Churchyard mapping

[PaulC]

If you visit the Atlantic Geomatics website they already have live maps for Kirkburton and Shelly churchyards in Yorkshire (links at foot of page):

Burial Ground Management System

I visit Kirkburton fairly reguarly (my grandparents are buried there) and while I of course know where the grave is, this site has still given me a burial record which I didn't have before. There are quite a few graves on the map marked as "unknown", but overall it looks rather impressive.

 

[peter]

They look very impressive, but can we expect something similar for the other 19000 parishes? I suspect that the CofE will be leaning heavily on societies and other volunteers.

 

[PaulC]

Who knows? It's obviously a massive undertaking that will take some time, but I would guess that's the template they intend to follow.

 

[peter]

Who knows?

Precisely - we don't know what they're going to produce and all the evidence is that family historians are going to be disappointed. I couldn't find any named graves on the Kirkburton map with a burial date earlier than 1800, and most are from the late 19th and 20th centuries.

I heard today about one London churchyard which has 200 legible headstones. Even allowing for multiple names this represents a very, very small fraction of the 50,000 people who are buried there. Most London churchyards closed in the 1st half of the 19th century, so it isn't that surprising, but it does emphasise the scope for disappointment.

 

[Bob Spiers]

My take on all this is don't hold your breath for anything of significance to materialise on Parish Churchyards for the best part of 10 years. As for Municipal cemeteries someone is having a laugh, if they expect to get round those in under 15 years, and that may be a tad too ambitious and the project likely a non-starter.

I have not visited many Parish Churchyards (although my wife certainly has and indeed we can hardly visit anywhere -whether family connected or not - without her insistence on looking in on the local churchyard). So I have her first hand reports on the un-readability of grave stones, broken or missing kerbs and headstones or those totally hidden by undergrowth. Only a few pass muster with "what a lovely well kept churchyard", and quite make her day.

On the other hand -and strictly limited to Birmingham - where of the 26 listed Cemeteries I have visited the 6 main Municipal ones over the years but would only claim fair knowledge of one, good of another and the 3rd almost intimately as that is the one most visited. As good as the Municipal records may be - to use a Brummie saying "fair to middling" - by the time you have been given instructions from the Cemetery site office (if lucky enough to find them open or staffed) to take the West path, 3rd avenue to the right, 7th row, 4th grave along (or something very similar) one ends up often disappointed at the dilapidated stonework found and unreadable name entries. This experience serves as an indicator of what would befall others trying to document Municipal Cemeteries throughout the country.

Unless they are to rely solely on Municipal and Parish records -such as they are - both projects will take an age to come to fruition hence to repeat what I said at the beginning of this narrative, expect nothing of significance before 2035-40. Until such time we must rely on what we have already via Family Search and its derivatives, and of course via many Family History websites.

Gravestones 100-150 years old are bad enough but Parish (particularly rural) graves are much older. Without the support of Records detailing who lies where, a seemingly impossible task. Of course I could be wrong but don't count on it.

 

[peter]

As for Municipal cemeteries someone is having a laugh, if they expect to get round those in under 15 years, and that may be a tad too ambitious and the project likely a non-starter.

Burial registers for many municipal cemeteries are already online, either through the website of the relevant council, or through DeceasedOnline, which was founded by a company that provides registration software to cemeteries and crematoria.

Unlike church burial registers the registers for municipal and private cemeteries always record the precise location of each grave - they have to because the plots are leased or sold. Most have maps showing where graves are sited - I've never had a problem finding my relatives' graves within a cemetery. The main challenge is identifying the cemetery in the first place, which is why DeceasedOnline, which has records (and maps) of hundreds of cemeteries is so useful.

Gravestones 100-150 years old are bad enough but Parish (particularly rural) graves are much older. Without the support of Records detailing who lies where, a seemingly impossible task.

In practice it's the city churchyards which are most problematic, because most stopped accepting burials around the middle of the 19th century, hence the very low proportion of graves with legible inscriptions (not that most people would have had a permanent memorial in the first place).

However Bob is right when he says that records of who was buried where would be key, But I suspect that in most cases they don't exist, hence the high number of unidentified graves in Kirkburton, one of the two flagship parishes.

 

[Bob Spiers]

by the time you have been given instructions from the Cemetery site office (if lucky enough to find them open or staffed) to take the West path, 3rd avenue to the right, 7th row, 4th grave along (or something very similar) one ends up often disappointed at the dilapidated stonework found and unreadable name entries.

That above is taken from my posting and would add that to get this information at one particular Birmingham Municipal Cemetery site office, I awaited the Clerk who - after checking through a well dog-eared List of burial surnames and burial years (not a computer in sight) - was gone a while returning with a huge Leather bound Register which he wheeled to the desk on a trolley. I was the other side of the counter and looking down on the neat hand-written ink script, and after further interrogating me on details he was finally satisfied he had found the person sought. When I agreed this was so he reached for a pre-sketched primitive map of the Cemetery, and marked out the route for me. The last occasion was (from memory) about 2016 and I doubt much has changed since.

Of course a computerised copy of the Register from this and other Municipal cemeteries may exist, but at Cemetery source the information is still held in Dickensian type Registers several inches thick and heavy. However the system does work, it just takes time and you have to visit during Site Office opening hours which (at the time) were something like 10.00am to 2.00pm on weekdays; and perhaps not every weekday I can't really remember.