St James’s Cemetery, Dover
The six-acre site of St James’s is one of four cemeteries located on Copt Hill overlooking Dover. It was opened for burials in 1855, the first being Mary Ann Whitworth who died on 22 January 1855.
There are 387 identified burials of the Great War here as well as 356 Second World War burials, contained in a special plot at the far end of the cemetery known as the Dunkirk plot. Here lie many casualties of the Dunkirk evacuation including those who succumbed to their wounds in Dover’s Buckland Hospital.
Graves of nine casualties of the 1918 Raid on Zeebrugge are laid out in ranks near the last resting place of their leader Admiral Sir Roger (later Lord) Keyes. Their names are inscribed on the Cross of Sacrifice.
The attractively laid out cemetery is peppered with the graves of servicemen who died in peace and war over the years in Dover, including at least three holders of the Victoria Cross. There are also eight foreign national war burials and three non-war service burials in the cemetery.
St Mary’s Cemetery, Dover
This site comprises about ten acres and was opened for burials in approximately 1870. Interred in this peaceful, idyllic setting are a number of Dover's leading citizens, including Sir Richard Dickeson, four times mayor of Dover. Standing alone is a memorial to the Lascar seamen who died when the SS Maloja sank off Shakespeare Beach during the First World War.
Charlton Cemetery, Dover
Charlton Cemetery is a ten-acre site opened for burials in approximately 1872, a time when the population of Dover was increasing rapidly. Within the cemetery you will find a mass of history chiselled into the tombstones and headstones.
There are 39 First World War burials and 17 from the Second World War.
Jewish Cemetery, Dover
Although a secret community of Marranos Jews is believed to have existed here in the sixteenth century, the modern Jewish community in Dover dates back to the early- or mid-eighteenth century; the date generally given for the establishment of the community is 1835, when the Paradise Pent Synagogue (Ashkenazi Orthodox) was founded. In the 19th century there were several Jewish schools and colleges in Dover, which attracted pupils from across the country and from overseas.
In 1861 a new synagogue was built on Northampton Street as the congregation had outgrown Paradise Pent. The walled cemetery, with its ohel (burial hall), was also acquired in the 1860s and first used in 1868, the land having been provided by Dover Harbour Board.
The community became defunct during World War II, with the synagogue largely destroyed by enemy bombing. The now-disused cemetery is administered by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and open by appointment. The foundation stone from the Northampton Street synagogue is visible inside the cemetery.
St James’s, St Mary’s, Charlton and Jewish cemeteries are all accessed from Old Charlton Road, Dover. There is limited roadside parking (use postcode CT16 2QQ); alternatively park in the town centre and walk up through Connaught Park.
For more information about military burials here, please see the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website
Cowgate Cemetery, Dover
Nestled at the foot of Dover's Western Heights, Cowgate Cemetery, formerly known as St. Mary's New Burial Ground, was consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1835 and was an extension to the parish churchyard now covered by York Street.
The gravestones provide a rich resource of family and social history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and Cowgate contains the headstones of many famous local figures, a terrace of family vaults belonging to many prominent Dover families and an obelisk erected by the Cinque Ports Volunteer Artillery to mark the grave of Sergeant John Monger who was killed along with Lieutenant Thompson when a gun burst at Archcliffe Fort in 1860. Other stones commemorate victims of Goodwin Sands shipwrecks, people who have drowned in the harbour or died aboard ships returning from overseas and the agent of the Belgium Government who was hit by a train at the Harbour station.
Cowgate Cemetery is peripheral to the Western Heights nature reserve and contains many plant species indicative of chalk grassland habitat, including marjoram, black knapweed, wild carrot, cinquefoil, bird's-foot-trefoil and common spotted and pyramidal orchids.
The cemetery was closed to general use in the 1870s with the opening of the Copt Hill cemeteries but continued to be used where plots had already been purchased or there were vacancies in family plots. The final burial took place in 2006, and was that of William Ebenezer Petchey aged 105, a member of the family who were for a long period sextons at Cowgate.
Hamilton Road Cemetery, Deal
Opened in May 1856, the cemetery was created to provide a new burial ground for Deal at a time when its general population was expanding and when previous, often ad hoc facilities for dealing with deaths in the area no longer sufficed.
It contains a Cross of Sacrifice unveiled in November 1925 by Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby, one of the Great War's most prestigious commanders, who was Captain of Deal Castle at that time.
Military burials include service personnel from Britain, Belgium, Canada, and – very unusually – Nazi Germany, many of whom took part in some of the most famous incidents in World Wars I and II, including the Gallipoli Campaign, the Battle of the Somme, the 1918 Zeebrugge Raid, the Battle of Dunkirk, the Battle of the Denmark Strait and sinking of HMS Hood, the Battle of Britain, and the more modern tragedy of the Deal barracks bombing in September 1989.
It also contains 66 local civilian war dead from World War II killed by German bombing and shelling between 1940 and 1945, 127 military burials from World War I (including three unidentified Naval ratings), and 54 from World War II.