The Cemetery is set in a hollow between Doctor's Hill and Box Brook, on land once known as Great Lye Mead.

The Burial Grounds presently cover an area of three acres and include a Chapel of Rest and a Caretaker’s lodge. The buildings and the gateways and walls fronting the Cemetery are listed as being of historical and architectural interest.

Box Parish Council administer and maintain the Cemetery on behalf of the parishioners of Box but the grounds are also greatly admired by visitors to the area. Many people appreciate the beauty and tranquillity of the Cemetery and the landscape beyond.

Over one hundred and thirty years ago, the then village council, known as the Vestry, decided that a new burial ground was required as the existing graveyard of St. Thomas a Becket church had ceased to be used on health grounds. The Vestry was in effect a combined Parish Council and Parochial Church Council, concerned with matters both spiritual and temporal, and pre-dated Parish Councils, which were not established until 1894.

On 26th January 1858, the Vestry decided to create a 'Burial Board' which was to obtain the land for the new cemetery, lay out the site, arrange for the construction of a chapel, lodge and entrance gates and then to manage the cemetery.

The first meeting of the Board was held on 26th February, members clearly intending to waste no time in achieving their objectives! The land was given by a Mr. Northey and was described as "part of a field adjoining the Turnpike Road, known as Nap Stile or Great Lye Mead".

The Board resolved that the chapel, lodge and gates should cost no more than £700, and after tenders had been accepted in May 1858, agreed that the designs of Messrs. Poulton and Woodman should be used, in conjunction with a tender for the works from a Mr. Victor, amounting to £712 3s. 2d.

Dates of completion are not recorded, but the site was probably laid out by December of that same year, for on the ninth of December 1858, the minutes of the Board record: "The Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol consecrated the Burial Ground for interment of the dead, according to the rites of the United Church of England and Wales".

In January 1859 the Vestry approved the Board's first Table of Fees. In order to finance the project, the permission of 'the Lords of the Treasury' was sought to borrow £1000 and to charge the Poor Rates of the Parish with the capital and interest. A mortgage of £1 000 was taken up on 4th April, 1859 with a Mr. Neale of Wootton Rivers, to run for ten years at 4% interest. Unfortunately costs grew, and by June the mortgage had increased to £1200.

By 1860 a sinking fund had been set up to pay off the costs of the enterprise and by 1875, £500 of the mortgage had been repaid. By 1879 the mortgage had been still further reduced to £500 and in 1880, on the death of Mr. Neale the mortgage was transferred to the Box Loyal Northey Lodge of Oddfellows, in the sum of £420. By April, 1886 the final settlement had been made and the long-standing charge on the Poor Rates came to an end.

Parish Councils were established by Act of Parliament in 1894; the affairs of the Burial Board could then be under the jurisdiction of the new Parish Council, instead of the Vestry. At a Vestry meeting on 15th April, 1895, the Board was asked to continue in office for a further year, "to afford the Parish Council the opportunity of deciding as to their taking over the duties of the Board".

One year later in April 1896, the Burial Board met and resolved to hand over its authority to the Parish Council from that date, together with a balance of £3. 1s. 1 1½&, burial registers and other documents including the Seal of the Burial Board.

From that time to the present day the affairs of the Cemetery, or more accurately, the Burial Grounds, have been managed by the Burial Committee of Box Parish Council.

Almost five decades later it became necessary to extend the Burial Grounds, so in 1943 a further area of land to the east of the Burial Grounds was acquired from a Mrs. Shaw-Mellor and became known as the 'New' Cemetery.

ARCHITECTURE AND THE CEMETERY
The Chapel of Rest the Lodge and the gateways and walls fronting the Cemetery are classified as Grade 2 in the schedule of buildings of 'historic and/or architectural interest' prepared by the Department of the Environment.

The buildings were all designed in highly ornate Gothic style by Poulton and Woodman of Reading in 1857.

The Chapel of Rest is built of crazed rubble stone banded in ashlar; it has stone tiled roofs with sawtooth ridges, coped gables and cross filials. Rectangular in plan, the Chapel has projecting North Porch and South Vestry and a needle spire to the north-west. "Unusually elaborate Gothic (style) with highly carved window tracery and a virtuoso display of contrasting stonework." (DoE).

The Lodge is of similar construction and style as the Chapel, with openings further emphasised with alternating rubble and ashlar voussoirs. The building is of one and a half storeys, and is the home of the resident Cemetery keeper. The entrance gates and walls are again of ashlar banded in crazed rubble stone with original ironwork gates and panels.

Readers may wish to know that the burial registers (dating back to around 1850), have been transcribed and placed on a computer database.  Anyone wishing to obtain details or perhaps a search should email the Parish Clerk.