whole childhood playing in the cemmy as we called it,remember older people saying your playing on top of dead bodies.Later when I was older reading there were people buried there in the forties and we were playing there in the sixties they were probably right.
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Same here dormouse, 70s for me though.
The headstones were stood up against the wall from the playground in front of Ayresome school down to Crescent Road and then along to Linthorpe road, we used to try and get right round by walking on top of the headstones.
 
One of grandmother's told me she lost twin sisters , they were only 3 or 4. My granny kept their clothes for years after, neatly pressed in a drawer. The lived in Eve Street off Cannon Road. This would have been around 1912/13. She said it was common then for people to lose kids. She said a brother or cousin lost his arm in a Middlesbrough sawmill about the same time. She was a bit of a drama queen and told me he chased it down the street. He did survive.
 
Redwurzel said:
One of grandmother's told me she lost twin sisters , they were only 3 or 4. My granny kept their clothes for years after, neatly pressed in a drawer. The lived in Eve Street off Cannon Road. This would have been around 1912/13. She said it was common then for people to lose kids. She said a brother or cousin lost his arm in a Middlesbrough sawmill about the same time. She was a bit of a drama queen and told me he chased it down the street. He did survive.
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Steve told the story of a young boy running home from a work's explosion without realising he had lost an arm.
The infant mortality was horrendous. Steve is right there needs to be a memorial of some kind to all those still at rest beneath the park. I suppose this could may be at Teesside Crem. Across the road at the Dorman Museum might be a good site also to access information about the former town cemetery.
 
When were the gravestones dug up and stacked against the wall? Trying to remember if I was around when it was a proper Cemetery/ Graveyard.
 
Fofacut said:
When were the gravestones dug up and stacked against the wall? Trying to remember if I was around when it was a proper Cemetery/ Graveyard.
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In the 1960s I believe.
Gravestones finally removed in 1970s I think. Obviously they could have potentially been dangerous - as we see above kids were climbing on them etc.
 
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