Listed building or place reference: HE1025

Historic site reference
Property: Green Street Cemetery
Road name: Green Street
Parish: St. Helier
Location: View on map
Grade: Listed Place Grade 1
Category: Designed landscape
Statement of significance: An early C19 garden cemetery - significant as the earliest example in St Helier and one of the earliest in the British Isles, with various notable monuments, surviving largely intact. Although the layout is relatively simple, the site is of considerable importance. 6 garden cemeteries were opened in England between 1819 and 1830. Early examples in England which survive reasonably well, reflecting the original layout and design intentions, include the first garden cemetery: the Rosary Cemetery, Norwich (1819, grade II*), and also St James's Cemetery, Liverpool (1827-29, Grade I), and Westgate Hill Cemetery, Newcastle (1829, Grade II). A further three have been lost or badly degraded. The site survives largely intact although the memorials are gradually weathering and will eventually be lost. In England this would be regarded as a nationally important site, for its early date and good survival. It is of the highest significance in Jersey.
Context: n/a
External Description: One of the earliest garden cemeteries in the British Isles, when it was set in open fields at the edge of St Helier in 1827. Now in an urban setting surrounded by housing and offices, as well as a car park, it has a simple rectangular outline and layout, with the main gateway at the NW corner. An axial gravel path runs north-south through the centre, and curves at the south end to the west to an informal exit, with a further spur leading off the main path half way along, east to Roseville Street. High granite rubble walls enclose the area to the north, east, and south, with a lower wall to the west. The main gateway is set back off Green Street, flanked by curved walls joining the main walls. High ashlar piers flank the main gateway, supporting iron vehicle gates (?mid-C19). The grave plots are aligned west-east in rows flanking the central path. The site backs on to gardens to north and east, and Green Street car park to the west. Trees, formerly Turkey oaks, were replanted mid-late C20, as a mixture of natives and common exotics, including hornbeam, lime, various oak inc Quercus ilex, cut-leaved oak, Turkey oak, ash, holly, yew, beech, myrtle, London and oriental plane, sweet chestnut. The sward is maintained as meadow and cut annually. Monuments are largely of limestone, set in rows reflecting rows of the plots. They are mostly upright slabs, but with some grander types including plinths with urns, table tombs and occasional low iron railings. The south end of the site is dominated by the massive dressed granite Classical-style monument, to the memory of Centenier George Cronier, killed in 1848 - the only honorary officer to be killed in the line of duty in the parish - with an open belvedere containing a massive swagged urn above large rusticated plinth with inscription panels. At the north end the path leading east from the main entrance is aligned on a focal obelisk monument, set on a panelled plinth, with an urn finial. Many squared numbered granite plot markers survive. Although views would originally have been rural, including extending south across farmland to Havre des Pas and St Clement's Bay, and dominated by Fort Regent to the west, the site has since the mid-C19 been enclosed by St Helier as it grew eastwards, with no major external views.
Internal Description: Some monuments are of high sculptural quality and include some of the island's finest works of public art. Funerary monuments often reflect historic design trends of the day, such as the Neoclassical style which retained its popularity in the Victorian period, and the Gothic Revival which became popular from the mid-19th century. Others monuments are eclectic, one-off designs reflecting local circumstances and individuals.
Special interest: Architectural,Artistic,Historical

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