IT may not be everyone's idea of fun, but an historic cemetery opens its gates for an open day today.

It is no ordinary day out, but Houghton Hillside Cemetery, which for more than 150 years has been the final resting place for thousands of residents of Houghton-le-Spring, is no ordinary graveyard.

During its eventful history, the cemetery has been the focus of public protest, the source of local legend and final home to some of the most colourful characters the community ever produced.

Today, the Friends of Houghton Hillside will invite the public to enjoy talks and tours of the graveyard, exhibitions of photographs, fancy dress parades by Victorian undertakers and even picnics among the tombstones.

Organiser Paul Lanagan sees nothing macabre in a day out among the dead.

"It is unusual but, hopefully, it is entertaining and informative and people will enjoy it."

There has been a graveyard at St Michael and All Angels at Houghton since the middle of the 16th Century.

The first burial is recorded as taking place in 1581 but, as the rural community turned into a Victorian pit town, the town's cemetery began to overflow.

By 1853, at least 8,500 people had been interred at the site and the crisis came that year when cholera swept through the crowded mining districts of Sunderland and Durham and decimated the townsfolk of Houghton.

As the bodies began to pile up, and the gravediggers resorted to breaking into old coffins to bury the dead, Rector John Grey came up with a drastic solution - extending the burial ground into the old quarry, on the edge of the village, with its dramatic cliff-face.

The suggestion was met with uproar. Townsfolk were furious at what they saw as dumping their loved ones in the old quarry. Meetings took place in the Golden Lion to organise protests, posters appeared around the village denouncing the scheme.

However, despite being crippled with early arthritis, which made him look much older than his 41 years, the clergyman stood firm against the opposition and, after an 18-month battle - and the personal intervention of Home Secretary Lord Palmerston - the new cemetery witnessed its first burial in September 1854.

Gradually, the community came to accept the new cemetery. Several of its most notable citizens were buried there in vaults - some created by using explosives to blow a hole in the rock face. Landowners, statesmen, pitmen, paupers - they were all brought to their final rest

By the time Reverend Grey was himself buried in the cemetery extension he created in 1895, the graveyard was accepted by the community.

In the early 20th Century, however, a municipal cemetery was opened nearby, in Durham Road, and, gradually, Hillside was used less and less.

Its last new grave was dug in 1971.

Mr Lanagan, a local government worker, said: "I first went up there when I was about four years old - my grandfather would take me up there for a walk.

"About four years ago, I took my wife up there just for a walk to see some of the places I had gone to as a child, and I realised how bad a state it was in, with rubbish everywhere and vandalism."

He launched a campaign to clean up the site and, with help from the church and Sunderland City Council, established a Friends of Houghton Hillside Cemetery, with the writer Lucinda Lambton as its patron, to maintain the site.

In March, the site was officially closed to new graves, although it remains possible for someone to be interred in a family plot.

The cemetery has given rise to a number of legends, many rooted in the site's remarkable geology.

The cemetery is located on the area's famous geological fault line, the same fault which gave rise to Houghton Cut and the cliff face which has been excavated for many of the tombs.

The graveyard is said to be haunted by the ghost of William Standish-Standish, who is thought to have died in 1856 when, as he rode at night on the moors above the cemetery, his horse stumbled over the edge of the cliff and threw him to his death.

He is buried in the family vault in the rock face and his apparition is said to recreate that fatal fall on the anniversary of his death, in July.

Historians believe the truth may be far less interesting and suggest he died in his sick bed at stately Cocken Hall.

To the edge of the cemetery is a crevasse, created by the same fault line, said to be so deep it hides the wreckage of a Spitfire buried there during the Second World War.

The history and geology of the cemetery will be explored in the day-long event, which starts at noon.