Zion Congregational Burial Ground in Gawthorpe, West Yorkshire

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Get directions Howroyd's Yard (north of)
Gawthorpe, Metropolitan Borough of Wakefield, West Yorkshire WF5 9RF England

Coordinates: 53.69753, -1.58799
Cemetery ID:

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About these numbers These percentages indicate the number of Find a Grave memorials that have a grave photo or GPS coordinates. We don't know the total number of burials in a cemetery, so we cannot calculate a percentage of those with memorials, photos or GPS coordinates.

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Note: Not to be confused with the hamlet of Gawthorpe in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees (east of Huddersfield).

The Zion Congregational Burial Ground at the edge of the village of Gawthorpe (north of Ossett) was dedicated in the early 1900s on land donated by Benjamin Howroyd. The Zion Congregational Church associated with the burial ground was located on High Street (opened in 1857 and closed in 1972). The church building is now the Darby and Joan Community Hall

The first interment in the burial ground was on 23 February 1904 (Frances Riley) with the last burial on the 30th October 1968 (Michael Gummerson). There are approximately 250 graves in the burial ground, but some have multiple interments. Most the graves are in Section F.

The Zion Congregational Burial Ground also contains the remains of 160 individuals from 69 graves that were exhumed from the Radley Street burial ground of the Ossett Congregational Church. The exhumation came about during redevelopment along Dimple Wells in about 1969 in Ossett. The exhumed remains were originally buried between 1811 and 1896, with the majority between 1820 and 1870. These included some well-known Ossett residents, such as Hannah Pickard (a local benfactress) and her brothers.

The exhumed remains were transported to Gawthorpe Lane in an open-topped truck and reburied in a large pit, 9-10ft deep, allegedly just to the left of the main burial ground entrance, near to the west wall. No burial service or religious ceremony was performed when the bodies were re-interred and there is no record of the exhumation or subsequent re-interment in the local newspaper 'Ossett Observer' or in the records of the two Congregational Churches concerned. The land at Dimple Wells was re-developed for new housing in the early 1970s.