Rusholme Road Cemetery
Date: 1821 - 1954
Location: Rusholme Road, off Upper Brook Street

Directions: If you head out of Manchester on Upper Brook Street, turn left down Grosvenor Street and then take your first right and walk down Kincardine Road. The former cemetery is now a garden called Gartside Gardens.

History: The Dissenters’ cemetery on Rusholme Road opened on 16 May 1821. It was founded by William Gatsby, Minister of Rochdale Road Baptist Chapel. The cemetery proved extremely popular amongst the Manchester middle and upper classes attracting some high-profile burials, such as that of John Edward Taylor, founder of the Manchester Guardian was buried at the cemetery in 1844.

In 1837, the cemetery came under particular strain when there was a severe influenza outbreak that had swept through the country arrived in Manchester. According to local reports the disease had ‘affected nearly every family in the town’ with the ‘mortality being exceedingly great’. On the worst day of the influenza outbreak, the number of burials in the cemetery reached thirty-six.

As the century progressed the number of burials deceased due to the Burial Act 1853, which prohibited the opening of new graves – only existing family graves or vaults were allowed to take new interments. Also, new cemeteries were opening up which gave the residents more of a choice as to where they would like to be buried.

In 1954, the cemetery came under control of the Manchester Corporation.

The following year, the Corporation informed anyone who had relatives in the cemetery that if they did not claim any of their memorials or headstones, they would be removed and disposed of. Furthermore, they would have to fund the removal themselves. Once the headstones and memorials were gone, the graves were grassed over and the cemetery opened as a park called Gartside Gardens – named after John Henry Gartside who left £33,000 to fund the new municipal venture. The bodies of those buried at the Rusholme Road Cemetery (estimated to be over 66,000) remain undisturbed under the park.