Landscape record 1540100000 - The Platt Cemetery, Amersham

A simple Burial Board non-conformist cemetery (1858-59) designed by WF Poulton of the Reading-based architectural firm of Poulton and Woodman as one of two burial grounds he laid out in the town, the other for Anglicans being near the parish church. Poulton and Woodman were Reading-based architects and prolific cemetery designers in the 1850s-70s, their cemetery work including Windsor, St Helier, Jersey, and Guernsey (all 1856) and Aylesbury (1857-58).
With the advent of the Burial Acts in the mid-1850s in response to the general lack of decent burial space, the Amersham Burial Board was set up. Land was given by Mr Drake, the squire, of Shardeloes, for two cemeteries. One piece for the Anglican consecrated ground to succeed the parish churchyard lay near St Mary’s parish church. The other 0.5 acre of land, for non-conformists, was adjacent to the Baptist chapel off Whielden Street, south of the High Street (Bucks Herald 1860), near an existing burial ground. It is now called The Platt Cemetery.
Sheahan noted shortly afterwards that ‘Two Cemeteries were opened here on the first of January, 1860, at a cost of about £1,600. One is situated near the church, and the other close to the Dissenting Chapels – an arrangement carried out to save the expense of building cemetery chapels.’ This explains the absence of chapels often found in similar Burial Board cemeteries of this period (B1).
The walls of the cemetery are distinctively designed with decorative copings, brick diaper patterning, flint panels and ornamental cast iron railings of aesethic appeal and are of decided local heritage value (B2).