Launch event at
Brompton Cemetery reunites Deceased Online user with her ancestors
After we
uploaded the final set of records from Brompton Cemetery last week, we were
inundated with messages via email, and on our Facebook and Twitter pages, from
users who found their ancestors in the records. With over 200,000 burial
records from the cemetery online, it is perhaps not surprising that many family
historians with London ancestors have found them here.
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| The Gate Lodge of Brompton Cemetery |
This week, we
held a launch event at Brompton Cemetery which was attended by the Charles Williams, the Mayor of the
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, renowned genealogist Dr. Nick Barratt,
representatives of the Friends of Brompton Cemetery, as well as staff from the
Royal Parks, the cemetery itself, The National Archives and other local authorities.
The event was a great success and the highlight was when family historian, Jan
Ellis, was able to visit the grave of her ancestors after seven long years of
searching.
BBC journalist
Josephine McDermott reported on the story and you can read her interview with
Jan at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22974465.
Also
at the event was the official historian of Chelsea Football Club, Rick
Glanvill. Chelsea’s
Stamford Bridge stadium overlooks Brompton Cemetery and the club’s founder,
Henry ‘Gus’ Mears, is buried in its shadow. Rick told me, 'As the official club
historian I am naturally aware of the close physical and family connections
between the cemetery and its noisy neighbours – Chelsea F. C. Several of the
first directors of the club have Brompton as their final resting place. Hordes
of supporters always stroll through the cemetery to the game on match days and
Gus's memorial is usually adorned with a blue and white scarf or flag after a
trophy win. It's lovely that the burial records are so accessible: Blues fans
can now easily find out whether they have ancestors of their own buried next
door to Stamford Bridge.’ Rick was also delighted to have found the graves of
two of his own Glanvill relatives in the Brompton collection.
A few
years ago Rick produced a guided tour booklet exploring the Chelsea F. C./ Brompton
links, and he now plans to conduct tours of the graves in conjunction with the
Chelsea Supporters Trust and the Friends of Brompton Cemetery on the first
weekend of the new football season. Read more about the history of the football
club on Rick’s blog at http://thehistoryofchelseafc.blogspot.co.uk.
Twitter Competition
We are delighted to have well
over 900 followers on Twitter. Thank you all very much! Unfortunately, we can’t
follow more of you until we have reached our 2000 limit. We are trying to reach
1000 followers as we really want to follow all of you. In honour of this, we
would like to give the 1000th follower 100 credits to use on the Deceased
Online website. So, if you’re not following already, please click ‘follow’ on our
Twitter page and hopefully win some credits!
London's Cemeteries
Next week we will have the full list of winners and the answers to the London's Cemeteries book competition. Thank you to all who took part.
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