Liverpool's St. James' Cemetery
Strangely Beautiful Sunken Cemetery at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral
Down a gravestone-lined tunnel under Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral, emerge into a city garden of history, blossoms, and strange beauty. Volunteer to garden on Saturdays.
A Cemetery Once, Now an Eerily Beautiful Garden
After exploring the magnificent space of the cathedral itself and getting your bearings of the city from above from the Cathedral's roof, head out the grand east portal, down the stairs on the right and through a tunnel in the living rock, into the eerily beautiful sunken St. James' cemetery.
St. James' has been a cemetery since the 18th century. It was emptied in the 1930s when Cathedral construction was well underway. No longer officially a cemetery - they prefer you call it "St. James's Gardens" now - if you're here on a Saturday, join the Friends of St. James' Gardens for tidying and garden grooming.
The Last City Spring
Most cemeteries are on hills, but, like Edinburg's Greyfriar's, St. James' is sunken, giving the mossy acre of garden a mysterious, theatrical little frisson and forming a sheltered, bird- and blossom-filled oasis as buses roll by above.
Snowdrops and daffodils emerge as early as January; blackthorn, plum, and crab-apple in March. Moss, lichen, and fern sprout all year, and stone seats are scattered throughout.
As good oases do, it even has a spring. The last natural spring in the city flows from the east wall, and has for quite a while. A Liverpool surgeon, writing in 1733 recommended it as a cure for 'rickets, weak eyes, crudities of the stomach, and lowness of spirits' of which there was plenty no doubt, and people would come to collect the water using a ladle chained to the basin.
Noteable Monuments, Gorgeous Grave Stones, and Progressive Public Health
The cemetery's graves were removed long ago, but many original grave stones, ivy-covered, and some big as doors, line the wrought iron fence at the top of the bank at street level and the entrance tunnel.
A monument to William Huskisson, beloved Liverpool Parliament member is here. In a horrible series of fluke firsts, he is the first person to be killed by the world's first passenger train on its otherwise festive inaugural journey (15 September 1830) as it went thirty miles from Liverpool to Manchester.
Also here, Kitty Wilkinson (b. 1786) who selflessly nursed victims of the cholera epidemics that swept this heaving port city in the early 1800s when life expectancies were a shocking 18 years. Liverpool, simultaneously squalid and wealthy, at a time when civic responsibility was a spiritual obligation, established progressive public health efforts, and was the first city to appoint a Doctor of Public Health.
Bear Safety in Mind
Further reflecting the city's raucous history, residents of the now-swank sweep of Georgian townhouses, Gambier Terrace, that overlook these hidden gardens, report that during Liverpool's more dire, post-war years, so derelict and rife with prostitution were the Cathedral and its wilderness of a cemetery, that little sofas were set out in the driveway where customers could wait their turn on the mattresses under the bushes. While no longer so appallingly notorious, the gardens are secluded and urban, so be alert.
Retreat to Reflect in the Cathedral's Cafe or Restaurant
After a thoughtful garden stroll, visit the Cathedral's Rectory Restaurant over-looking the gardens to muse and enjoy hot, substantial fare, or the Cafe above the gift-shop for light repast and a cuppa.
