Room with a dead good view

Few people would choose to spend their nights in a cemetery surrounded by gravestones, tombs and ivy.
But one Sheffield couple have - and they are not goths.
When Sally Rodgers and Martin Bullock saw a house advertised for rent in Sheffield General Cemetery, they jumped at the chance.
The Victorian cemetery which contains the graves of 87,000 people has two entrances - one on Cemetery Road and another near Ecclesall Road.
Sally and Martin live on the Ecclesall Road side, just through the Egyptian Gateway - a massive columned entrance with a big brass gate.
Just through the gateway is a door marked Private. This is Sally and Martin's house.

BBC Radio Sheffield's Howard Pressman visited the couple in their new home in August 2009. They had been looking for a house to rent in Sheffield for a while when they saw this one advertised in the Sheffield Star.

"It just popped up. We never would have thought we would live in a cemetery. We thought we'd just go and have a look out of interest but then we loved it!"

One of the stipulations of the rental agreement was that the tenants also had to take on the role of part-time cemetery warden, but that did not dissuade Martin:

"We had to have an interview to be a warden as part of the deal but it's only seven hours a week - checking the cemetery is ok and keeping it tidy.

"They probably conducted interviews because they didn't want goths or people who were into death. They wanted people who were interested in the cemetery and looking after it. I've done caretaking jobs before, and I'm interested in history and archaeology.

"The building is Grade II listed - it's a little castle. Being the warden is a small price to pay to live here."

As well as the two main rooms the strange little house has a shower and a small kitchen, plus of course gravestones outside the door. The couple were redecorating the small house when Howard Pressman visited. Between coats of sunny yellow paint Sally showed him a particularly interesting part of the house.

"I think the building used to be two different rooms with separate outdoor entrances but to make it habitable they added this little enclosed bridge between the two rooms - it's like a shed stuck out over the river.

"There's a port hole looking on to the River Porter and a lovely tree. That's my favourite bit."

Sally and Martin could have chosen any other house in Sheffield - so why did they choose one which had gravestones outside the door?

"It's Grade II listed, it's Egyptian-esque, it's set in 16 acres of Victorian cemetery," says Martin. "What other chance in life are you going to get to live like that?

"Sheffield cemetery is gorgeous - it's not active as a graveyard at the moment, it's a park. There are two chapels in back garden, all Sheffield's glitterati are buried here and it's off the busy shopping area of Ecclesall Road."

When asked if the idea of dead bodies outside the door puts them off, Martin laughs: "No, that's ok - there are dead people on the streets!"

Sheffield General Cemetery opened in 1836 as one of the first commercial cemeteries in Britain. It contains one of the deepest single grave plots in the UK, holding the bodies of 96 paupers.

In 1978 the Cemetery was closed for burial and half the site was demolished to create a green space. It is now a conservation area, listed on the English Heritage Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.