C O N T E X T 1 7 1 : M A R C H 2 0 2 2 37 summerhouse, which have all been demolished. The lodge, wall and railings at Weaste Cemetery are listed structures but they are in a poor condition. In addition, six of the funerary monuments are listed structures.The paths are managed and the landscape tended. A friends-of-the-cemetery group is doing an excellent job in managing and interpreting the site for visitors. The first interment was Joseph Brotherton MP, who had campaigned for the cemetery to be created but died before it was completed. He established the first municipal library, museum and art gallery in Britain, and helped set up the vegetarian movement. The cemetery contains the graves of 373 Commonwealth service personnel who died during the world wars. Also buried there are Charles Halle, the pianist and conductor who founded Britain’s longest-established symphony orchestra in 1858, and Eddie Coleman, the Manchester United footballer and Busby Babe who died in the Munich air disaster in 1958. Sale and Brooklands Cemetery opened in 1862, designed by the architect WilliamWilson. It is unusual in its plan form. Divided into two parts, the older cemetery has an almost symmetrical layout with an unusual path layout fanning around lozenge-shaped areas for burials. There is a range of monuments from simple to very ornate, yet none is listed. The paths are in a poor condition, and the listed chapel and gatehouse are empty and considered to be at risk. Although there are several internationally important people buried here, I have highlighted one and mentioned several favourites that captured the imagination of both schoolchildren and adults alike. Cemeteries are not only places where people can grieve and remember. They are also places that bridge the void between the present and the past, and the living and the dead. All burial grounds need to be treated with respect. There are visitors who like the macabre and others who are researching their family trees, as the popularity of find-a-grave websites demonstrates. They are public places, which and can be used to encourage visitors as well as mourners to explore and to educate the community about the unique history and even curiosities within the graveyard and most importantly, for the heritage professional, ensure that they are managed and maintained for the future. Burials include James Prescott Joule, the physicist, mathematician and brewer, who lived locally and developed the first law of thermodynamics, and after whom the SI unit of energy is named; Elizabeth Burton, a Christian who died aged 24 in 1900 in the Boxer Rebellion (the Boxers conducted violent attacks targeting Christians and foreigners in northern China), a martyr of the China Inland Mission a missionary agency; and John Joseph Wright. Born in Cumbria, Wright lived locally when his parents moved here when he was a child. He was a hero of the first world war, after which he emigrated to North America. He was caught in a gunfight on a train in Montana by bandits, who were caught, convicted and given life sentences. He was given a soldier’s burial and is commemorated in his family plot. Alexandra Fairclough, a lawyer and former planning inspector, is a conservation officer for Cheshire East. She lectures on architectural history and law, and provides heritage talks and walks. The Manchester United footballer Eddie Coleman is buried in Weaste Cemetery. (Photo: P Lucas, Wikimedia) The number 772.55 on the gravestone of the physicist James Prescott Joule in Sale and Brooklands Cemetery is a reference to his measurement of the mechanical equivalent of heat. (Photo: Alexandra Fairclough) Buried in Montana after being killed by bandits, the firstworld-war hero John Joseph Wright is remembered in Sale and Brooklands Cemetery. (Photo: Alexandra Fairclough)
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