The Story of Undercliffe Cemetery and its historic burial monuments

As part of a recce for an Ancestry Tour I’m booked to do in and around Bradford next year, I made a visit to Undercliffe Cemetery – sometimes known as Highgate of the North. The 26 acre cemetery site on Undercliffe Hill with views over Shipley, eccleshill & Idle is a product of Bradford’s Victorian heyday with huge Yorkshire stone memorials and gothic revival monuments, tombs and crypts.

It is unlike any other cemetery I have been to, with the opulence and grandeur of the special memorials towering along pathways, with many showing the grime of the industrial revolution when mills and factories billowed out smoke from the city to the outlying areas. The site is such an iconic location, that it has been used many times in film and TV as a location with it featuring in the 1960’s movie Billy Liar and more recently in the TV hits band of Gold and Peaky Blinders.

The story of the cemetery aligns with that of the growth of Bradford’s population as well as the prosperity of the upper and middle classes. Within 50 years from 1801, Bradford’s population jumped from around 13,000 to over 100,000. This was fuelled by the industrial revolution and Bradford’s thriving clothing production. Sadly for the working classes it meant overcrowding, cramped living conditions and poor sanitation, as well as terrible working conditions, all this leading to disease and high mortality rates.

The Churchyard of St. Peter became so over crowded human bones would be sticking out above the ground. New cemeteries on the outskirts of the city were desperately needed and reform was required so that people did not have to be buried in the Parish in which they died.

So in 1849 a group of Bradford business men including Titus Salt formed a joint stock company to run a private cemetery in Undercliffe. The land was purchased in 1850 and after landscaping the cemetery including a long promenade through the middle, it was opened in 1854 with two chapels.

Where Undercliffe differed from other cemeteries where rich and poor were buried side by side, here the ability to pay dictated the size of the plot families could purchase and the poorer plots were located in remoter edges of the site. Wealthy families would often buy multiple plots accounting for the many large monuments to past mayors, mill owners, architects and businessmen.

This also accounts for the quality of the monuments, with most of the graves being far grander than just simple memorials, being produced by experienced stone masons at great cost. It seems there was still competition between the wealthy even in death as to who was the most important by way of the size, cost and flamboyance of their monument!

As the cemetery was maintained by the directors of the company, it became a place where Bradford residents would come for recreation too, but people were expected to behave properly when visiting the grounds.

It is worth noting that some of the site was put aside for non-conformist graves and the Quaker graves are all characterised by the simplicity of their horizontal memorial stones. There are also some Company graves (or Paupers graves) for people from workhouses or those too poor to be able to afford a burial plot.

With more people choosing cremations and a decline in internments, the Cemetery company went into liquidation in the 1960’s, a property developer acquired the site in 1980, before selling the site 4 years later to Bradford Metropolitan District Council and a thriving Friends Group was set up with volunteers supporting the council in maintaining the site.

There are a number of Bradford’s famous sons and daughters buried at the site, with well know artists, musicians, sports people, politicians and civic dignitaries.

Of the grave monuments, 6 of them are actually listed.

These include:

The Joseph Smith Obelisk  - at the end of the Promenade near the bandstand. A prominent 30ft grey granite obelisk in honour of the surveyor, businessman and land agent of the cemetery.

The Mawson Monument – a granite obelisk on a pedestal in honour of William Mawson who with his partner Henry Lockwood was responsible for designing Bradford City Hall, Bradford Wool Exchange and Bradford St.George’s Hall.

The Swithin Anderton Monument – a Yorkshire stone fine gothic revival monument and a copy of Sir Walter Scott’s monument a tribute to the local Judge.

The Illingworth Mausoleum – a grey granite mausoleum in a style of an Egyptian Mastaba, built as a family tomb for the Illingworth family owners of Whetley Mills on Thornton Road.

The Behrens Monument – a renaissance style monument to Sir Jacob Behrens, an Anglo German textile merchant and leading member of Bradford Philosophical Society.

The Miles Moulson Monument – a sculpture for the Moulson family of Horton, by famous sculptor John Thorp. Miles Moulson was an eminent stonemason himself.

The location is well worth a visit. It is very atmospheric, particularly if you explore the more overgrown areas on the outskirts of the area as opposed to just visiting the “Historic Core” of the cemetery.

It is still an operational cemetery and burials take place more regularly now than in the 1960’s. The site is operated by the Undercliffe Cemetery Charity although it is still owned by Bradford Metropolitan District Council. The charity are responsible for cleaning and removing dirt from 30 monuments a year and are also able to provide guided walks & tours around the sites for groups.

In 2025, the area was designated a Local Nature Reserve and has been a conservation area since the 1980’s. On my walk around, I saw plenty of wildlife including many birds a squirrel and even caught a glimpse of a fox.

If you visit look out for the many interpretive boards which talk about the people buried at the site as well as Bradford’s history and heritage. There are also QR codes on some of the monuments where you can easily find information about the person and the grave.