Cherry Lane Cemetery was opened in 1936, although the first burial took place in 1937. Often referred to as the “new” cemetery, it is a municipal burial ground that contains people from multi-faith and multi-denominational backgrounds.  The first burial in the newly designated Muslim section occurred in 1977.  The cemetery is maintained by the Parks and Cemeteries department within the London Borough of Hillingdon. 

As of October 2008, there were approximately 9,500 people interred in the cemetery. It has capacity for 13,000 (which will be entirely depleted if the dual carriageway is built). Among the thousands of people buried at the cemetery are the 32 ‘residents’ whose service in the Second World War is commemorated with headstones preserved by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and protected by the Geneva Convention.

The worst incident of the war in Hayes occurred in the afternoon of 7th July 1944 when a V1 flying bomb hit one of the surface air-raid shelters at the Gramophone Company (EMI). In the words of an air-raid warden who recorded the incident in his diary, “The wings started to wobble from side to side as it lost flying speed and it then came in a dive at the entrance of the shelter. Some of the seriously injured and the dead were got out of the emergency exit but many were trapped for hours under the ten inch thick roof that had collapsed on top of them. The next shelter had its roof lifted and tilted over but not quite enough to fall in”. The monument recalls the names of the 37 people killed in the incident, 12 of who were buried in the cemetery”.

The quotation in italics and EMI Memorial photograph have been kindly supplied by Mr Phillip Sherwood and can be found in his book on the History of Hayes.