The picture above shows a section of Western Cemetery taken in the part of the Cemetery west of Chanterlands Avenue and in the Committee Minutes (s.p.b.s) referred to as ‘new site’ (as opposed to ‘old site’ east of Chanterlands Avenue). The impact of the landscaping is much more impressive today than it must have been when the young trees were first planted.
By the early 1880s plans for a second municipal cemetery (second to Hedon Road, s.p.b.s) were well underway, west Hull needed a municipal cemetery as well as east Hull. By 1883 land on the north side of Spring Bank West (today) and immediately west of the Hull General Cemetery site (s.p.b.) had been purchased (as previously referenced the early history of the Hull General Cemetery Co. site has been written-up in five successive articles in the Hull Civic Society Newsletter between June 2016 and May 2018). As to be expected, this semi-rural site was then on the edge of town while to the west the land was crossed by the Hull-Scarborough rail line (the rail crossing now known as Walton Street crossing was then a rural crossing and before the rail track was a farm track later to become Chanterlands Avenue).
At the same time the municipal Parks Committee was searching for suitable sites for two municipal parks, one to the east of the town, one to the west. In 1883 a 40 acre site beside Walton Street (today) was chosen for the site of West Park, this land having been bought by the Municipal Corporation from the North-Eastern Railway Co. in 1878.
By 1885 outline plans for ‘additional burial accommodation’ on Spring Bank (West) were finalised and in December 1885 the Borough Engineer submitted to the Burial Committee a proposed lay-out plan for the Western Cemetery.
West Park was to be a quarter of a mile south of the Western Cemetery.