Birmingham Crematorium

Birmingham Crematorium is a Protestant crematorium in the Perry Barr district of Birmingham, England, designed by Frank Osborne and opened in 1903. A columbarium was added in 1928. The crematorium is now owned and operated by Dignity plc.OpeningCremation was not declared legal in Great Britain until 1885, by precedent from the trial of William Price. Despite the opening of Woking Crematorium in 1878 and the passing of the Cremation Act 1902, which came into effect on 1 April 1903, it remained controversial, on religious grounds, in the first decade of the twentieth century. However, proposals to build a crematorium for the city of Birmingham, the ninth such facility in the United Kingdom, received support from Sir Oliver Lodge, Principal of the University of Birmingham, and were given the approval of the three local bishops: Edmund Knox (Coventry), Augustus Legge (Lichfield) and Charles Gore (Worcester) (Birmingham did not have its own bishop until 1905).