Wardsend Cemetery

The ground on which the cemetery stands was originally purchased in 1857 by John Livesey, vicar of the nearby St Philip's Church, as an overspill burial ground. The first burial at Wardsend was of a 2-year-old girl named Ann Marie Marsden in 1857. She is, in keeping with tradition, regarded as the "Guardian of the Cemetery". The graveyard is also noteworthy for being the final resting place of George Lambert VC, a highly decorated Irish soldier, for holding graves of many victims of the Great Sheffield Flood of 1864, and for being the only cemetery in Britain with an active railway line passing through it. Sheffield Archives offers much material on the history of the cemetery, perhaps most…

The cemetery was originally linked at its Hillsborough entrance by Wardsend Bridge, a two-arched stone structure built in the 18th century exclusively to provide access to the burial ground. However, after its destruction by the Sheffield floods of 25 June 2007, it was rebuilt as a 31.2 ft wide single-span integral bridge, at an estimated cost of £673,000, and re-opened in early 2009. There are also buried here a number of service personnel who died in the First and Second World Wars but because their graves are now unmaintainable by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission their names are listed on a Screen Wall Memorial in Plot H of nearby City Road Cemetery. Since its loss of status as a…