Place:Holbeck Cemetery, Leeds (metropolitan borough), West Yorkshire, England

Resources

• Find A Grave: Holbeck Cemetery
• Address: Fairfax Road, Leeds, Metropolitan Borough of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England LS11 8SY

Cemetery notes and/or description

Holbeck Cemetery opened in 1857. The opening coincided with the closing of the graveyard at St Matthew's church near Holbeck Moor. Holbeck was the third municipal cemetery to be opened in Leeds township after Beckett Street and Hunslet.

Holbeck Cemetery encompasses 10 acres situated on an elevated site overlooking the city of Leeds, Morley, Bradford, Shipley and beyond. It contains 86 commonwealth war graves and many other private memorials to servicemen and women from World Wars I and II. It also contains a great many guinea graves dating from 1857 to the 1940's.

Some of the more intriguing monuments include:

• "mustard-maker" E.T Jones, world champion swimmer, and
• Henry Bailey, "caterer of amusement"
• the largest memorial, belonging to Henry Rowland Marsden, born in Holbeck in 1823, who made his fortune in Connecticut, USA before returning to Leeds where he became Lord Mayor of the city.
• the oldest memorial stone belonging to William Gott
• Thomas Beecroft, sewing machine and band-knife inventor
• Adam Paton, who invented improvements in colour lithography

The latter two had a great influence on the development of factory mass production and the printing industry which were so important to the development of Leeds as a commercial city.