Heene Cemetery – West Worthing’s hidden graveyard

Heene Cemetery is a one-acre town-centre site in West Worthing that was open for burials between 1873 and 1977. It is now a ‘closed cemetery’ and a Sussex Local Wildlife Site cared for by a volunteer group, the Friends of Heene Cemetery, who also built and maintain this website.

Nearly 2,000 individuals are buried here, and a group of the Friends is researching their history and documenting their stories. Another group of the Friends volunteers throughout the year to care for this space, documenting and encouraging the biodiversity of what was originally old meadowland.

Heene Cemetery in August 2022

Heene Cemetery in May 2020

Heene Cemetery drone shot May 2022 (courtesy of Matt Standing)

Heene Cemetery June 2024

Heene Cemetery June 2024

Heene Cemetery in May 2022

(These photographs—and more—can be viewed in the photo gallery.)

Bringing the past to life

Heene Cemetery is an often-overlooked window into the past. (The history of the cemetery and of the Heene area of Worthing is summarised in a timeline on the About page of the website.)

Our heritage research team has accumulated a wealth of detail about the nearly 2,000 people who have Heene Cemetery as their final resting place. These individual records are available on this website. They tell stories that range from the humdrum to the vivid and extraordinary, sometimes blighted by epidemic or war, sometimes exemplifying valour, scientific brilliance or business acumen. Whether you are looking for an ancestor or browsing with an interest in social history, you will find them worth exploring.

Thomas Mathews (buried 1927) portrait

Lucy Walkey

Charles Gibson (buried 1936)

George Moore (buried 1900)

Philip Smurthwaite (buried 1931) and his father

William Wenban Smith (buried 1901)

Annie McLaughlin (buried 1911)

Charles Whitcomb (buried 1944) photograph

William Lawson (buried 1922)

Portrait Ferdinand Chasemore Gates

Jane Bonner Lucie Smith

Constance Gordon (buried 1921)

Eliza Elliott (buried 1958)

Photograph of John Firminger Duthie about 1875

Ernest Shields (buried 1901)

(All burials can be viewed—and searched—in the burials section of the website.)

The ecology of an ‘old meadow’ community

Surrounded today by the residential neighbourhood of West Worthing, this closed cemetery and Sussex Local Wildlife Site hides its meadowland origins behind its Victorian brick and flint walls. The cemetery is the focus of an ongoing citizen-science project to identify species and record them all on this website. Over 700 species have been identified to date, and nearly all have been photographed in situ.

The old name of Lesser Celandine, Pilewort, reflects the fact that its root tubers look like piles.

Spear Thistle is a solitary thistle that has sharply spiny leaves ending with a 'spear'.

The Common Spotted Orchid is one of our most common native wild orchids.

This pale-yellow leafhopper feeds on cypress trees (hence the second part of their Latin name).

Dryad's Saddle fungus is a bracket fungus that grows on deciduous trees

The Red Mason Bee emerges from its nest in early March if the weather is mild.

Alba Semi-plena is an old rose that produces clusters of large milk-white flowers.

The Lesser Marsh Grasshopper is a brown or green species that has straight keels.

The tips of the English Bluebell's flowers revolute, meaning they roll back from the tip.

The Comma butterfly's rapid flight is interspersed with twisting glides, and the males are aggressive defenders of territory.

These shieldbugs live in Birch trees, overwintering as adults, mating in the spring. Adults are 8 and 11 millimetres long.

The Tapered Drone Fly, Eristalis pertinax is one of our commonest and easiest to identify hoverflies.

The Beautiful Demoiselle is easily mistaken for a butterfly, with its fluttering flight pattern.

Blood bees are usually black and red. They are small or medium-sized bees that are cleptoparasitic of ground-nesting bees.

The Six-spot Burnet Moth flies from late June until August and overwinters as a larva.

(All species can be viewed—and searched—in the species section of the website.)

Various blog posts that help explain Heene Cemetery

Separate from burials and species records, there are many posts that detail Heene Cemetery’s special appeal. Richly illustrated, these posts often say more than any single story. Here are some of our most recent blog posts:

(All blog posts can be viewed in the blog section of the website.)

All this website's content—including its creation and maintenance—is the collective work of unpaid volunteers from within the local community.