Skip to main content

Wakefield Council



Records for at least twenty cemeteries and two crematoria in West Yorkshire can now be searched on Deceased Online


As reported on our Facebook and Twitter pages earlier this week, we have uploaded nearly 230,000 burial and cremation records for Wakefield Metropolitan District Council to the database. This includes the industrial towns of Castleford, Featherstone, Knottingley, Pontefract and the city of Wakefield.



The records date from 1857 for the most historic cemetery, Castleford Old Cemetery. Most of the collection dates from the Victorian period, although the twentieth century Pontefract and Wakefield crematoria are also included. The full list of cemeteries will be explored in future posts.



Once the county headquarters of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Wakefield covers 338 square kilometres and has a current population of 325, 600. This encompasses urban and rural areas including Horbury, Ossett, Wrenthorpe, Stanley, Altofts, Normanton, Castleford, Pontefract, Knottingley, Featherstone, Hemsworth, South Kirkby, South Elmsall, Middlestown, Crigglestone, Crofton, Woolley and Ackworth.



The south east of the district has a strong mining heritage, and this is represented at the locally based National Coal Mining Museum for England. By 1869, there were 46 working mines on the outskirts of the city of Wakefield. The last pit in the district, the Prince of Wales at Pontecfract, closed in 2002.

This photograph from Wakeford Council’s collection shows a miners’ demonstration in Aire Street, Castleford in 1903 at the time of a protracted strike over enforced reduction in pay at Wheldale and Fryston Colliery. 





Thousands of people who lived and died in this area were connected in some way to the coal mining industry. In Wakefield, which became a city in 1888, others worked in grain mills, malt kilns, chemical and dye works, iron foundries and making glass.   

Perhaps one of the most unique industries here is the production of liquorice sweets. Liquorice had been used in Britain as a medicine for centuries, but it wasn’t until the creation of the Pomfet (Pontefract Cake), or Yorkshire Penny, in 1760  that it was used as sweet. At its height Pontefract had thirteen liquorice factories. Today there are just two: Haribo and Tangerine.

Pontefract cakes (copyright Wikimedia)


 I shall be looking further into the people and social history of the Wakefield area in next week’s post. Look out for more registers, grave details and colour maps which will be added soon to the database.



Sources:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

London's Spa Fields

Deceased Online has just uploaded around 114,000 burial records from Spa Fields in the modern London borough of Islington Spa Fields today, with the Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer in the background Spa Fields Burial Ground became notorious in the 19th century for its overcrowded and insanitary conditions. Located in the parish of St James, Clerkenwell, the grave yard was not far from the ever-increasing City of London. Spa Fields was known also as Clerkenwell Fields and Ducking-pond Fields in the late 18th century, hinting at a dark side to what was then a summer evening resort for north Londoners. What would become a cemetery was a ducking pond in the rural grounds of a Spa Fields public house. It was here in 1683 that six children were drowned while playing on the ice. In his History of Clerkenwell (1865) William J. Pinks wrote that visitors, "came hither to witness the rude sports that were in vogue a century ago, such as duck-hunting, prize-fighting, bull-baiting

Haslar and Netley Military Hospital Cemeteries

Following on from last week's post, I'm looking further into Deceased Online 's latest collection of burials. These military burials were digitized in partnership with The National Archives .  Two notable institutions in the collection are Haslar Royal Navy Cemetery and the Royal Victoria Hospital in Netley. Both Haslar and Netley (as it was more commonly known) were Britain's foremost military hospitals during the bloodiest years of war in the western hemisphere The Royal Hospital Haslar and Clayhill Royal Navy Cemetery, Gosport, Hampshire The Royal Hospital Haslar dates from 1753. For over two hundred and fifty years Haslar served as one of main hospitals caring for sailors and marines of the Royal Navy and merchant services. Patients came from ships as well as from naval and seamen institutions in nearby Portsmouth and Gosport. The hospital closed as the last official military hospital in 2007. The Haslar Cemetery closed in April 1859 but the neighbouring Cl

Wakefield Collection: Cremation Records now available on Deceased Online

Records for both crematoria in Wakefield, Yorkshire have been added to the Deceased Online database Above: Pontefract Crematorium The two sets of crematoria records have been added to Deceased Online 's Wakefield Collection .  Wakefield district contains nineteen cemeteries and two crematoria. Many of the records go back to the mid and late 19th century when the cemeteries opened, and range across a wide geographical area. The full list of  Wakefield  cemeteries live on Deceased Online,  with opening dates in brackets,   is as follows: 1.  Altofts Cemetery  – Church Road, Altofts, Normanton  (1878)   2.  Alverthorpe Cemetery  – St Paul’s Drive, Alverthorpe, Wakefield  (registers from 1955) 3. Castleford Cemetery  – Headfield Road, Castleford  (1857) 4.  Crigglestone Cemetery  – Standbridge Lane, Crigglestone, Wakefield  (1882) 5. Featherstone Cemetery  – Cutsyke Road, North Featherstone  (1874) 6. Ferrybridge Cemetery  – Pontefract Road, Ferrybridge, P