Dereham Cemetery
The site to the east of Dereham football ground may seem an unlikely spot to recreate the mossy beds and blissful meadows of Virgil’s Elysian Fields but the design of the new cemetery aims to express the cultural values of our most potent public landscapes.
The concept of ‘liminality’ is embodied throughout the new burial ground. A threshold in-between space that is neither one place nor another place but a transition from one world to another. This begins at the road boundary where grassy mounds, reminiscent of ancient burial mounds, define the site as a special place and also provide a sound barrier from the traffic noise. Weaving around the mounds, silver birch trees grow in a ‘river of life’ form symbolising both physical sustenance and the flow of life, death and the seasons. Beyond the mounds the entrance threshold opens up to a distinctive entry marker of a 3m high gabion clad wall filled with layers of flint pebbles, chalk blocks and local carrstone echoing the underlying geology of Norfolk.
The burial ground itself is laid out in the shape of a leaf that sits lightly on the ground responding to the rural landscape and the notion of time passing and the understanding that everything inevitably returns to the earth. Within the leaf design, graves are arranged in the pattern of the veins and beyond the leaf margins, green burials and ashes can be accommodated in wilder areas.
A little shelter sits in a garden. It’s form and materials reminiscent of the traditional Norfolk vernacular but realized in a contemporary idiom and expression. Inside, a place for quiet reflection offers views across the burial ground and a place for memorial plaques and inscriptions. The simple double pitched form is familiar and welcoming. Great care has been taken in detailing the structure to create a sense of place, of arrival and of calm. The architects have worked to ‘design out’ the details, thereby allowing the visitor to focus on the burial ground and their private reflections. This has been achieved by using the same dark tiles for the roof and for the cladding. There are no projecting eaves, no gutters, no downpipes and rainwater flows seamlessly off the building into a pebble filled trench around the perimeter. The fitted benches are made of the same oak as the internal cladding. Slate flooring is laid at the same level as the surroundings as the inside and the outside merge. Thus, the structure sits lightly on the ground, very much part of the landscape as the garden and grassland flow around it.
