Baptist Burial Ground, Snow Hill

The location of the first Baptist Burial Ground

In Waters of the Son – Baptists in Georgian Bath by Kerry J Birch (Kappa Beta Publications, 2009), the first Baptist burial ground was a “triangular plot ... of ground ... in the Parish of Walcot ... next to the turnpike gate there, and which is enclosed by a wall”. It had been bought in 1762, part sold off for two houses and the remainder of the land laid out as a graveyard in 1764. There are records of 480 burials up to 1837 when civil registration started and all nonconformist churches were obliged to surrender registers to the Registrar General.

A list of 371 burials in this cemetery is at Bath Record Office. About 40% are entries for children for which no forename is given.

In 1949 the land ‘at the rear of Myrtle Place, used as garages and storage space – formerly

disused burial ground’ was bought from the trustees and cleared with the human remains transferred to Haycombe cemetery where they were reburied in an unmarked grave.

The site of the burial ground appears on the Cotterell map of 1856 at the lower end of Snow Hill. The whole area subsequently became transformed by the building of the Snow Hill estate and the road layout changed, so there is now no trace of the site.