Key Hill Cemetery Entrance gate restoration complete.

Key Hill by Nicobobinus on flickr

Next Monday will see the Friends of Key Hill cemetery celebrating the end of a £120,000 restoration of the Grade II listed entrance gates.

It’s Birmingham’s oldest cemetery the work was to return the badly eroded sandstone piers to the condition they were in when the place was first used in 1836. According to the city council’s shiny new Birmingham News Room website

Restoration works, funded in partnership between English Heritage and the Council’s Big City Plan, were required due to the poor state of repair of the stone piers, caused by severe sandstone erosion and impact that theft and vandalism has had on the grand iron gates.

Situated in the Jewellery Quarter the cemetery…is the resting place for many important 19th century Birmingham figures, including Joseph Chamberlain, George Dawson and Alfred Bird.

A popular haunt not just for tourists but also those taking part in ghost walks of the city, the site is on English Heritage’s Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Interest in England.

Have a great day.  Hat tip Jon Bounds.