A lost Jewish cemetery in the middle of a Devon city has been opened up for the first time in centuries after a complaint from a neighbour about overgrown trees.
The holy ground which is the final resting place of people who lived and died 300 years ago had been locked up and forgotten about, until a caretaker used Google Maps to track down the missing plot, and dug through an old box of keys to find one that would let him in.
Jerry Sibley, custodian of Plymouth Synagogue, has now cut back much of the overgrown vegetation, and the cemetery is welcoming visitors keen to find their ancestors. The old Jewish cemetery is hidden behind high stone walls on Lambhay Hill in Plymouth, in the shadow of the Royal Citadel.
Jerry revealed the search for the lost graveyard began when he took a call about overgrown trees, and went to Plymouth’s old Jewish cemetery – only to find it wasn’t the only old Jewish cemetery in the city.
He told The Herald “We had a neighbour ring up and complain to us, saying that his telephone lines were all crackly because the trees had all overgrown on the lines. Having gone to the cemetery, I discovered there weren’t any houses there and it was only at that point I found out there were actually two cemeteries in Plymouth.
“Even though the one I was stood in was from the 1850s, it wasn’t the ‘old’ one – the one on the Hoe.”
After seeing a reference to The Old Jewish Cemetery on Lambhay Hill, Jerry went in search of it – but was still unsuccessful. That’s when he used his initiative and used Google Maps.
“I started to look at every single plot on the road,” he said, “and that is when I noticed there were three legs to Lambhay Hill, not just the two, and eventually I found this lovely green spot that seemed to be nothing. I thought, ‘Well, it is a very good chance it is going to be there.
“I really zoomed in on it and you could just make out a couple of the headstones, so from there I came up to take a look, but I could not get in, so the treasurer at the time gave me a whole box of keys and said, ‘Help yourself’.
Jerry eventually managed to find the right key and what he discovered when he opened the door stopped him in his tracks.
“I was really awestruck,” he said. “The whole thing was like a wildlife park, completely overgrown, not just at ground levels but the height of it as well.
“When I looked around at all the stones it was all in Hebrew. It wasreally interesting because I’m not Jewish, so I don’t read Hebrew and I certainly don’t speak Hebrew, but when I was going back along the back wall I saw the sign of the Cohanim on one of the headstones.”
The sign of the Cohanim has become famous after being used by Spock in the Star Trek series as a Vulcan greeting – a hand raised palm outward with the fingers split in the middle.
Jerry said: “Of course for me this relates to Star Trek, and I really could not understand at that point why there should be Spock’s ‘Live Long and Prosper’ symbol which comes from the 1960s on a headstone that dates back to the 1700s.
“It was that story there that really enthused my ambition to go and find out a little bit more about what it is doing here.”
Jerry employed the help of some friends, and quickly managed to clear the cemetery, which included chopping down the trees. They started getting a few enquiries from tourists who had family connections and wanted to visit their relatives, followed by some genealogists who thought they had Jewish ancestry from Plymouth.
Realising how interesting the cemetery truly was, Jerry asked for help from the Ripple Theatre, run by Derek Frood, Ruth Mitchell and David Prescott. He asked if they would create something to encourage more members of the public to visit.
Eventually they came up with the idea of creating an audio trail, detailing the lives of all those buried at the site.
Jerry said: “It sort of blossomed and grew from there. We did a trial run with four or five stories at the last History Festival, then managed to get them all done and recorded with actors for the Plymouth Art Weekender last year.
“Now hopefully it will leave a legacy where we will run it every History Festival for now until forever.”
Written by Neil Shaw
Photos by Sarah Waddington
Taken from devonlive.com
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