Standing Before The Gates Of Eternity

A journey into a forgotten world, the Gothic splendour of the Sheffield General Cemetery.

Walled off from the careless modern world lies a forgotten haven of peace; a place to breathe, escape your cares and from which to emerge renewed. At least that's how I feel about Sheffield General Cemetery, to be found between Ecclesall Road on one side, with Sharrow and Nether Edge on the other. 

The Gatehouse opens onto Cemetery Avenue off Ecclesall Road, however I prefer to enter from the other side on Cemetery Road, through a magnificent gateway that first drew my attention to this lost world.

The gateway viewed from Cemetery Road, built in a style that references ancient Egyptian architecture including the winged solar disc.

 I remember how I was first drawn to the cemetery more than a few years ago; walking along in a daydreaming frame of mind, vaguely aware of the warm sandstone wall beside me when out of nowhere, I was before an immense stone gateway, seemingly straight from ancient Egypt. I couldn't believe my eyes! The shape and form couldn't be mistaken especially with the winged solar disc.

The distinctive winged solar disc from ancient Egypt, although the wings have been given a more traditional western form. Originally a symbol of protection found above the doorways of Egyptian temples.

 My curiosity and imagination were already caught but then on the large wrought iron gates themselves, another symbol from ancient Egypt but one that had held significance across the ages. Ouroboros!

Ouroboros or Uroboros. A serpent eating its own tail, symbol of eternity and also unending renewal.

Ouroboros first appears in ancient Egyptian funeral texts but has found it's way into many cultures, religions and mythologies. Finding it here on these gates with architecture from ancient Egypt created a powerful sense of mystery and wonder; a place seemingly removed from time.

                                            

"......Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

 The cemetery is an amazing space, poised between decay and timelessness. Gravestones and monuments protrude from overgrown vegetation. What seems like disorder at first glance, refines itself as patterns emerge; a dawning awareness grows of the original layout of the cemetery before it was reclaimed by the ivy, trees and brambles.

A delicate balance between preservation and the beauty of decay, witnessing the passage of time.

Narrow paths meander their way through forlorn groups of gravestones, bright sunshine is banished by the dense trees. Worn stone born of the time's passing. Who's feet have trod these same steps? How many, now nameless, do I follow? And yet, perchance here still, beside me.

Above all the feel of the place grows upon you. Gothic. Romantic. What stories lay buried, now untold and long forgotten? A sense of loss through the ages; unrequited love too, perhaps.

An angel, from beneath the undergrowth, beseeches "Forget not, those once loved."

Walking from the Gates of Eternity through the trees I emerged out into the cheerful sun. Before me enclosed in a circle of wrought iron was a meadow in miniature; dazzling flowers in yellows and blues lay in the warm sun, enticing Butterflies to pause in their dancing.

Bluebells too, as well as the bright Buttercups and other flowers.

The Anglican Chapel perhaps symbolises the cemetery best, caught in a perfect moment between romantic decline and structural failure. How to preserve and yet, still hold onto the atmosphere that is so unique to this place?

Spire of the Anglican Chapel. Superb gargoyles abound but deserve to be a subject in themselves!

The cemetery was opened in 1836 and was designed by a man called Samuel Worth (1779 - 1870) while Robert Marnock was in charge of the landscaping. Robert Marnock also landscaped the Botanical Gardens (1836) and Weston Park (1873).

Originally Nonconformist, if I understand correctly, that is not belonging to the Anglican faith but instead to the Protestant denominations; the cemetery was expanded in 1846 to include an Anglican section and the two were actually separated by a wall.

The Chapel was completed in 1850 and built in a style called Gothic Revival or Neo-Gothic which had roots in the late 1740's becoming popular in the 19th century, inspired by medieval Gothic architecture.

Interior of the Chapel, from a previous camera. Vandals had broken through a bricked up doorway, luckily I was there before it was resealed.

So many evocative sights at every turn, it seems as if the very soul of everything that is Gothic has been laid to rest here or that this is it's heart. The source of it all.

And yet, despite the melancholy there's beauty enough to stun the senses, if only I had the skill to photograph all that I felt!

From the darkest shadows to the brightest light and returning again to the dark; a hidden world between the two extremes.

I walked round the Chapel, gazed at the standing cross for a long time before walking down a broad tree-lined avenue.

All around me the monuments to those that had lived and gone lay entwined in the embrace of ivy and bramble. Dark, cool stone contrasted by the deep green lustrous leaves.

The avenue led me down past many graves until I came to a monument that seemed to be the embodiment of sorrow, a female figure kneeling as if seeking atonement.

I prefer not to know who this commemorates, the mystery and romance is better left to the imagination.

"....Half sunk, a shattered visage lies...."

A little further on a number of large monuments stood imperiously above the rest and seemed unmoved by the enveloping tide of determined vegetation.

A previous acquaintance, now free from a jacket of snow and ice.

I now reached the Nonconformist Chapel stunning in it's classical proportions and due to the strange serpentine paths of the cemetery not far from where I started.

The late afternoon sun was starting to disappear behind the trees and it was drawing near to the time when I would have to leave this magical place and travel the short distance home, it felt however a much greater distance in terms of time. The modern world seemed agreeably far away and remote.

The sense of peace and continuity that is conjured here is wonderful, it feels like a place frozen as a moment in time, between the past and the present, where both are equally distant and yet strangely near.

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone 

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing besides remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley, (1819).