The General Cemetery was opened in 1836 "at some distance in the countryside", in a "remote and undisturbed" location, now part of the inner city suburb of Sharrow. It is one of the earliest examples, outside London, of a cemetery company being established to cope with the rapid growth of the country's industrial cities in the Georgian and Victorian periods. The Cemetery closed in 1978 and is now a Grade II* listed park, and a Local Nature Reserve, with many opportunities for studying natural and social history and for investigating the geology of its gravestones.