Harlow Hill Cemetery on Otley Road, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, is a local authority cemetery established on land donated by Henry Lascelles, 4th Earl of Harewood in 1869, and consecrated on 3 October 1871 by the Bishop of Ripon. It features the Gothic Revival Church of All Saints, designed by Isaac Thomas Shutt and Alfred Hill Thompson. It has individual memorials to casualties of World Wars I and II, and other graves include those of actor Michael Rennie and Catherine Gurney, an activist in the Temperance movement in the United Kingdom.
Location and general information
Harlow Hill Cemetery is on the north side of Otley Road, near RHS Garden Harlow Carr in Harrogate. It is run by Harrogate Borough Council; It was established in 1869 on land donated by the Earl of Harewood. Although the church was opened on 11 April 1871, the church and cemetery could not be consecrated until 3 October of the same year due to a financial anomaly.
History
Early history
Harlow Hill is the earliest recorded place of worship in Harrogate. It is likely that a chantry chapel existed on this hill in the 14th century. Harrogate Chantry Chapel is first mentioned in a will of 1439 and was dissolved in 1549. A high cross known as the Great Puddingstone Cross existed close by the site of the chapel from at least 1199, and was gone by 1610. By 1848 there is no mention of a church or cemetery on Harlow Hill.
Recent history
In 2000 at Grove Road Cemetery, Harrogate, a 99-year-old, high monument fell and killed Reuben Powell aged six years. Harrogate Council responded by contacting those owners of graves who were traceable to ask them to secure their standing stone memorials. Between 2006 and 2010, 6,000 standing monuments with untraceable owners were laid down for safety reasons by the Council. During the same period, "scores of Harrogate district offenders, sentenced to Community Payback" assisted with the reinstatement of over 1,000 of the laid-down memorials. Councillor Les Ellington said, "Not only is this bringing benefit to local communities, who are seeing their cemeteries reinstated, it is saving public funds ... over 60 offenders have also been accredited by York College of Masonry with Open College Network qualifications."
Chapel
The plot of land for the chapel and cemetery was donated by Henry Lascelles, 4th Earl of Harewood (1824–1892), and the church was opened in 1871. The chapel was designed by Isaac Thomas Shutt and Alfred Hill Thompson ARIBA, architects.
Notable burials
Individual war memorials
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission has identified 28 casualties recorded here. There are various individual gravestone-memorials to those killed in World Wars I and II, and the cemetery has been photographed and indexed with war memorials noted.
For example, Donald Luke Abbott (1920–1943) was a prisoner of war in Japanese hands, he was buried at Thanbyuzayat, Burma, in the war cemetery commemorating those who died constructing the Burma-Siam Railway. The stone cross for the Beall family records two brothers killed in action in 1917 and 1916. They are Lieutenant A. Ernest Beall of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and Lance Sergeant Wilfred R. Beall of the York and Lancaster Regiment. The Campbell stone cross monument records the death in France of Private William Gordon Campbell (1887–1917) of the 46th Battalion of the AIF, or First Australian Imperial Force. The gravestone of the Crawford family tells of Geoffrey Crawford, his parents' only son, who was killed in action in Sumatra in 1942. Fred Foxton, ABRN, (1919–1944) is recorded as missing presumed killed at sea; his sister had already died suddenly at the age of 26. The portrait of Ordinary Seaman Kenneth Mattison RN (1922–1942) C/JX 318042 in sailor's uniform is on his white gravestone; he died at age 19 years of wounds received in action at sea on 17 August 1942. Captain John K. Miller MC was a captain in the Denbighshire Hussars and attached to the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He was killed in action in 1918 near Roussoy, France, and buried in the British cemetery northwest of St Quentin.