Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust

Arnos Vale opened in 1839. Arnos Vale was to be a garden cemetery, inspired by the Père-Lachaise in Paris and later, London's Kensal Green. By then, Bristol's old parish graveyards were overcrowded, and a health hazard. The Bristol General Cemetery Company was set up to provide a stylish yet spacious alternative. It bought land in the outlying and picturesque village of Brislington. Putting forward plans for a cemetery that would be filled with sunlight, fresh air, trees and shrubs, with its architecture and landscaping designed to echo classical Greece. Despite the attention to style and beauty, at root Arnos Vale cemetery was a private enterprise solution to a public health problem – part of the great Victorian movement to modernise Britain’s cities by equipping them with clean water supplies, efficient sewerage systems and many other services we now take for granted. Appropriately, the first person buried at Arnos Vale was Mary Breillat, wife of the man who had brought gas street-lighting to Bristol. This is where you will find the graves of most of Bristol’s leading Victorian citizens, industrialists, philanthropists, scientists and soldiers, as well as tens of thousands of others. By the early 20th century, the prospect of a full cemetery with nowhere to expand, was one of the factors that encouraged the Company to introducing the first crematorium in the West of England. By the time, the cemetery company ceased trading in the 1980s, Arnos Vale had become the last resting place for more than 300,000 people. For people with Bristol ancestry, a tour of Arnos Vale, or a search of the cemetery records, or Books of Remembrance may turn up fascinating facts about forebears who were buried or cremated at Arnos Vale. Today, Arnos Vale is run by a charitable trust, and its future depends on public donations and the work of volunteers.