Discover your ancestors who were buried in Norton Cemetery, Sheffield, England, between 1869 and 1995. These records may reveal your relative’s name, address, age, and burial date.
Each record comprises a transcript of the original register. The amount of information listed varies, but the records usually include a combination of the following information about your ancestor:
• First name(s)
• Last name
• Age
• Birth year
• Burial year
• Burial date
• Cemetery
• Residence
• Place
• County
• Country
• Notes (cremation or burial, cause of death)
The record set comprises 19,902 records.
Norton Cemetery
Norton Cemetery is one of 16 cemeteries in Sheffield. It was originally owned by Norton Parish Council and is today run by Sheffield City Council. It is six acres in size and offers views of the Sheaf valley and the moors. The cemetery contains 27 graves of service members killed in World War 1 and seven from World War 2. No new plots are available in this cemetery.
Possibly the saddest record in this set is named as ‘Cremated Remains’ in the First name field and ‘Identity Unknown’ in the Last name field. The notes state that the ‘remains [are] scattered on still born lawn’.
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of South Yorkshire, England. Sheffield is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire.
History of cemeteries
From around the 7th century, burial in Europe was under the control of the Church and could only be carried out on consecrated church ground. From the early 19th century, however, the burial of the dead in graveyards (burial grounds within churchyards) began to fall out of favour. This was due to rapid population growth in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, continued outbreaks of infectious disease near graveyards, and the increasingly restricted space in graveyards for new interment. Entirely new burial places were established far from heavily populated areas at the outskirts of towns and cities. Many new cemeteries were municipally owned and therefore independent from churches. In Britain, this movement was initiated by dissenters who wanted non-denominational burial places, and was also driven by public health concerns. The Metropolitan Burial Act of 1852 legislated for the establishment of the first national system of government-funded municipal cemeteries across Britain, paving the way for an enormous expansion of burial facilities throughout the 19th century. In the 19th century, urban burial grounds were viewed as public open spaces and were thus professionally designed to be attractive places to visit in their own right. They were often designed by people who designed public parks and were seen as public landscapes as well as burial grounds. The General Cemetery was Sheffield’s first civil cemetery. It opened in 1836, despite Anglican efforts to prevent Non-Conformists establishing their own cemeteries. A cholera epidemic in 1832 which claimed the lives of 402 Sheffield citizens highlighted the need for a solution to the problem of unsanitary churchyard burials.