St Mary's is a Medieval church located in Beverley. Over time as the town expanded and size of the population grew the church needed to look elsewhere for a burial ground.
This cemetery is 0.5 miles north west of Beverley in the village of Molescroft, and eventually this cemetery also became full.
There is no sign with the name of the cemetery. However St. Mary's Church, Molescroft Parish Council & Molesworth Wildlife network are managing the cemetery area as a haven for wildlife and they have notices in the graveyard with details of how they're doing this.
"In 1864, Rachel Myers gifted five acres on Molescroft Road as an additional burial ground for St Mary parish. This was the third burial ground for the St Mary parish, the other two being St Mary Churchyard and a separate cemetery opened on North Bar Within in 1829. A three acre plot at the Molecroft Road location was consecrated and parish burials officially commenced in 1869. However, temporary burial licenses were issued in prior years, including one for the burial of Mrs. Myers in 1867. A mortuary chapel with a later 13th-century style was designed by William Hawe and built in 1867-68; this chapel is still found in the cemetery. By 1919, the original consecrated ground of three acres was full and the rest of the cemetery was consecrated. The Molescroft Road cemetery was closed in 1963 except for burials in existing plots. Since that time St Mary parish has used consecrated areas of various municipal cemeteries for the burial of their parishioners. Burial registers for St Mary parish are available at the East Riding Archives (Treasure House, Champney Road, Beverley, HU17 8HE)."
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Near the entrance to the cemetery is a grave of Frederick and Mary Elwell, both renowned artists who lived in Beverley.
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Frederick William Elwell RA (29 June 1870 in Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire – 3 January 1958 in Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire) was an English painter in oils of portraits, interiors and figurative subjects. He exhibited at the Paris Salon and the Royal Academy, where he became a member in 1938, and painted a portrait of King George V in 1932."
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Mary Dawson Elwell
1874–1952
Painter, notably of interiors, also landscapes, born in Liverpool, daughter of a shipping merchant. She married Hull oil broker George Holmes who died in 1913, then the painter Fred Elwell, with whom she studied, in 1914. His portrait of his wife is held by the Borough Council in Beverley, Yorkshire, where they settled. Her money enabled the Elwells to travel extensively on the continent. She exhibited often at RA, also at SWA, RSA, Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and elsewhere, although a stroke in 1945 incapacitated her. There was a retrospective of the work of the two Elwells in 1953 at Beverley Art Gallery and Ferens Art Gallery, Hull."
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