Open Day: Holywell Cemetery

The annual open day in Holywell Cemetery forms part of the Oxford Open Doors festival. A tour of the cemetery reveals the history of Oxford over the last two hundred years. Among the graves, University dons predominate, as you might expect (at the last count there were 160 of them, including 32 Heads of Houses), but there is no barrier here between town and gown. Shopkeepers and tradespeople abound, with names which will be recognised by many Oxonians: Boffin the baker, Salter the boatbuilder, Badcock the draper, Gillman the bootmaker, Mallam the auctioneer, Knowles the builder, Castell the tailor and robemaker, Goundrey the ironmonger, Payne the jeweller, Goodall the chemist, Venables the gunsmith,  Broadhurst the printer and stationer, Mowbray the ecclesiastical outfitter, Thornton the bookseller. Here too is Benjamin Blackwell (1814-1855), the first city librarian whose little bookshop in St Clement’s was the forerunner of his son’s more famous premises in Broad Street. George Claridge Druce, the proprietor of a chemist’s shop in the High Street, was both a businessman and an eminent botanist, whose dedication to science was rewarded by three honorary degrees and Fellowship of the Royal Society. In the various corners of the cemetery, you will find the graves of Charles Williams, one of the Inklings, as well as the Church musician, John Stainer, and the writer, Kenneth Grahame.