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Denne
Road cemetery: Horsham's best-kept secret
Horsham's dead were first buried around
the Parish Church, and today their destination is
either Hill's cemetery, or, if the alternative
approach is preferred, the crematorium at Worth. But
there is another resting place, brought into use when
the churchyard filled up, and now – happily –
sidelined by the passage of time, and that is the old
cemetery in Denne Road. This is a place, like so many
Victorian burial grounds, with an atmosphere all of
its own, with its crumbling headstones, cracked
plinths and collapsed mausoleums, the humble and the
grand all jumbled up together, and none immune from
the ravages of time.
It is a peaceful place to walk through, and behind the
lych gate which marks the entrance lie well-mown
corridors amid the long grass, and everywhere trees
and brambles encroach on these monuments to
mutability. A good place to escape to, and all the
better for being deliberately left in a state of
benign neglect. For the Council has sensibly taken the
view that this small plot of wilderness should be left
just as it is, with just enough attention to make the
area manageable - and while to the front it is fairly
well groomed, at the back there is no nonsense about
prettification or cosmetic enhancement.
It is an unique spot, for nowhere else within the town
boundary is there such a stretch of land, left
virtually unchanged since the mid-nineteenth century.
This gives it a very special value, and full marks to
the powers that be. Certain parts, such as the area
fronting on to Denne Road, get a standard mowing from
time to time, but that's about it – and long may it
remain so. There are plenty of other parts of the town
that get more than their fair share of attention, what
with Horsham in Bloom and so on, so the Denne Road
cemetery provides a welcome contrast.
It is also, of course, a fine spot for wildlife, and
who knows what species of small furry rodent may be
lurking in the tangled undergrowth, or the long grass
of the wild flower meadows. I am not too hot on the
various types of mouse and vole that may be about (the
display board by the entrance claimed that 'three
mammals' thrive there – but I suspect they mean three
species of mammal, and even that sounds too small a
number) but I do know that it is a happy hunting
ground for our cats, so something must be stirring
deep in the greenery. Birds are more my line, and the
cemetery provides excellent cover and nesting
opportunities for a whole range (certainly more than
'35 birds', as the board again claimed): Blue Tit,
Great Tit, Long-tailed Tit and Coal Tit (very much at
home in conifers) can all be found, as well as
Blackbird, Song and Mistle Thrush. Greenfinch,
Goldfinch and Chaffinch – not to mention other common
but not-to- be-despised species such as Robin, Dunnock
and Wren, are always knocking about, and Green and
Great Spotted Woodpecker are around from time to time,
along with Goldcrest, Nuthatch and the occasional
furtive Treecreeper. The calls of Wood Pigeon and
Collared Dove, one restful the other less so, are
seldom absent, and there is a resident family of
Carrion Crows, which always seems to be in a terrible
flap.
Trees are another important element, and the Council
must be congratulated on the investment it has made in
planting new ones among the well-established. Oak, Ash
and Hawthorn are there a-plenty, and of course Yew and
Holly are all around. But there has also been a
conscious effort to introduce other, more far-flung
species, and so we find Bitter Orange from China,
Snowy Mespicus from Canada and Red-stemmed Dogwood
from China, as well as Magnolia Grandiflora and Monkey
Puzzle - all neatly marked with metal labels. As a
result Denne Road now has its own small-scale
arboretum.
But back to burials. It is a self-evident fact that
the original burial area around St Mary's could never
have provided enough space for all Horsham's dead over
the many centuries since the Church's foundation – and
perhaps before that, if a Saxon church was previously
on the site. There was, and had to be, much re-use of
existing ground, and in the way of things old bones
were cast aside to make room for new. It is thought,
for example, that the vault under St Mary's Chapel of
the Holy Trinity served as a repository for such
bones. Things reached a crisis point in Victorian
times (particularly in London and the big cities),
with the population explosion and lack of flexibility
in existing sites. Stories are told of
recently-interred bodies ruthlessly dug up and left
about the place, so as to accommodate the immediate
dead, and out of necessity the concept of urban
cemeteries was then developed.
And so, back in Horsham, more space was also needed,
and the site in Denne Road was consecrated in 1852,
and the old churchyard closed for burials four years
later. In 1884 an adjoining plot was taken over, to
provide even more room, and within this new area a
part was left unconsecrated for other burials.
What was Denne Road like in 1852? It used to be known
as Back Lane South (running as it did to the back of
the Carfax, or Gaol Green), and it provided, before
Worthing Road was established (there was once a toll
gate at the bottom of Tower Hill), the main route
south through the Weald and towards the coast. It must
have been a well-travelled road in its time, across
the Arun by Cobbett's Bridge (where river, rail and
road now meet), up over the flank of Denne Hill and
then away towards the Downs.
But by 1852 this route would have long fallen into
disuse, and traffic now took the new road – and paid
for the privilege. So Denne Road was now a backwater,
and its population was mostly families of modest
means, apart from the occupants of Arun Lodge, which
was a church house, lived in at the time by Curate
Thomas Debary, and Arun House just across the road,
owned by the Shelleys and rented out to John Thorpe, a
retired draper and his wife and family. Next to it was
the old Collyer's School, where the master, William
Pirie and his wife Elizabeth resided (the former is
still about the place in statue form in Pirie's
Place), but otherwise there was a scattering of more
humble folk up and down Cobbett's Lane, as the lower
part of the road was also known. There was Thomas
Booker, for example, 'a beerhouse keeper' and his son
James, 'a fishdealer', George Clark, 'an agricultural
labourer', and Ann Goldsmith, 'pauper and seamstress'.
So it was here, until space again became exhausted and
the cemetery on the Guildford Road was opened to serve
twentieth century Horsham, that the town's dead were
brought to be buried. A quiet walk among the grave
stones tells you much of its past. Here are all the
old names: Potter, Murrell, Charman, Jupp, Feist,
Puttock and Glaysher – all from a time when Horsham
really was a market town, full of small shops and
individual trades, and of course everyone knew each
other. And right over at the back there is a fine,
ivy-encrusted monument, in a state of elegant decay,
to the much grander Hurst family, Horsham's ruling
clan for many years and owners of Park House – and
indeed the very Park itself until it was deeded to the
town. So Robert Henry Hurst, Member for Horsham, who
died in 1857 aged 69, is commemorated, as is his MP
son of the same name, and his five daughters,
including Dorothea, well-known locally as the author
of ' The History and Antiquities of Horsham', of whom
John Snelling wrote an interesting account in the June
1998 issue of the Horsham Society Newsletter.
Close by, and not easy to find, is a more simple stone
that records the burial place of Thomas Medwin and his
lawyer brother Pilfold. Thomas, Percy Bysshe Shelley's
cousin, was also his travelling companion in Europe
for a while, and was a much-published author of short
stories, novels and poetry, as well as being famous
for his sometimes fanciful recollections of both
Shelley and Lord Byron, written after they were both
dead. He was a man with more than his fair share of
faults, it is true, but for all that he had a talent,
and no biography of either poet would be complete
without due reference to him. Once a nationally-known
figure, there he now lies, forgotten among the
encroaching ivy.
Further down is perhaps the finest and best-preserved
monument (because it was made of enduring marble, and
the man who commissioned it knew how to build to
last), that of the Oliver family, of 'Tanbridge
Horsham'. On it we read of Cuthbert Wallace, first son
of Thomas and Caroline Oliver, who died 2 January 1853
at the tender age of 8, of his mother who died 15 May
1904, aged 74, and his father, who passed away 18
October 1920, at the age of 86. Thomas Oliver was the
son of a Derbyshire railway contractor, and himself
became a great railway man. Among his many claims to
fame was his development of the Petworth to Midhurst
and the Horsham to Guildford railways, and he lived in
some style in the house that later became the Girls'
High School, and has now been converted into flats.
Right over on the other side of the cemetery is
'non-conformist corner', where the Kensetts, a
well-known General Baptist family, are buried. Here we
find the headstone of two Kensett sisters, Emily and
Bessie - the former, who died in 1928, 'secretary and
historian of the Free Christian Church in this town'
(she wrote an absorbing and now scarce book on the
history of her church, entitled 'The Story of the Free
Christian Church at Horsham'), and the latter, who
died a year later, had inscribed under her name:
'there is no friend like a sister'.
As you walk about, other inscriptions gain your
attention. The one for young Sidney Hartley is
touching in its brevity: 'born 11 May 1889; died 26
March 1902'. Who was this twelve year old, whose only
mark on the world was to be his headstone? Are any of
his family still about? Does anyone at all remember
him? Then, on more familiar ground, there are the
Lintotts, a well-known local family: Lucy, wife of
Bernard Lintott, died in 1890, and William Lintott
died in 1911, aged 79. And here are the Galliers, who
were prominent in Horsham as chemists and druggists ('Gallier's
Balsamic Cough Elixir: safe, pleasant and effectual').
Ellen died in 1894, and Edith a year earlier.
The cemetery holds a war grave, that of Private RW
Russell of the Royal Sussex Regiment, who lost his
life on a foreign field on 14 April 1918 at the age of
34, and whose relatives must have wanted him home,
rather than buried among the serried ranks of the dead
in Belgium or France. And lastly we find Richard Cragg
'late of Collyers Grammer School in the town',
together with others of his family.
Do find time to explore this hidden corner of
Victorian Horsham. Here are its gentry and its common
folk, its tradespeople and its writers, its young and
its old. There are, as well, not a few inscriptions
that are now illegible, lost through flaking stone or
worn away by time – but known or unknown, to those
with imagination they and their last resting place all
have a story to tell.
note: since this article was written the cemetery
has been subject to serious vandalism, and sadly some
of the grave stones may not be as they were.
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