Ascension Parish Burial Ground, Cambridge

Ascension Parish Burial Ground, Cambridge

The Ascension Parish Burial Ground, formerly St Giles and St Peter's Parish, is a cemetery just off Huntingdon Road near the junction with Storey's Way in the northwest of Cambridge, England. (All Souls Lane leads off the Huntingdon Road to it.) It includes the graves of many Cambridge academics and non-conformists of the 19th and early 20th century. A small chapel was also built on the grounds, and currently acts as the workshop of local lettering artist Eric Marland.

The one and a half acres of the burial ground were established in 1857 when extra burial space was needed as the city of Cambridge expanded in Victorian times. The first burial there was in 1869. Today some 2,500 people of every religious denomination and none are buried in 1,500 plots. Many city and university dignitaries, scientists and scholars are buried there including three Nobel prize winners. Perhaps one of the burial ground’s most famous graves is that of Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher (1899-1951).

The burial ground is a designated City Wildlife Site and is part of the Storey’s Way Conservation area. In 2005 the plant species present were catalogued and the site is now managed so as to encourage wildlife and habitat diversity, as well as to care for the graves themselves. It is a ‘hidden’ part of the busy and rapidly expanding city and remains little known even to people who have lived all their lives in Cambridge. (The Friends of the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground aim to protect and enhance the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground for the public benefit as a place of remembrance, spirituality, history and nature.)

The Burial Ground contains the graves of three Nobel Prize winners (who were also members of the Order of Merit), five other members of the Order of Merit, twenty-two knights, and nine Masters of Cambridge colleges, plus over 50 people with entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. There are six Commonwealth burials of the 1914-1918 war and one of the 1939-1945 war in the burial ground.

There are eight former Masters of Cambridge colleges interred in the burial ground:

• Hugh Kerr Anderson (Sir) FRS, Master Gonville and Caius College : 1912 to 1928
• Rev. Richard Appleton Master Selwyn College 1907 - 1909
• Arthur Christopher Benson Master Magdalene College : 1915 to 1925
• Derman Christopherson (Sir), FRS, Master Magdelene College : 1978 to 1985
• John Cockcroft OM, (Sir) FRS, Master Churchill College : 1959 to 1968
• Arthur Hutchinson, FRS, Master Pembroke College 1928 to 1937
• Norman McLean FBA, Master Christ's College 1927 to 1936
• George Ernest Newsom Master Selwyn College: 1934 to 1946
• Charles Taylor (scholar) Master St. John's College,: 1881 to 1908

and there are twenty-two Knights (some with their Ladies) buried in the burial ground:

• Hugh Kerr Anderson (Sir) FRS
• Robert Stawell Ball (Sir) FRS
• Denis William Brogan (Sir) FBA
• James Cable (Sir)
• Derman Christopherson (Sir) FRS
• William Henry Clark (Sir)
• John Cockcroft OM, (Sir) FRS
• Francis Darwin (Sir) FRS
• Horace Darwin (Sir) FRS
• Arthur Eddington (Sir) OM, FRS
• James Alfred Ewing (Sir) FRS
• James George Frazer (Sir) OM, FRS, FBA
• Frederick Gowland Hopkins (Sir) OM, FRS
• Sir Richard Jebb OM, MP, FBA
• Horace Lamb (Sir) FRS,
• Donald MacAlister (Sir)
• Desmond MacCarthy (Sir)
• Charles James Martin (Sir) FRS
• Sir Leon Radzinowicz FBA
• John Edwin Sandys (Sir) FBA,
• Charles Henry Sargant (Judge Sir)
• Percy Henry Winfield (Sir)

There are twenty-five former Fellows of the Royal Society interred in the burial ground:

• John Couch Adams FRS (1849)
• Hugh Kerr Anderson (Sir) FRS (1907)
• Robert Stawell Ball (Sir) FRS (1873)
• William Henry Besant FRS (1871)
• Frederick Frost Blackman FRS (1906)
• Derman Christopherson (Sir) FRS (1960)
• John Cockcroft OM, (Sir) FRS (1936)
• Francis Darwin (Sir) FRS (1882)
• Horace Darwin (Sir) FRS (1903)
• Arthur Eddington OM (Sir) FRS (1914)
• James Alfred Ewing (Sir) FRS (1887)
• James George Frazer OM, (Sir) FRS (1920), FBA
• Ernest William Hobson FRS (1893)
• Frederick Gowland Hopkins (Sir) OM, FRS, (1905)
• Bertram Hopkinson (Colonel) FRS (1910)
• Arthur Hutchinson, Minerologist FRS (1922)
• Horace Lamb (Sir) FRS (1884)
• George Downing Liveing FRS (1879)
• Alexander MacAlister FRS (1881)
• Charles James Martin (Sir) FRS (1901)
• Hugh Frank Newall FRS (1902)
• Alfred Newton FRS (1870)
• Max Perutz OM, FRS (1954)
• William Halse Rivers Rivers FRS (1908)
• Henry Martyn Taylor FRS (1898)

There are also twenty-two former Fellows of the British Academy buried in the Burial Ground:

• Elizabeth Anscombe FBA (1967)
• Arthur John Arberry FBA (1949)
• James Bethune-Baker FBA (1924)
• Charles Oscar Brink FBA (1964)
• Denis William Brogan (Sir) FBA (1955)
• Zachary Nugent Brooke FBA (1940)
• Geoffrey Bushnell FBA (1970)
• Francis Cornford FBA (1937)
• James George Frazer OM, (Sir) FRS, FBA (1902)
• Reginald Hackforth FBA (1946)
• Henry Jackson OM, FBA, (1903)
• Sir Richard Jebb OM, MP, FBA, (1902)
• Courtney Stanhope Kenny FBA (1902), MP
• Norman McLean FBA (1934)
• Alfred Marshall FBA (1902)
• John Eyton Bickersteth Mayor FBA (1902)
• George Edward Moore OM, FBA (1966)
• Sir Leon Radzinowicz FBA (1973)
• John Edwin Sandys (Sir) FBA (1909)
• Walter William Skeat FBA (1902)
• Joseph Peter Stern FBA (1990)
• Percy Henry Winfield (Sir) FBA (1934)

Former members of the Cambridge Apostles, the intellectual secret society in the burial ground include:

• Richard Claverhouse Jebb,classicist (1860)
• Henry Jackson, classicist (1863)
• G. E. Moore, philosopher (1894)
• Desmond MacCarthy, newspaper critic (1895)
• Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher (1912)
• Frank P. Ramsey, philosopher (1921)

Not surprisingly, the burial ground contains the graves or interred cremations of 26 Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge most of whom are also commemorated in Trinity College Chapel with brasses:

• Richard Appleton, Master of Selwyn College : 1907 - 1909; Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Robert Burn, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• John Burnaby, Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, Regius Professor of Divinity
• John Walton Capstick Bursar and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Arthur Eddington OM (Sir) FRS : cremated, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Francis Cornford FBA : cremated and interred in grave of Francis Darwin with his wife Frances Cornford, Francis Darwin's daughter, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• James Frazer OM, FRS, FBA (Sir), Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Basil Hammond Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Frederick Gowland Hopkins OM, FRS, Nobel Prize winner (Sir), Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Henry Jackson OM, FBA, Vice Master Trinity College,1914 to 1919, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Sir Richard Jebb OM, FBA (Sir), Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Horace Lamb (Sir), Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Henry Richards Luard Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Jeremy Maule Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and Lecturer in English
• George Edward Moore OM, FBA, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Hugh Newall FRS, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Sir Leon Radzinowicz Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Walter William Rouse Ball, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Ernest Henry Stanton Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Henry Martyn Taylor FRS, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Augustus Arthur Vansittart, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Arthur Woollgar Verrall, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Denys Winstanley Vice-Master: Trinity College Cambridge 1935-1947, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• John Wisdom : cremated, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Ludwig Wittgenstein, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• William Aldis Wright Vice-Master Trinity College 1888 - 1914, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge

In March 2000, Dr. Mark Goldie of Churchill College compiled a list of the 50 more famous people buried in the cemetery, along with a brief biography of each person. As he says : "their lives provide vignettes of Cambridge, snapshots which tell stories of Victorian scholarship and college life and which trace the growth of new disciplines in the sciences and the humanities." ("A Cambridge Necropolis", by Dr. Mark Goldie, Churchill College, Cambridge March 2000 - for the Friends of the Parish of Ascension Burial Ground, a total of 24 pages.)