Hundreds of paupers’ graves are finally recognised

HUNDREDS OF forgotten paupers’ graves are being marked for the first time with a headstone due to be unveiled in a ceremony today.

More than 900 men and women inmates of the East Riding Asylum, later Broadgate Hospital, were buried in the Queensgate cemetery in Beverley over seven decades until 1980.

Until now the area where they were buried was simply a large grassed area, with no clue as to who was buried there and why.

Charles Stride, a cemeteries technical officer with East Riding Council, wanted to put that right.

He said: “We have 38 churchyards and cemeteries and all have pauper’s graves. But this is such a vast area where there are 935 people buried in one location.

“I just felt that the people who died in those circumstances, through no fault of their own, deserve some kind of recognition.

“The deceased had neither money nor an estate to pay for a funeral and no family who would contribute either.

“In those circumstances it was down to the local authority to pay for a funeral.”

At least one former member of staff at the hospital will be attending a service of dedication at 11am, led by the Rev Becky Lumley, vicar of St Mary’s Church.

The council has put up an information board and planted trees around the unmarked graves, as well as the headstone which reads: “In memory of the residents of Broadgate Hospital who were buried here from 1911 to 1980. May they rest in peace.”

The East Riding Asylum opened in 1871 on Broadgate, off the B1230 Beverley to Walkington Road, for people with mental health problems.

Renamed Broadgate Hospital in a bid to break with its grim Victorian reputation, it eventually closed in 1989 and psychiatric services were transferred to the nearby De La Pole Hospital in Willerby.

Of the surviving buildings, three lodge cottages and the staff housing on the main road remain.