Sheffield Council has responded to suggestions it ‘broke’ and ‘piled up’ a row of historic headstones during restorations at a city cemetery.

Sheffield General Cemetery, in Sharrow, is being renovated as part of a £3.8m project funded in part by the National Heritage Lottery Fund.

The extensive reworks, set to finish in summer, will see the cemetery’s tiered structured reinforced for decades to come, and stripping back its aging concrete catacombs to open up the lowest level by the river to more sunlight.

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Project manager “We can totally understand that people might have wondered what we were doing. This is just to reassure these are stones that were broken in the 80s and we will do our best by them now.”

placeholder image — Project manager “We can totally understand that people might have wondered what we were doing. This is just to reassure these are stones that were broken in the 80s and we will do our best by them now.”

However, residents grew concerned when a large stack of historic headstones appeared at the cemetery’s entrance from Montague Street.

Pictures show how a large number of the gravestones and concrete balustrades appear broken. A resident who shared photos with The Star described them as ‘piled up’.

It led to concerns that a number of headstones had been broken during renovations.

Now, the council has revealed the headstones by the Montague Street entrance were actually discovered in the catacombs.

Photos appear to show headstones and concrete balustrades from the cemetery broken and 'piled up' by the entrance from Montague Street. The council has now explained where they came from.

Rather than being among the stones that line the park, they have not seen the light of day since the 1980s.

Now, a number of the unearthed headstones are being studied by the cemetery’s trust, and the most complete or interesting ones will form a new display along the pathways. The broken ones have had to be moved to Montague Street while work continues.

Project manager Claire Watts told The Star: “In the 80s, a huge number of headstones were cleared from the Anglican site to create the green space off Montague Street.

“It would appear a lot of those broken headstones were put in the catacombs as landfill. It’s not something we expected to find. Now, we have reclaimed this piece of Sheffield heritage.

Sheffield City Council has responded to suggestions it 'broke' then 'piled up' a number of historic headstones during restorations at Sheffield General Cemetery.

“Sheffield General Cemetery Trust is now searching through burial records to research as much information around the headstones as we can.

“We can totally understand that people might have wondered what we were doing. This is just to reassure these are stones that were broken in the 80s and we will do the best by them now.”

Sheffield General Cemetery is one of the UK’s best preserved Victorian cemetery’s, and one of the few left in the world to retain a set of catacombs, a practice which was introduced but proved unpopular in the 19th century.