On The Hill

S01 Trailer

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.

S01 Episode 01: Sir John Gay Newton Alleyne with A J Dalton

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.

S01 Episode 02: Mary Monk with Amy Lilwall

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.

S01 Episode 03: Chung Shin and WWI with Sherezade Garcia Rangel

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.

S01 Episode 04: Artist Winifred Freeman with Anna Kiernan and Glyn Winchester

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.

S01 Episode 05: Henry Philip Creese and the Titanic with A J Dalton

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?

S01 Episode 06: Countess Ellen Odette Cuffe or 'The Weeping Widow' and Amy Lilwall

Legend has it that Irish Jewish Countess Ellen Odette Cuffe requested that her hand was joined with her husband’s when she was buried in Falmouth Cemetery in 1933. Is there truth in the myth? What about the woman herself, who commissioned this cemetery’s most unique gravestone? Did she get involved in the revival of Irish identity? What was her role in the Jewish community? And how did Falmouth Cemetery’s regulations allow for such a remarkable gravestone?

S01 Episode 07: William Bilkie the last mail coach guard with Jennifer Young

In the mid-1850s, William Stevens Bilkie was working as a mail coach guard from Falmouth to Plymouth. The arrival of the train to Cornwall in 1859 would bring an end to his job, but William continued to reinvent himself and to actively participate in Falmouth. A renown storyteller and floriculturist, he left behind a legacy that it still around today. What was the mail coach era like? How did the people of Cornwall deal with the arrival of the railway from Plymouth? And how did Falmouth Cemetery kept up with a town outgrowing its boundaries?

S01 Episode 08: Miśko Molnár the First Czechoslovak Sailor in Poland with Sherezade Garcia Rangel

On September 1933, the legendary Polish frigate Dar Pomorza left Gdynia on its winter trip to check on Polish colonies with shores on the Atlantic. All but one of its 56 cadets would return home, though. Miśko Molnár, the first Czechoslovak sailor in Poland, died before the end of the trip. What can we learn about Cornwall and the world by looking at the story of one ship? And how has Falmouth kept up with the demand for more space on its Victorian cemetery?

S01 Episode 09: George Kerswell Sheaff and the HMS Ganges with Amy Lilwall

On November 1899, a man jumps off a yacht to save someone who has fallen into the water. His name was George Kerswell Sheaff, from Portwrinkle, Cornwall, and he had led a quiet, devout life with a long career in the navy. The last ship his served in was the HMS Ganges, which spent decades in moored in Mylor, training young men. What can we learn from the story of George Sheaff? What do we know of the HMS Ganges? And how did Falmouth Cemetery secure the consecration of part of its land?