Why does a cemetery have gates

Using an elegant and specially designed driveway aluminum gate will allow the cemetery to welcome guests with an easy-to-maneuver gate that fits any vehicle trying to enter. Thankfully, aluminum gates come in plenty of sizes, styles and designs for every need. When it comes to design, there are plenty of choices available to meet any look. Gates and fencing panels can be different colors to match buildings on the property or the surrounding nature.

There are also multiple options for the design of the tops of the pickets as well as the space between the pickets. Privacy panels are also an option for certain areas of the property. These keep visibility low in areas such as storage for garbage or landscaping equipment that can disrupt the overall aesthetic. The seamless look is very important, but equally important is that the quality is top-notch and that the fence and gates surrounding the cemetery are built to last.

Our intention for this blog is to rediscover the out of the way and obscure graveyards that surround us, as well as to uncover new histories among the more well-trod grounds of prominent burial places. With this blog as a guide, visitors can experience cemeteries in a new way. This site is the last in a series of meetinghouses that served as the hubs of all early American towns, and Mansfield is a great example of how these communities expanded through the centuries while preserving its historical core.

The stones of the Old Town Cemetery reveal an expansive variety of designs and materials. An impressive amount of portrait stones neighbor finely inscribed early geometric willows, figural setting suns, and nineteenth-century urns that almost resemble Islamic lamps. Unusually ornate floreate, symmetric patterns occupy a good percentage of lunettes.

Particularly of note are the hybrid cherub-skulls that seem to be from the same workshop as the suns. Some of the slate stones appear to have been partially conserved, resulting in an unusual green tint on the front surface. This usually only occurs when lichen spreads over slate, but even then it more commonly forms distinct clumps rather than a film. The tint could also be a result of chemical erosion, and appears to have been on the stones for some time.

Similarly mysterious are a few markers of a distinctly darker slate than their peers. While most surviving gravestones are made from green slate, these resemble contemporary Grayson slate, quarried today in Virginia.

No seventeenth-century headstones have survived, and the oldest belongs to Sarah Pratt d. Empty as the Common is during pandemic times, one hopes that when the weather warms, the few fallen and broken stones will receive some attention. Burnett is a writer and editor with a background in early American history and material culture. Combining her passion for the paranormal and everything pink, Z. If you are a representative of a cemetery or a cemetery historian and would like to see your cemetery featured in this blog please email Corinne Elicone at celicone mountauburn.

Reader, today we have a tale of two different kinds of cemeteries, both alike in dignity under one name in fair Mansfield, Massachusetts where we lay our scene. Spring Brook Cemetery, consecrated in , has a clear boundary between the old and the new. A simple flat plot of land next to what we can only assume used to be a babbling brook now down to a steady trickle, rests with a few structures of interest and a smattering of Victorian-style beech trees.

Camaraderie and fraternal bonds seem to be some of the most pervasive values of the old industrial town. The difference between the two sides of the cemetery is stark. At the turn of the 19th century burial tastes rapidly developed and so did the design and aesthetic of modern day death paraphernalia. I even saw a toy horse at the grave of a horse aficionado.

In the cemetery community there is often a harsh judgement placed on these mementos and those who leave them. They are evidence of a visitor to often lonely places. His son is buried in this spot and it was his 54th birthday recently. And a range of his other family members going back generations are scattered throughout the cemetery.

Stewardship in cemeteries especially very old ones often comes in the form of an adopted fondness—a rogue genealogist seeing a need and filling a need, a parks department official slowly fixing a decrepit perimeter, a member of a local historical society meandering through a maze of archives…. A unique combination that lends itself to a great deal of passion and a curbing sense of realism.

Realism, which far too often challenges Spring Brook Cemetery. HFPJC has completed surveys and construction at more than Jewish cemeteries in Europe particularly in Hungary and other regions of the former Kingdom of Hungary , including more than 40 wall projects in Ukraine.

Of these, only 7 wall projects to date have been in western Ukraine defined here as the Lviv, Ternopil, and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts , but 28 perimeter walls have been erected around Jewish cemeteries in nearby Zakarpattia oblast. Headstone resetting and other non-wall projects have also primarily been in Zakarpattia oblast, but one resetting project has been in progress at the Jewish cemetery of Rozdil in Lviv oblast, and HFPJC placed a memorial monument at the largely destroyed old Jewish cemetery in Brody , also in Lviv oblast.

Contact information and a query form are available on their website. The non-profit organization Geder Avos aims to preserve Jewish heritage by restoring and maintaining Jewish burial sites both cemeteries and mass graves in eastern Europe. Most of their cemetery efforts are focused on repairing and rebuilding ohels over the graves of historically significant tzadikim; some of their projects include funding for vegetation clearing, site rehabilitation, headstone repair, and the construction of walls and gates around the cemetery perimeter.

At mass graves, Geder Avos organizes and funds research as well as the construction of protective covers and the erection of commemorative monuments. An additional three wall and fence projects have been completed to date in the adjacent Chernivtsi and Zakarpattia oblasts. Contact information for Geder Avos is on their website. A concrete panel fence installed by Geder Avos at the Jewish cemetery of Yahilnytsia Ternopil oblast. The Faina Petryakova Scientific Center for Judaica and Jewish Art serves as the public face of a Lviv-based organization which for more than three decades has worked to preserve Jewish heritage, especially cemeteries and mass graves, across the western half of Ukraine.

Managed by Meylakh Sheykhet, who also serves as Director of the Ukraine Bureau for the Washington DC-based Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union UCSJ , their efforts include research both legal and ground survey as well as design and construction of access, fences, and ohels at cemeteries plus headstone recovery and other related work. Ground-level construction work at burial sites is supervised by religiously-trained leaders.

Contact information for the Center is on their website. Relics of a prewar wall around the new Jewish cemetery of Khyriv Lviv oblast. Substantial walls and fences erected around cemeteries often require review and approval by local municipal administrations or village councils, and in some cases the civic authorities will want to participate in the design and construction work of perimeter marking and protection of Jewish cemeteries as part of their responsibility to care for regional burial sites.

Because new wall and fence construction inevitably involves some excavation, cemetery project leaders should always engage a regional rabbi or other Jewish religious leader to review the site, survey data, and plans before purchasing materials and beginning work. With advice and oversight, experienced local building contractors can design and erect fences and walls of any style, and will often know the best sources for preferred materials and labor in the local area.

Involving the civic authorities, cemetery neighbors, as well as local craftspeople and businesses in the work can help create pride in the shared heritage of the community and facilitate arrangements for long-term maintenance of the new construction and the site overall. Decorative stone and precast concrete panel fence at the new Jewish cemetery and mass grave site in Lanivtsi Ternopil oblast. Cemetery preservation project leaders who do not have experience building fences or walls in western Ukraine are advised to work with experienced professionals such as those listed above for the design and construction of suitable perimeter marking and protection.

However, even for those who will do no hands-on work on the project, it is helpful to see and evaluate alternatives through galleries of images and by visiting sites in the region and abroad.

Each of the primary Jewish cemetery organizations linked above has documented their projects online with photos; we especially recommend the ESJF cemeteries series in Ukraine because of the large number and wide variety of built enclosures, but images posted by all of the organizations can help guide new projects.

For those planning their own designs, or simply wanting to understand the possible styles, materials, and construction methods for fences, walls, and gates, there are many practical books, articles, and videos available, several of which are available online for free, including older but still valuable illustrated books which have been scanned and posted for library-style borrowing on the Internet Archive. Curbing is another type of cemetery border.

This is one of the Schoolfield family plots. The urn over the arch is surrounded by two angels. The arch is another popular Victorian cemetery symbol, representing victory over death.

Texas Historical Commission.