'Ruined'

To begin with, Brunswick Cemetery in Bristol was established circa 1770 and served as a Unitarian burial ground until 1963 when it became a public park. While it retained much of its historic features such as monuments, boundary walls, and a Georgian mortuary chapel, its past as a garden of remembrance was largely forgotten over time. 

In 2010, however, artist Hew Locke revitalized its role as a cemetery with a creative twist.

Now titled “Ruined,” the former Unitarian cemetery is now home to a series of cast-iron grave markers, designed by Locke to evoke the long-forgotten histories of the dearly departed that they commemorate. Memorialized here are now-defunct, bankrupt, or taken-over companies of the past. Some of them are of local origin which contributed to the rise and fall of Bristol’s trade in the days of the British Empire.

The work received a Planting Places Award in 2011 and is now also known as Brunswick Cemetery Gardens.