Conservation of Cremulator

The cremulator was an essential piece of equipment used at Arnos Vale Cemetery during the mid-20th century and illustrates a key stage in the process of cremation and disposal of human remains.  It would have been used to crush any bone remains removed from furnaces after cremation into a powdered form for scattering or interment in graves.

Queen Victoria was new to the throne when Arnos Vale Cemetery opened in 1839 as a ‘garden cemetery’, inspired by the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris and later, London's Kensal Green Cemetery. 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 (then outlying and picturesque) village of Brislington, and put forward plans for a cemetery that would be filled with sunlight, fresh air, trees and shrubs, and with its architecture and landscaping designed to echo classical Greece.

In its heyday, Arnos Vale provided direct employment to dozens of people, most of them gardeners and grave-diggers who lived in the industrial suburb growing up around the cemetery.  Many more were employed indirectly, including as monumental masons, florists and, of course undertakers.

Alan Wyatt’s father was one of four monumental masons who shared business premises within a few hundreds yards of the Cemetery. Alan, born in 1936, recalls:

In the late 1980s, Arnos Vale reached a critical situation also experienced by other old private cemeteries – as burial space ran out, income dwindled, resulting in less money to pay for staff and much reduced maintenance. Many of the once-splendid memorials toppled and the grounds became over-grown as wind-born seeds of ash and sycamore took root, and paths and open spaces became choked with bramble, bindweed and knotweed.

In 1987, alarmed by a press report that the then owners wanted to clear a large section for commercial development, a group of concerned local people came together to oppose the proposals and win long-term protection for the cemetery as a heritage asset.

The chapels and gate lodges at Arnos Vale are listed buildings - that is, they appear on the UK's register of places of special architectural merit &/or heritage value.  In addition, the site contains 25 Grade II or Grade II* listed monuments, as well as many others which, although not 'listed', are still of great historic or artistic interest. The recently restored Indian style chattri or memorial to Rajah Rammohun Roy is listed Grade2*, and is a Bristol landmark.

Many of the cemetery's most significant monuments are in the lower, older, part of the site.  Much of this area is now overgrown, creating a 'Gothic' appearance, but in Victorian times it would have looked much more like a park, with far fewer trees, less undergrowth, and clear views of the classically elegant Anglican and Non Conformist chapels.

More than 600 British and Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen from both World Wars and older conflicts are remembered at Arnos Vale Cemetery, including three recipients of Britain’s highest award for valour, the Victoria Cross, and veterans who survived the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo.