Robert Marnock. Source: Wikimedia
Robert Marnock was one of the leading Scottish horticulturalists and garden designers of the nineteenth century, considered to be one of the best exponents of the Gardenesque school of landscape gardening. He worked as the head gardener at Bretton Hall (now within the Yorkshire Sculpture Park), Wakefield between 1829 and 1833, and was appointed by the Sheffield Botanical and Horticultural Society in 1833 to design and lay out the Botanical Gardens at an annual salary of £100.
There was no official commission for the laying out and planting of the Nonconformist area of the Cemetery and supervision was delegated to three of the Directors. But in the Minutes of the Cemetery Company on 28 August 1837, Marnock was thanked ‘for his services in inspecting the laying out and planting of the Cemetery: and that he be requested to accept a donation of £5 as an acknowledgement thereof’.
Marnock produced a planting plan for the extension to the Cemetery that formed the Anglican area. A resolution in the Company Minutes of 4 February 1850 records ‘That so much of the New Cemetery as lies above the middle walk, be planted, and laid out according to the Plan submitted by Mr Marnock. The Planting, trenching, and supply of Shrubs etc. to be contracted for.’ Marnock submitted his account of £7 10 0 ‘for instructions etc. in planting New Cemetery’ at the end of the year and he was paid in February 1851.
The 1850 Ordnance Survey map shows the planting and various meandering paths across the site but by May 1855 a new arrangement was proposed with rectilinear rather than serpentine walks. This, and reducing the plot size, would greatly increase the number of plots available and thus the Company’s income. Clearly money talked and the romantic curved lines designed by Marnock were replaced by regimented rows of gravestones as is clearly visible on later Ordnance Survey maps.
You can read more about the history of Sheffield General Cemetery in the SGCT publications For the Living and the Dead, Sheffield General Cemetery – Then & Now, and Recollections of a Former Occupant.