Sileby Cemetery

By the mid 1870s Sileby's parish churchyard was full to capacity, and an order was made to stop burials there. A new Burial Board was established in 1878 representing all the religious denominations in the village. Their role was to find a location for a parish cemetery and then to lay out plots and build cemetery chapels.

A two acre site was found off Ratcliffe Road and by October 1880 work on the chapels was making good progress with the spire almost finished and the pathways laid out. The whole area was divided between the consecrated ground of the Established church and that of the Nonconformists.

Work was almost finished by January 1881 and the scheme cost £1,960. The Nonconformists started using the cemetery almost straight away. On the 25th January 1881, Reverend William Luddington, a Primitive Methodist minister was the first person interred in the new cemetery.

However, problems occurred for the Established church. Doctor Magee, the Bishop of the Diocese refused to consecrate the parts of the cemetery put aside for Anglicans. He had taken issue over sharing ground with Nonconformists. It forced the Burial Board to apply for a licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury for burials to start. The delay meant that the first burial in the consecrated part of the cemetery did not take place until the 25th March 1882.

Due to an ever expanding population more ground was needed and further expansion of the site took place in 1941-42. In 1975 extra additional ground was acquired and a Garden of Remembrance was also established.