Friends of Mendip Hospital Cemetery
Registered Charity number: 1085981
In June 2000 the cemetery of the former Mendip Hospital at Wells, Somerset, was put up for sale by the owners, NHS Estates, as they wished to dispose of the cemetery by auction as a “freehold development opportunity”.
Former Wells Mayor Graham Livings launched an appeal to save the cemetery. He communicated with the then Wells MP David Heathcoat-Amory who raised the matter with the Secretary of State for health, Alan Milburn, and the cemetery was withdrawn from auction.
At the first public meeting in July 2000 a working group was formed to save the cemetery – “Friends of the Mendip Hospital Cemetery’ – and in March 2001 they became a registered charity. The following year the Friends were granted a long lease on the cemetery under the condition that the charity was solely responsible for upkeep and repair of the grounds and the chapel
We now care for all those buried here, many lost to their families through time. The Friends, all unpaid volunteers, have looked after the site for over 20 years, caring for the burial ground with its varied flora and fauna, raising funds, as well as undertaking continuing research on the life stories of the 2,910 patients and staff buried here: because of this many of our ‘lost ones’ have been found by relatives.
We are entirely reliant on your donations to maintain this three acre cemetery and its Victorian chapel. Please support us if you can to keep the memories of those in our care alive. They suffered enough in life, let them rest with dignity.
Please donate if you can via the page button; you can join us and become a Friend – there is a downloadable form for this on our ‘contact’ page. We always need Volunteers – there are many ways you can help us: all welcome – wherever in the world you live you can make a difference!
The aims of the Friends are:
“To preserve and protect the former Mendip Hospital Cemetery site and enhance the site as a public amenity and to maintain, repair, restore, preserve, improve, beautify and reconstruct the fabric of the Chapel at the former Mendip Hospital Cemetery site as a place of historical or architectural merit and to advance public education in the history of the Mendip Hospital, the Chapel and the Cemetery”.