Dudley - old St Thomas burial ground at Queens Cross

[cjmcolley]

Hi All - Is anyone here familiar with the old Queens Cross Cemetery? From what I can gather, this is separate from the current council cemetery (confusingly also at Queens Cross) which opened in 1904. Instead this was one of seemingly several burial grounds belonging to St Thomas's.

I'm trying to locate an old grave from 1872. The monumental inscription was recorded here - http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~uktranscriptions/genealogy/StThomas_Dudley_MIs.htm - so the headstone existed until the mid-20th century at least. I suspect the headstone may no longer be there, but I'm finding it hard to locate much specific information about this particular burial ground, where it was, and whether it still exists.

I'm wondering if anyone familiar with the area might be able to shed light on the location of the cemetery - and whether the old 19th-century graves are still there? (And if not, then what might have happened to them.) Any info much appreciated!

[StintonLomas]

The 1883 OS 1:500 oldmap shows a cemetery in the SW angle between Queen's Cross and Blower's Green Rd.
https://www.old-maps.co.uk/#/Map/393848/289764/13/100383

GMaps seems to show this as public open space now
https://goo.gl/maps/r614dUh9Qxo27QGR9

The earliest oldmap that doesn't show the legend Cemetery is the '63-'65 1:2500
https://www.old-maps.co.uk/#/Map/393848/289764/12/100954

The cemetery further West (municipal ?) first appears on the 1919   1:2500

[cjmcolley]

That’s very interesting, thank you - nice detective work! So, it looks like the cemetery may have been landscaped as early as the 1960s. That’s somewhat aggressive - some of the headstones were as recent as the 1930s... I wonder if the stones may have been moved to the municipal cemetery, as with the previous cohort from St Thomas’s that’s listed in the MIs (although there are no Victorian memorials still there it seems).

Thanks again.