Earlier this week, Arnos Vale Cemetery announced that it was receiving £500,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund. This will further help secure the future of the 45-acre Victorian gem which was almost destroyed a decade ago and reopened in May 2010 after a £5.4m restoration programme.
One of the restored buildings now houses a cafe operated by catering company Whisk!, only founded in early 2010, whose other Bristol cafe is at Knowle West Health Park.
Like the cemetery itself, the cafe is an oasis of peace and tranquility. With the sound of birdsong and the rustle of the wind in the trees, you can easily forget that the busy Bath Road is only a few hundred yards away. The cafe itself is light and airy, with the sun, if you’re lucky, streaming through its floor to ceiling windows.
Scrambled eggs, sandwiches, paninis and soup please the lunchtime crowd. For something sweeter, there are homemade cakes, brownies, flapjacks and rocky roads.
A cream tea with pot of tea costs £4.95, while for something stronger there is also red and white wines by the glass or bottle, bottles of Bristol Beer Factory Gold and Southville Hop, Thatcher’s Gold, and lagers from Budvar, Freedom Organic and Erdinger.
With views of gravestones poking through brambles, it’s no exaggeration to say that the Atrium Cafe is a unique place, in a cemetery which you want to visit before you’re pushing up the daisies.
The Atrium Cafe, Arnos Vale Cemetery, Bath Road, Brislington, Bristol, BS4 3EW
