Registers and papers of the Leeds General Cemetery Company

Burial and associated registers, and company papers, together with papers relating to the purchase of the Company by the University and the closure and landscaping of the cemetery; there is also a numbered plan showing the original site of each burial plot.

Leeds General Cemetery was established in 1833 as a joint stock company, to provide and maintain a burial ground in Leeds. The site chosen was St George's Fields near Woodhouse Moor close to the road to Headingley and Otley. In the 1930s it became clear that the ground would not last much longer, and by the end of the Second World War the cemetery became rather neglected. Therefore, after some controversy, the University of Leeds, whose site and buildings had nearly surrounded the cemetery, acquired the Company in 1956, and subsequently landscaped the site under the provisions of the University of Leeds Act (1965). A photographic record of the inscriptions on tomb-stones in the cemetery was made before it was landscaped, and the negatives were deposited with the Registrar General in London.

The burial registers themselves are in two sequences, one arranged by date, the other by plot number.

Access is unrestricted, except that 12 boxes contain papers marked as 'Closed'

Transferred from the office of the Bursar of the University of Leeds, 1977 and 1978

In English

Contents described in Handlist 40. There are also two computer-generated indexes to the registers, by name and by plot number.

A history of the Company was the subject of an M.Phil. thesis in the University of Leeds submitted by R.E. Fletcher in 1975