Horden Cemetery Extension

BCE Northern was employed by Horden Parish Council on a project to undertake works to the new Cemetery land adjacent to the existing Cemetery at Horden Village.

Horden is a village in County Durham, England. It is situated on the North Sea coast, to the east of Peterlee. Horden was a mining village until the closure of the Horden Colliery in 1987. Main features include the Welfare and Memorial Parks, Thorpe Road Cemetery and St Mary’s Church.

Thorpe Road Cemetery was built in 1952, partially in preparation for the building of the New Town of Peterlee in 1954. The cemetery is owned and maintained by Horden Parish Council who is the statutory burial authority for the village. The cemetery had been extended once in 1992 and plans have been made over several years to extend again once the cemetery was nearing capacity.

In 2016, the parish council purchased additional land adjacent to the existing cemetery in order to extend again which will provide another 70 years of burial space for the village.

The works included:

• Making safe temporary access for construction traffic, keeping secure from trespassers and reinstating afterwards
• Widening of the existing entrance
• The development of an access route from the existing cemetery into a new 5.1m roadway
• Stripping, contouring and grading 1.5 Ha of the site on a phased basis, with arising material stored in easement areas on the north side of the site
• Construction of a series of transverse crushed stone pathways 1.8m wide forming a grid to the north of the central roadway,
• Construction of a landscaped wetland utilising a natural ground feature with piped outfall route
• Installation of a system of surface water catchment drains with outfall to the wetland or direct to the outfall route
• Installation of mains distribution water pipes and water troughs
• Construction of a Garden of Remembrance/Children’s section with seating and curved Remembrance Wall design
• Landscaping, forming, seeding and planting of the site after all roads, pathways and drainage works completed
• Installation of ornamental gates and fencing from existing site in to extension
• Refurbishment and surfacing of existing internal pathways with high quality edgings and surface finishes in Resin Bonded Gravels