On The Hill Sherezade Garcia Rangel

In the Falmouth Cemetery, a family grave holds Sir John Gay Newton Alleyne, 3rd Baronet of Four Hills, Barbados. The Alleyne family's sugar plantation in Barbados was maintained by the unpaid labour of African slaves. What does his story tell us about the British Empire? In the middle of the 19th century, the town of Falmouth, overwhelmed by cholera epidemics, is trying to improve the lives of its inhabitants among the Victorian initiatives for orderly lives. The old churchyard in town is too full and making people sick, they must find a new solution.

On The Hill is a new podcast which brings you stories about Cornish cemeteries and those buried there. Each episode reassembles the life of someone departed and the history of the time, and shares original creative writing inspired by them.

After a short illness for which she sought healing at a spa in Falmouth, Mary Monk passed away and was buried in the Falmouth Cemetery. She was the first female sanitary inspector and health visitor in Portsmouth. What can we learn from her story about the UK’s efforts to reduce child mortality in the late 19th century? The Falmouth Burial Board takes measures to regulate the burial of stillbirths on the Falmouth Cemetery.

In 1917, Cabin Boy Chung Shin is on a trip from Singapore to Portishead when a U-boat attacks the S.S. Sequoya. It is the middle of World War I and the UK, overwhelmed by the great losses of its service men and women, must find a way to honour them. Running out of space again, the Falmouth Cemetery must secure another expansion.

In 1866 Winifred Freeman is born into a family of Lamorna Granite Merchants. She would go on to challenge conventions and earn her living as a painter. We talk to Glyn Winchester from the Falmouth Art Gallery to learn more about this artist. Anna Kiernan shares poems inspired by the cemetery and by Winnie. Keeping up with the times, Falmouth Cemetery regulates the way family vaults and brick graves are to be managed.

On April 10 1912, the Titanic sailed from Southampton. A few Cornish passengers were on board, including deck engineer Henry Philip Creese, memorialised in Falmouth Cemetery. How were the news of the Titanic delivered? What can we learn about the most famous maritime disaster in the world? And how has Cornwall, notorious for its shipwreck history, contributed to the way in which the UK takes care of the victims of such disasters?