New project reveals working class lives of Jewellery Quarter's common graves

The University of Birmingham's Professor Adam Ledger has been working with the burial sites conservation charity, Caring for God’s Acre, and its ‘Our Digital Ancestors’ initiative to share stories of those buried in the common graves at Key Hill Cemetery, in Birmingham’s historic Jewellery Quarter.

The Bone Ensemble, a theatre company run by the Professor of Theatre and Performance, was commissioned to create ’Stories to Remember' with a group of local writers, to share the stories of some of the people buried in the Cemetery's common graves.

"This is one of a number of arts and performance projects I've created in and around the Jewellery Quarter, including with students on the University’s drama programmes, and this is the third project I've done in the cemetery," says Professor Ledger.

This time, local writers researched what information could be found in Birmingham’s Central Library, including newspaper clippings and census information, and set about interpreting and reimagining the lives of Birmingham’s working class through stories and poetry.

"Unlike the wealthy and well known who are buried in Key Hill – which include Joseph Chamberlain, Constance Naden and instant custard creator Alfred Bird – the mass graves offered an alternative to what was considered the shame of a pauper's grave," explains Professor Ledger.

Each plot is many metres deep and sometimes contains over 200 bodies. Yet a name only appears on one of the huge memorial stones if friends and family could afford to have the deceased's name engraved on the long lists that appear on both sides of the memorial.

The stories were read at the graves on Saturday 12 September as part of Birmingham Heritage Week and will now be turned into a book, to be launched at Birmingham Central Library in November.