Woodgrange Park Cemetery opened it's gates in 1889. It's hard to
imagine how it looked in it's prime, but unfortunately today it's a mere derelict shadow of itself.
Overgrown and strewn with rubbish it's hard to understand how the
owners are allowed to continue their neglect. The cemetery in recent years has made history for all the wrong reasons. In
the early 1990's the owners (Badgehurst Ltd) decided to sell a portion of the cemetery for the development of high intensity
housing. Despite fierce objections from the Friends of Woodgrange Park Cemetery an act of parliament was passed (Woodgrange
Park Cemetery Act 1993) to allow the exhumation of 14,000 bodies and the sale of the land.
Today the new flats tower over the remainder of the cemetery and
the destruction of graves continues. According to sources on the internet it is alleged that, and I quote:
"Woodgrange has been totally neglected by the owner and previous
owner and vast areas of private graves have been cleared of the headstones and new graves buried on top. Unless relatives
live locally or pay to have their graves maintained they can be cleared and reused within one year and a day. The cost of
maintaining one grave yet alone two or three or more could become an impossible task particularly for retired relatives".
Unfortunately upon our visit in early 2008 the cemetery chapel had
already been bulldozed after another fire had destroyed the roof and made the structure unsafe.
