Fox Hill Cemetery

Fox Hill Cemetery lies on the slope of Fox Hill beside Andover Road, east of the Centre. It takes its name from the hill, which was common land into the eighteenth century and gave the name "Fox Farm" to the part of the Church Farm north of it. The Billerica Historical Commission, asked by the cemetery commissioners in 1976 to search the town records, gave its official name and date as "Fox Hill Cemetery (est. 1856)." The ways inside it are driveways that have never been named; there is a separate Fox Hill Road in the house lots of the 1950s nearby.

The town's Cemetery Commission, formed about 1899, called for a topographical plan of "the new portion of the Fox Hill and North grounds," to be "immediately followed by the completion of the driveways," and by 1903 it was clearing the growth at the top of the hill and planning a lawn "sloping to the highway." In 1917 the town voted $500 to buy additional land for the cemetery, and a survey and plans for the "Fox Hill Extension" were paid for in 1919. A memorial entrance was built in 1923 under the will of Mrs. Lucy Clewly. The addition was developed slowly through the 1930s, partly as a public works project of 1937 that included "constructing roads, building cut stone walls and entrances," and in 1938 the town set apart a newly developed block in the southeast corner for Catholic burials.

Thirty acres adjoining the cemetery were bought in 1947, and more than ten acres more, with further frontage on Andover Road, in 1963. The driveways, which "wash badly during heavy rains," were hot-topped from 1959, and articles of 1968 and 1969 asked for money for "Hot Top for Cemetery roads," as burials came to be concentrated here and the cemetery was extended in stages, most recently toward Jones Brook in the 1970s.

The cemetery's driveways are internal ways owned by the town as part of the burial ground, not streets: they were never laid out, named or accepted as town ways, and they appear in none of the street lists of 1897, 1899 or 1956 or the 1831 list accepted in 2016.

References

1. Annual report 1900: report of the Cemetery Commission, plans for the new portion of the Fox Hill and North grounds and completion of the driveways
2. Annual report 1917: town votes $500 to purchase additional land for the Fox Hill Cemetery
3. Annual report 1923: memorial entrance at Fox Hill Cemetery under the will of Mrs. Lucy Clewly
4. Annual report 1937: Fox Hill Cemetery public works project, "constructing roads, building cut stone walls and entrances"
5. Annual report 1938: newly developed part of Fox Hill Cemetery set aside for Catholic burials
6. Annual report 1947: thirty acres of land adjoining Fox Hill purchased for the extension of the cemetery
7. Annual report 1959: "Further work has been done at the Fox Hill Cemetery in hot topping the driveway"
8. Annual report 1963: purchase of more than 10 acres adjacent to Fox Hill Cemetery with frontage on Andover Road
9. Annual report 1976: official cemetery names and dates from the Historical Commission, "Fox Hill Cemetery (est. 1856)"