Barker Gate Rest Garden has two entrances. One from Packhorse Lane with a step in through the gate and the other main entrance from Barker Gate, which is fully accessible. There is ample on-street parking on Barker Gate, including several Blue Badge parking bays.

The park has wheelchair access pathways running through it and there are several benches to sit and enjoy your lunchbreak or the trees and birdsong.

Please note that the gates are locked at dusk each evening.

From the 1700s Nottingham’s population grew with the development of the lace and textile industry, and nearby St Mary’s Churchyard could no longer cope with the increasing number of burials.  This resulted in the development of three new graveyards on Barker Gate, Upper, Middle and Bottom Burial Grounds.

In 1878 Nottingham Corporation were given permission to take over the burial grounds, lay out grass and flower beds.  None of the Barker Gate burial grounds were in use for burials after 1881.

In 1953 a Faculty was granted for the City to take over responsibility for all three burial grounds including moving tombstones. Any human remains were removed and re-interred in a consecrated part of Wilford Hill Cemetery.  Any monuments were to be re-erected near the place where the remains were buried.  Several of the original gravestones are placed around the edge of the park against the walls of Gothic House and Riste Place.

A little bit more of the history of the overflow cemeteries of St Mary’s Church can be found here

Nottingham City WI have tried to maintain the integrity of the original public park, but improve it for both wildlife and visiting humans! 

Nottingham City Women’s Institute is one of the ‘new wave’ of urban WIs with a membership of around 35 women ranging in age from 20 to 52, most of whom are in full-time employment. We asked for a corner of a Nottingham city park to plant up with pollinator-friendly flowers and were offered an entire park!

We are hoping that our contribution to the green corridors around the city centre, meeting up with those from the local Articulture project, Sneinton Market and Victoria Park will impact on the well-being of passing bees, hoverflies and other pollinators. Nottingham City WI are part of the Nottingham Bee Forum and are dedicated to pursuing the National Federation of WIs’ campaign to ‘Save the Honey Bee’. We have planted over 3,000 plants and bulbs in Barker Gate Rest Garden so far with more being added each season.

We work closely with the Nottingham City Council Cemeteries Team to ensure that grass-cutting is kept to a minimum to allow wild flowers to flourish. We have built two compost bays, so all of the clippings, weeds and leaves are kept on site to rot down and return to the soil. We also leave seed heads for insects to hibernate in and birds to feed on during the colder months.

Having added paths to increase accessibility, extra benches for people to sit and enjoy the space and hand-crafted metal gates to contain the essential bin storage, our next improvement to the park will be the addition of a shallow pond area to increase the diversity of habitat. We will also be planting two locally-sourced Bramley Apple trees and taking part in the Nottingham Crocus project, planting Autumn-flowering species to increase to the coverage across the city.

Visit our site for more info: nottinghamcitywi.wordpress.com