Kingston Cemetery CD
KINGSTON CEMETERY CD
HGS are very pleased to announce that a new CD is now available to buy for Kingston Cemetery, Portsmouth. The CD costs £10.00 and is available from our Research Centre in Cosham. It can be purchased in person, by post, through the sales section of our website or through our Bookstall.
HGS started recording the memorial inscriptions for Kingston Cemetery in 1984, when it was noticed that a kerb removal programme was taking place. Members of the Portsmouth Group, including Miss Chadwick, Blanche Hunt, Val Casey, Mrs Hemensley, Sarah Iredale, Norma Smith, Dolina Clarke, Mr Birt, Mr and Mrs Love and Betty Haughey completed nine plots in 1985. To start with they just kept ahead of the workmen, but with bad weather and a step up in work power they were overtaken.
Transcribing and indexing continued in subsequent years: Stephen Thompson scanned and transcribed the early typescripts, Ron Kerridge and Eileen Davies completed the remaining plots. Not all the gravestones listed are still present, some have been vandalised or removed when graves have been reclaimed.
The burial registers of the cemetery are held at Milton Cemetery Office, Milton Road, Milton, Portsmouth, PO4 8RS.
Tel: 023 92 732559
Email: cemeteries@portsmouthcc.gov.uk
HGS wishes to thank the staff at Milton Cemetery Office – Gerry, Steve and Jacqui – for their invaluable help and advice during the final checking which included identifying as many as possible of the illegible memorials and those without surnames.
A thank you also to Eileen Davies of HGS Research Centre who has been instrumental in the final putting together of all the material and writing the brief history of the cemetery shown below and on the CD. Thanks also to Trevor Bumstead for his work in the production of the CD.
A brief history of Kingston Cemetery, Portsmouth
Kingston Cemetery was dedicated by the Bishop of Winchester on 26 December 1855 and opened for burials on I January 1856. According to local tradition the opening was marked by an unseemly race along St Mary’s Road by hearses from two different undertakers eager to be credited with the first burial. The main entrance is in St Mary’s Road next to the railway line. On the other side of the railway is the former Kingston Prison. In 1866, 1878 and 1889 the cemetery was extended, eventually north to New Road and west to George Street and covers 52 acres. The other gateway, designed by A E Cogswell, erected in New Road in 1891 is the more imposing one. A tree-lined avenue joins the two entrances.
The first person to be buried in the cemetery was a Mr Benjamin, a plot was later named after him. Near the St Mary’s Road entrance is a monument in memory of the men killed in 1878 on board HMS Thunderer when a boiler exploded. Near the New Road entrance in Pinks Plot is the grave of Ada Frances Harriet JONES whose first husband, Charles CRUMPLIN, a steward “answered duty’s call on SS Titantic April 15th 1912”. Elizabeth E PETERS, who was the authoress of “The History of Pembroke Dock” is buried in Gills plot, which is on the righthand side as you enter the cemetery from New Road.
October 2018