Lined with towering, grimy funerary monuments and Yorkshire stone memorials, Bradford’s 26-acre Undercliffe Cemetery is a product of the city’s Victorian industrial heyday. It’s also an atmospheric park with a broad east–west promenade that makes it easily accessible for filming crews. In the 1960s it featured as a filming location in the movie Billy Liar. Since then, it’s also made appearances in TV productions as diverse as Peaky Blinders and Band of Gold, as well as the 1998 film LA Without a Map.
The origins of Undercliffe Cemetery makes for grim reading. By the mid-19th century, Bradford’s population had exploded in line with its transformation into an industrial centre. But working conditions were poor and the mortality rate among factory workers was extremely high, particularly for children. After a cholera epidemic in 1849, Bradford’s St Peter’s churchyard became so overcrowded that bones were sticking up out of the floor and something had to be done. The establishment of Undercliffe Cemetery proved to be the answer.
Today, it’s still a working cemetery, but it’s also popular with dog walkers and sometimes hosts guided tours.
