DEWSBURY
Dewsbury Cemetery Action Group
NEWSLETTER NO 17 APRIL 2006
Joyce Wilcocks reports:
In 2003 after several meetings with Kirklees Bereavement Services, the final details of the feasibility studies for the restoration of the two Grade 11 listed chapels and the landscaping of the cemetery were agreed. Bereavement Services aimed to make the application to the HLF in January 2004.
Some months later we were informed that the application had not been made because Bereavement Services still had been unable to find someone to complete it. When at last they found someone the rules had changed. The HLF required a guarantee of ten years sustainability. Apparently Kirklees MBC were not prepared to give that assurance. Shortly after this, the lead officer moved to another post and his senior officer retired. A new team moved in. We were told that they would make the decaying chapels safe and 'to look like chapels' but would not bring them into use. Unsafe monuments throughout Kirklees would be laid down.
Now some 18 months after the new team moved in, the incidence of vandalism has rocketed. Monuments, some of which we have restored, have been damaged or knocked down and seats which we commissioned have been damaged. The cemetery looks like a disaster zone. Should the unsafe monuments be laid down, there will be very few remaining upright.
Dewsbury Cemetery Action Group was formed some 10 years ago as a result of a request published in the local paper by Kirklees MBC for a cemetery friends group. Members are now asking 'Why?'
