Work starting on new Shrewsbury cemetery
Work is starting on the construction of Shrewsbury’s new cemetery and Remembrance Park.
Mytton Oak Remembrance Park will enable Shropshire Council to continue to provide burial services to the people of Shropshire for the next 100 years. It will also provide an opportunity for a broader range and more environmentally-sensitive types of burial – including meadowland and woodland burials – and include areas for quiet reflection.
The work is being carried out by Oswestry-based Pave Aways Limited on behalf of Shropshire Council.
Work is due to be completed by January 2014, and the site is due to open in spring 2014.
Steve Charmley, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member responsible for bereavement services, said:
“I’m really pleased that work is now starting on Mytton Oak Remembrance Park, and look forward to it opening next spring, as planned. A new cemetery is much needed for this area and it’s great that work is being carried out by a Shropshire-based company, who I know will do a great job.”
Steven Owen, Managing Director of Pave Aways Limited, said:
“The new cemetery and Remembrance Park will be an integral part of the Shrewsbury community throughout this century and into the next. Pave Aways are honoured to be chosen as the contractor and look forward to working alongside Shropshire Council to create a park that will provide solace and reflection.”
Planning permission for the site was granted in February 2013.
The choice of name for the new Remembrance Park recognises the location of the new Park just off Mytton Oak Road, which in turn took its name, in 1934, from the fact that land in the area once belonged to the Mytton family.
To recognise the origins of the Remembrance Park’s chosen name, Shropshire Council plans to plant at the site an oak tree which descends from the Shelton Oak – a tree which for more than 600 years stood close to the remembrance park site on the land once owned by the Mytton family – and from which the name Mytton Oak is thought to originate.
The plans for the site have been drawn up by Axis, the design consultants for the project.
It is estimated that developing the new site will cost £1.1million, and this sum is included within the council’s capital programme.
