Cemeteries And Graveyards
A Guide For Family And Local Historians In England And Wales
Celia Heritage tackles this farreaching subject with both rigour and pragmatism. The occasional
WDYTYA? Magazine contributor (see page
27) begins with an overview of death and burial from as far back as 10,000 years ago, which helps to place our more recent practices in context. For example, the Romans buried their dead outside settlements, but from Anglo-Saxon times the church encouraged burials within communities via churchyards.
The author explains the evolution and use of churchyards including the favoured locations for burial. There is also a step-by-step guide to locating a burial place, and advice on exploring a churchyard. Heritage adopts a similarly thorough approach to ex-parochial graveyards such as nonconformist burial grounds, private cemeteries, and institutional graveyards associated with, for example, asylums or prisons. There follows a detailed account of public cemeteries that were created away from churches from the 19th century onwards.
A summary of the types of gravestone (and gravesite) that you may encounter is welcome, as is a handy guide to dating them by style, a digest of the symbolism employed, and advice on understanding inscriptions.
The final two chapters are practical introductions to the genealogical sources available. Parish burial records are of
Pen & Sword, 248 pages, £15.99 course important and the author traces their history, but she also advises on the many other sources that may be of value.
The book concludes with outlines of websites that may enable you to locate an ancestor’s burial, as well as practical advice for finding your forebear’s final resting place and avoiding pitfalls.
I suspect that many local historians and genealogists will read this useful and well-written reference work cover-to-cover.
Dr Simon Wills is the author of How Our Ancestors Died (Pen & Sword, 2013). His article on naval records begins on page 62