Ascension Burial Ground / St Giles and St Peter cemetery

History of Ascension Burial Ground

This was formerly the burial ground for the parish of St Giles and St Peter. It holds the graves and memorials of many University of Cambridge academics and non-conformists.

There is a detailed Wikipedia entry.

The Mortuary Chapel is a Building of Local Interest

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1871 Cemetery Lodge

Alfred Nunn, 41, police pensioner now curator, b Fowlmere

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1881 Cemetery House

Frederick Plum, 58, curator, b Balsham

Ann, 52, b Wilts

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1891

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1901 Cemetery House

William Hills, 62, caretaker and gardener, b Cambs

Elizabeth, 64,

Elizabeth, 24, dressmaker

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1911 Cemetery Lodge

William Hills, 45, curator of cemetery, b Suffolk

Emma, 40, b Surrey

William Thomas, 17, college servant, b Duxford

Albert James, 13, errand boy, b Duxford

Walter George, 12, b Duxford

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1922 04 21

Impressive scenes were witnessed at the funeral of an Indian undergraduate, conducted according to Muslim rites at St Giles’ Cemetery, Huntingdon Road. The coffin was conveyed in a hearse and followed on foot by more than 50 Indian undergraduates. At the cemetery it was placed on the lawn near the entrance, where several mourners removed their shoes and conducted a short service. The coffin and mourners were then photographed by an Indian student before the body was carried to the grave and lowered by members of the group. Nobody not directly involved in the ceremony was permitted within 25 yards of the grave.

Credit: Mike Petty, Cambridge Huntingdon Road Scrapbook.

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Among those buried at the Ascension are the following:

John Couch Adams, astronomer discoverer of Neptune

Hugh Kerr Anderson, physiologist

Richard Appleton

Robert Stawall Ball, astronomer

Arthur Benson housemaster at Eton who wrote the words of Land of Hope and Glory

James Bethune-Baker, theologian

Charles Brink, classicist

Denis William Brogan, historian

Zachary Brooke, historian

Geoffrey Bushnell, archeologist

William Henry Clark, civil servant

John Cockcroft, Nobel prize winner

Frances Cornford, poet

Francis Darwin, botanist

Horace Darwin, Scientific instrument maker

Ida Darwin, mental health pioneer

Arthur Eddington, astrophysicist

James George Frazer, anthropologist

Henry Melvill Gwatkin, historian

Frederick Gowland Hopkins, Nobel biochemist

Bertram Hopkinson, engineer

Arthur Hutchinson, mineralogist

Henry Jackson, classicist

Richard Claverhouse Jebb, classicist

Courtney Stanhope Kenny, legal scholar

Horace Lamb, mathematician

Hugh Roger Lubbock, biologist

Donald MacAlister

Desmond McCarthy, literary critic

Norman McLean, orientalist

Alfred Marshall, economist

John Eyton Bickersteth Mayor, antiquarian

George Edward Moore, philosopher

Hugh Newall, astrophysicist

Alfred Newton, ornithologist

Frank Plumpton Ramsey, philosopher and mathematician

David Wyn Roberts, architect

Walter William Rouse Ball, mathematician

John Edwin Sandys, classicist

Charlotte Angas Scott, pioneer student

Rev John Richardson Selwyn

Walter William Skeat, philologist

Bridget Margaret Spufford

Peter Maria Stern, German scholor

Henry Taylor, mathematician

Arthur Woollgar Verrall, classicist

John Wisdom, philosopher

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein, philosopher

Charles Wood, composer

William Aldis Wright, Shakespearean scholar

Further Information

• Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society: The Ascension Parish burial ground
• Faruk Kara’s film: Eric Marland’s Alphabet Museum