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Ascension Parish Burial Ground

Coordinates: 52°13′03″N 0°06′00″E / 52.2176°N 0.1001°E / 52.2176; 0.1001
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The chapel of the Ascension Parish Burial Ground, Cambridge.

The Ascension Parish Burial Ground, formerly St Giles and St Peter's Parish, is a cemetery just off Huntingdon Road near the junction with Storey's Way in the northwest of Cambridge, England. (All Souls Lane leads off the Huntingdon Road to it.) It includes the graves of many Cambridge academics and non-conformists of the 19th and early 20th century. A small chapel was also built on the grounds, and currently acts as the workshop of local lettering artist Eric Marland.

The one and a half acres of the burial ground were established in 1857 when extra burial space was needed as the city of Cambridge expanded in Victorian times. The first burial there was in 1869. Today some 2,500 people of every religious denomination and none are buried in 1,500 plots. Many city and university dignitaries, scientists and scholars are buried there including Nobel prize winners. Perhaps one of the burial ground’s most famous graves is that of Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher (1899-1951).

The Burial Ground contains the graves of three Nobel Prize winners (who were also members of the Order of Merit), five other members of the Order of Merit, eighteen knights, and five Masters of Cambridge colleges, plus 50 people with entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. There are six Commonwealth burials of the 1914-1918 war and one of the 1939-1945 war in the burial ground.

There are some fifteen former members of the Royal Society interred in the burial ground.

Former members of the Cambridge Apostles, the intellectual secret society in the burial ground include:


Selected graves and memorials

The gravestone of Ludwig Wittgenstein has started to attract small tributes in recent years.

The above website has details of 152 graves of which the following 20 internments are judged to be those of "famous" people:

+ [1], not to be confused with Richard Appleton, Australian poet, raconteur and editor; see: Ascension Parish Burial Ground at Find a Grave

Further reading

  • Cathcart, Brian, The Fly in the Cathedral, Penguin, 2005. ISBN 0-14-027906-7
  • Martin, Stanley (2007). The Order of Merit: One Hundred Years of Matchless Honour. New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. ISBN 978-1-86064-848-9.

References

A Guide to Churchill College, Cambridge: text by Dr. Mark Goldie, pages 62 and 63 (2009) includes references to the following twenty people:

as well as both the late David Roberts and Bridget Spufford, from contemporary Cambridge.

52°13′03″N 0°06′00″E / 52.2176°N 0.1001°E / 52.2176; 0.1001

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