From May 2003 to May 2019 I served as one of three local councillors (elected representatives) for the ward of Woodstock on South Gloucestershire Council. The former Wesleyan Methodist Chapel and Burial Ground between Blackhorse Road and Waters Road, Kingswood were (mostly) within the ward I represented. Due to the bizarre way in which boundaries are put on maps over the years and the way in which land is divided up, a small portion of the Burial Ground does, in fact, lie within the boundaries of Bristol City Council. At the local council elections in May 2019 (when I stood down) the ward boundaries for South Gloucestershire Council were re-drawn and the wards re-named. The site of the Chapel and most of the Burial Ground are now (from May 2019 until any future boundary review) within the ward called 'Kingswood'.

In 2005, myself and my two fellow councillors for the Woodstock ward began a campaign to encourage South Gloucestershire Council to use the various powers at its disposal to tackle the state of the burial ground. In the intervening years since its closure to new burials (ca. 1979) and changes in ownership, the burial ground had fallen into disrepair. The boundary wall along Blackhorse Road and Waters Road had fallen down in a number of places, the cemetery itself was totally overgrown with brambles and other vegetation and the site was being used for fly-tipping.

I am sorry to say that our campaign didn't really achieve it's goals, although a number of small steps forward were made. However, over the 14 or so years that we tried to get something to happen, we did amass a fair bit of information about the site. As a keen family historian myself I am well aware that this may be of interest to the families of those who are interred in the Burial Ground or who were associated with the Chapel. The purpose of this webpage and the various links from it are to enable me to share information that we gathered during our campaign. I do wish to make clear, however, that apart from look-ups in a copy of a Monumental Inscription that I have, I am unable to assist in any researches with the Chapel or Burial Ground.

This website will exist only for as long as I can continue to afford to pay for the hosting, so if there is material here you are interested in, rather than just 'bookmarking' the pages, I do suggest you print-off (or create PDFs of) anything you are interested in and/or download photos, documents etc. because I cannot promise it will be here indefinitely.

Andy Perkins, Hanham, Bristol. February 2021. Updated July 2021.

In 2005, we began a campaign to encourage South Gloucestershire Council to use the various powers at its disposal to tackle the state of the cemetery. In the intervening years since its closure to new burials and changes in ownership, the cemetery had fallen into disrepair. The boundary wall along Blackhorse Road and Waters Road had fallen down in a number of places, the cemetery itself was totally overgrown with brambles and other vegetation and the site was being used for fly-tipping.

It was quite quickly established that the site was owned privately, but the owner could not be traced. Following pressure from ourselves, South Gloucestershire Council enlisted a private detective in the autumn of 2006 to try and track down the owner.

Early in 2008, the private detective tracked down the owner to an address in Pucklechurch and shortly afterwards, the Council served legal notices on the owner. These legal notices required the owner to clear the overgrown vegetation, remove fly-tipped materials and repair the boundary walls.

However, the legal notices had no effect. So, in January 2009, the Council took the owner to Court and he was successfully prosecuted. The Court ordered him to pay a £350 fine, £455 costs and a victim surcharge of £15.

Ordinarily, it would have been hoped that a successful prosecution would have spurred the owner into finally taking some action. However, this didn't happen. So, in October 2009 the owner was successfully prosecuted for a second time. This time, the Court ordered him to pay a £405 fine, costs of £405 and another victim surcharge of £15. This was a disappointing outcome as the total amount payable was just £5 more than the first prosecution.

Between 2010 and 2011 there was little visible progress, partly due to departmental re-organisations and staff changes within the Council. Some work did continue though behind the scenes exploring a number of different avenues (e.g. the legislation around disused burial grounds, the possibility of compulsory purchase, whether the Commonwealth War Graves Commission had any powers). But none of these were deemed really practical nor offered any real prospect of success.

At the end of 2011 some new council officers took a fresh look at what the Council had been doing and took stock. Over the years, many £1000’s had been spent (largely undertaking repairs to the walls) and although this money is potentially recoverable it would only be recovered if the site was ever sold. The lack of any response whatsoever from the owner to two successful prosecutions coupled with the disappointingly low level of fines set by the Court meant that it was decided that further prosecutions would not be worthwhile. And to make matters worse, the owner was found to have disappeared again.

In 2012 it was decided that the approach should be as follows; The main council department overseeing this issue (called Planning Enforcement) had a small annual budget of £10,000 for taking direct action. This budget was used to pay for physical works where rogue landowners had failed, despite requests and legal action, to do so. Council officers were willing to spend this entire sum of money on the cemetery in one of two ways.

To test whether there was sufficient interest amongst the local community for forming a community group, a public meeting was held on 3rd December 2012 (documents available here are: meeting invite, meeting agenda and a slide presentation). Although there were a number of (unanswerable) questions arising from that meeting, it was decided to press ahead with the idea. A further meeting was suggested for early 2013 to explore in more detail some of the questions that needed to be resolved before a community group could be formed.

Not long into 2013, legal advice from Council lawyers was received which, in a nutshell, said that any attempt by a community group to enter the site could be regarded as tresspass. This was contrary to previous advice that had been received which essentially said that tresspass would not apply if the intention of entering the site was a positive one; i.e. tresspass would only apply if the intention of entering a site was to damage - which clearly wasn't the case. However, the new legal advice scuppered any attempts to form a community group.

Because of the legal advice received in early 2013, everything ground to a halt and was still the case when I stood down in May 2019. The main stumbling block was (and presumably still is) the absence of the landowner. Without him there is little chance of any progress being made.

One of the main questions I was always asked - Why doesn't the Council compulsorily purchase the site ? - is answered along the lines of: In an ideal World that is what we would have liked to have seen. However, it would have needed cross-party political support. Amongst the risks that councillors would have had to consider were a) the Council would be committing itself to an on-going financial liability and in the financial climate of the time every penny spent was being questioned as to whether it was necessary and b) that embarking on a Compulsory Purchase process means that the Council would be commiting itself to the process and would be legally bound to accept the value attached to the site if the owner appealed against the value which the Council put on the site. In addition to this, if the Council did consider Compulsory Purchase, there were, at the time, other sites within the district which other councillors may have considered to have been a higher priority.

As our campaign progressed, we were contacted by many people, both local and from further afield who were interested in the cemetery. People were interested in the site because of two mains reasons; first because they had relatives buried in the cemetery and had been unable to visit their graves for many many years; and second because people just wanted to see the site improved. Some people were also interested as they had more distant relatives buried there and were interested from a family history perspective.

What we tried to do is keep people informed about any developments and progress, so we wrote the occasional letter to update them. You can find links to these letters here (links will open in a separate window). These update letters do provide a more detailed chronology of our efforts and what was happening from 2005 to ca. 2017.  Letter 1 (March 2005), Letter 2 (September 2005), Letter 3 (October 2007), Letter 4 (July 2008), Letter 5 (April 2009), Letter 6 (November 2012), Letter 7 (December 2015), Letter 8 (February 2016), Letter 8a (June 2016), Letter 8b (June 2016), Letter 9 (March 2017).

In our role as Local Councillors we also tabled questions at meetings of the Full Council. Past copies of Council Agendas and Minutes can be found here (website link working as of 16th July 2021). From the records I retained, questions were asked by us on 19th Jan 2004, 19th Jan 2005, 14th Sep 2005, 19th Jul 2006 and 20th Oct 2010. We may well have asked questions at other times, particularly more recently, but if we did, I have not retained paper copies.

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