It contains four chapels, and various ornate memorials dating back to the early Victorian period, and was the first municipally constructed cemetery in England and Wales.

[1] It remains in use to this present day as the main cemetery for burials in Newport, and has been used as a filming location for the BBC series, Doctor Who.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the graveyard immediately outside St Woolos Cathedral had become full, but burials continued to take place there in the shallow soil covering the existing graves.

This became a public health hazard, and "represented a ghoulish aspect with coffins protruding from the ground, many broken open with the grisly contents spilling out.

St Woolos Cemetery is listed on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales.

Completed in 1855, the original lodge is constructed of "coursed rubble stonework and ashlar quoins and window surrounds.

"[6] On the wall to the left of the entrance a blue plaque has been erected in commemorate artist James Flewitt Mullock, who was also clerk to the Newport and St Woolos Burial Board.

The building is one of a pair of symmetrical chapels facing each other across a circular plot near the main Bassaleg Road entrance to the cemetery.

The Non-conformist chapel also features a decorative pattern on the roof using tiles of different shapes and materials.

This building stands alone within the cemetery grounds, due south from the Risca Road/Fields Park Road roundabout, the windows of this chapel have now[when?]

This much loved and visited area in the heart of the city contains a wealth of art, architecture, history, flora and fauna.

The cemetery contains a coarse finished, granite obelisk in memory of the victims of the Newport Docks disaster.

Some of the men were known solely by their surname, as recorded in the pay book, as they were migrant workers employed temporarily on the docks site.

[citation needed] The final plaque records the purpose of the memorial, to commemorate "the 39 men who lost their lives in the Trench Disaster at the New Dock Works".

The Gwent branch of the Western Front Association carried out a survey of Newport dead in advance of the 2018 commemoration and continue to identify missing names.

The cemetery was used as a filming location for the 2007 Doctor Who episode Blink [citation needed] and the 2008 Christmas Special where the Cybermen attack the mourners,[21] both starring David Tennant.

The cemetery features as a location in the crime thriller novel "We Go Down Slowly Rising" by Newport author John Gimblett.