Heritage Open Day: Explore a historic cemetery & some of its inhabitants with members of its new Friends Group. Designed by renowned gardener Robert Marnock, it opened in 1847 to huge success, but fashion & fortunes change & burial ceased by the turn of the millennium. Now in the care of West Northamptonshire Council, the cemetery occupies the eastern end of The Billing Road Conservation Area and is arguably its most significant component. In the middle of the 19th Century a brand new cemetery was opened by The Northampton General Cemetery Company to relieve the town’s overcrowded churchyards. It was then a fashionable ‘Garden Cemetery’ sited on the very edge of the Victorian town, and proved so popular that an extension to the cemetery was added in the late 19th Century.