Salford Northern Cemetery Agecroft
By the mid-1890s Salford’s first municipal cemetery at Weaste was filling rapidly, with almost 200,000 interments. Simple mathematics indicated that within twenty years additional burial provision would prove necessary. Thus in 1897 Salford Corporation purchased a 45 acre site including the farm buildings of Agecroft Grange from Robert Dauntesey of the nearby Agecroft Hall, the last surviving member of the ancient family. Situated on the west bank of the River Irwell close to Agecroft Bridge, the site of the proposed cemetery was one well-known to Salford’s borough engineer, Joseph Corbett who had been a member of the nearby Agecroft Rowing Club since 1864. Born in 1842, Joseph Corbett was the son of the architect Edward Corbett, and was formerly a member of the firm of Corbett and Roby, later, E. Corbett and Sons. Works designed by the practice included Barton Arcade and Hayward’s Building in Deansgate, Manchester. Five years a member of the Salford Corporation, Joseph Corbett resigned and was appointed Borough Engineer of Salford in 1892. Corbett saw the Agecroft site not merely as a burial ground but one that offered several additional advantages to further both his professional and personal ambitions. The site was outside the municipal boundary, in the adjacent borough of Pendlebury. By its purchase Salford had not only resolved the difficulty of providing a suitable site within its own municipal boundaries, but, “de facto,” extended its boundary northwards. Later purchases of the Drinkwater estate in Prestwich for an isolation hospital and land to the north of Agecroft for Salford’s second electricity generating station further increased its land holding outside its formal boundaries. For Corbett this had the additional advantage of giving the municipal authority control of the river bank, allowing appropriate flood control measures and denying the opportunity for further factory building (with associated pollution) along the banks of this stretch of the river, an area still at the time essentially rural. Corbett had personal dreams of restoring the river to its condition in the 1840s and at the same time creating a water park through Salford.
Joseph Corbett prepared plans for the Cemetery in 1899, and in the same year a competition was held for the design of the chapels, lodge and office buildings, a competition won by local architects Walter Sharp and Fred Foster. The cemetery layout was a simple grid-iron pattern with the three chapels positioned on a central north-south axis, the Anglican Chapel in the centre, opposite the entrance gates, the Non-conformist Chapel to the north and the now demolished Roman Catholic Chapel to the south. The creation of a crematorium was also considered but the idea was rejected. Only in 1957 was the non-conformist chapel converted into a crematorium. The design also provided a strip of land ten yards wide between the boundary wall of the cemetery and the river to allow works on the river bank and the creation of a riverside walk.
THE SALFORD NORTHERN CEMETERY. This new cemetery, which has been laid out by the Salford Corporation at a cost of more than £61,000, will shortly be consecrated by the Bishop of Manchester. It is near Agecroft, a district which once could lay claim to great natural beauty is now surrounded by tall chimneys and manufacturing works. The cemetery covers 45 acres; it is bounded on the west, north and easterly sides respectively by Langley Road, Agecroft Road and the River Irwell. There still remain near it things that remind one of the past - Agecroft Old Hall, a quaint Elizabethan mansion and Kersal Cell , the one-time home of Byrom, are not far away. The approach to the cemetery from the main entrance is through a wide archway, built in red sandstone, decorated. In the spandrel of the arch, carved in stone are the Royal coat-of-arms and also the arms of the borough. On the right and left of the archway, and joined to it by a continuous wall, are the lodge keeper’s house and the Boardroom and offices. At the end of a wide pathway from the central gateway is the largest of the three chapels, and this has been mad the central figure of the cemetery. It has a tower in front, designed in decorative Gothic, and a clock with four dials. The tower forms part of the interior accommodation in the chapel. The tie-beams of the roof inside have been decorated with the arms of the following Sees of the Northern Province – York, Durham, Chester Ripon Manchester and Liverpool. At the extreme northerly side of the cemetery and at a lower level is the Nonconformist chapel. It has been designed in Early English Gothic. The Roman Catholic chapel is at the extreme southerly side, and has been designed in the later perpendicular Gothic. On the lead glazing of the windows are the arms of Pope Leo XIII, of the Se of Salford, of the Dominican Order (having reference to the Dominican Monastery in Gerald Road, and of Lenton Priory in Nottinghamshire, of which Kersal Cell was an appanage. The chapels are all built of the same materials – axe-faced Yorkshire stone walls with red sandstone dressings and pitch-pine woodwork. It is perhaps unfortunate that the smaller chapels have not been placed nearer to the larger or central chapel and connected in some way by a crescent-shaped road as a complete scheme. At present they are so far apart as to spoil the effect intended, besides inviting a comparison not intended by the designers, which may be misunderstood by the general public. The designs for the cemetery are by Messrs W R Sharp and F Foster, architects of Manchester, who were appointed by the Corporation to carry out the work. [Manchester Guardian 1 April 1903 page 10]
On 8 April 1903 the Bishop of Manchester consecrated about 16 acres of land at the new cemetery, the land being that allocated for the Church of England interments. [Manchester Guardian 9 April 1903 page 10]
Salford Northern Cemetery was formally opened on the 2nd July 1903 by the Mayor of Salford, Mr Alderman Stephens. The cost of the land, layout and buildings was £65,732. [Manchester Guardian 3 July 1903 page 3]
