Exeter Dissenters Graveyard open days

The Dissenters Graveyard will be open to visitors between 11am and 4pm on Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th June.

Visitors can:

Take the opportunity to walk through the nearly restored graveyard and browse through the range of information on the histories of the Graveyard, of Dissent, of the monuments and the people associated with site.

Hear about previous excavations including an investigation of an intact underground vault with visible  burials.

Hear about the histories and sometimes the transatlantic connections of families represented in the Graveyard.

Purchase a 32-page booklet describing the origins of the graveyard, some of the people who are buried there, and what has happened to the site from the time it closed in 1854 to the present day. Price £4.

The Dissenters Graveyard is a significant physical remnant of the important Dissenting strand in Exeter's history. Dissenters were those Protestants who did not accept the authority of the Church of England. The Dissenter community was an important part of the city's commercial, religious and political life, particularly during the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. At one time Dissenters made up nearly 40% of the Protestant population of Exeter and indeed of England.

The Graveyard was used for burials between 1748 and 1854. At least 1,300 people are buried at this site on the corner of Magdalen Street and Bull Meadow Road. We are repairing, rebuilding and re-bonding the broken fragments of some of the nearly 100 monuments on the site and repairing & repointing boundary walls. New wrought iron gates and railings will be installed. As much of the work as possible is being done by volunteers, with appropriate training.

Exeter Dissenters Graveyard Trust (EDGT) was set up in 2013 specifically to rescue it from ruinous development.  It has a website: www.edgt.org.uk
https://www.facebook.com/exeterdgt/