Lincoln Collection

This week we are pleased to launch our Lincoln Collection, featuring five burial grounds and one crematorium from the East Midlands cathedral city.

I hope some of you picked up on the hint in the recent Nottingham Collection post about the Robin Hood link to our latest release. I was, of course, referring to Lincoln Green, the colour of cloth worn by the fabled Robin and his Merry Men. In the Middle Ages, Lincoln produced woollen cloth of a rich olive green, created by dying first with blue woad and then with a yellow weld. Besides its cloth heritage, the city of Lincoln has a rich medieval history and a splendid cathedral, dating from 1072. In my opinion, there are few finer views in England than the sight of Lincoln Cathedral floodlit against a clear night.

Monuments in Canwick Road Cemetery, with Lincoln Cathedral just visible on the horizon.

Deceased Online's Lincoln Collection includes full sets of records for five burial grounds and one crematorium and is reproduced in partnership with the City of Lincoln Council's Bereavement Services. These records include scans of the original burial/cremation register, grave details, maps highlighting the section of the cemetery where the grave is located, and maps highlighting the area of the crematorium grounds where the ashes were scattered, if the ashes are recorded as being scattered or interred onsite. In total there are 140,000 individuals who have been buried or cremated in the City of Lincoln over the past 158 years. The records in the Collection date from the mid-19th century and come from the following sites:

Canwick Road Cemetery (both new and old cemeteries from 1856)
Eastgate Cemetery (from 1856)
Newport Cemetery (from 1856)
St Margaret's Cemetery (from 1907)
St Swithin's, Washinborough Road (from 1890)
Lincoln Crematorium (from 1968)

Page in Lincoln's Eastgate Cemetery Register showing November 1885

Anyone with Lincolnshire ancestors should note that as well as the records in this latest collection, the Deceased Online database also has monumental inscriptions for St Marks Church, Lincoln (1707-1886), as part of the headstone removal records from The National Archives Collection. Further afield in the county, the database also includes removal records for St Michael's Church, Stamford (1703-1857) and the burial records of Gainsborough Town Council (1875-2010).

Entry for William McBeath in the burial register of Canwick Road Cemetery, Lincoln

As regular readers of this blog will know, I have a personal family interest in football history. I was delighted to discover, therefore, that among the Collection is a burial record for the Scottish footballer, William McBeath (1856-1917). Celebrated as one of the founding members of Glasgow Rangers Football Club, McBeath was buried in Canwick Road Cemetery on the 19th July 1917. William had a tragic life after leaving Scotland, being labelled an "imbecile" when he arrived in Lincoln in 1910 and swiftly incarcerated in the city's workhouse. After he died, McBeath was buried in a pauper's grave. It is unlikely that any relatives attended the burial as McBeath is described in the register as "MacBeth" and as 46 years old even though, according to his birth date, he was 61.

Next week I'll be looking in more detail at Lincoln's fascinating past. Unfortunately, I don't have a photograph of Lincoln at night but if you do, or if you have interesting tales to tell of your Lincoln ancestors, please do contact us via email, or on our Facebook or Twitter pages.

London's Spa Fields

Deceased Online has just uploaded around 114,000 burial records from Spa Fields in the modern London borough of Islington Spa Fields today, with the Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer in the background Spa Fields Burial Ground became notorious in the 19th century for its overcrowded and insanitary conditions. Located in the parish of St James, Clerkenwell, the grave yard was not far from the ever-increasing City of London. Spa Fields was known also as Clerkenwell Fields and Ducking-pond Fields in the late 18th century, hinting at a dark side to what was then a summer evening resort for north Londoners. What would become a cemetery was a ducking pond in the rural grounds of a Spa Fields public house. It was here in 1683 that six children were drowned while playing on the ice. In his History of Clerkenwell (1865) William J. Pinks wrote that visitors, "came hither to witness the rude sports that were in vogue a century ago, such as duck-hunting, prize-fighting, bull-baiting

Nottingham Collection

This week, Deceased Online expands its Nottingham Collection with the addition of records from the early Victorian cemetery, Nottingham General. Enter Nottingham's General Cemetery from Canning Terrace and be prepared to step back in time to the late 19th century. Like many of the Victorian cemeteries in the Deceased Online collections, Nottingham General was designed to take the burden from parish churches whose graveyards had become overcrowded. Also, like many other Victorian cemeteries, this was administered by a newly-formed body, the Nottingham General Cemetery Company (1836) . The Grade II listed gatehouse , the chapel and the adjacent almshouses were built between 1836 and 1838 by S. S. Rawlinson . Burial registers were kept from the opening date of cemetery in 1838. Concerns were raised in the 1920s that this municipal cemetery was now overcrowded and from 1929 the cemetery was closed to new burials other than those who owned burial rights. Headstones in

Churck (Rock) Cemetery, Nottingham

Coming soon to the Deceased Online database: two historic cemeteries from Nottingham City Council to add to the Nottingham Collection . This week, I explore the history of the renowned Church Cemetery (also known as the Rock Cemetery) . At first glance, the modern visitor to Nottingham's Church Cemetery may think they have wandered into Kensal Green , or another of London's Magnificent Seven cemeteries. The 13 acre site abounds with the kind of gothic stone monuments and large sarcophogi with which the mid-Victorians liked to remember their dead. Yet look harder and you will find something unique to Nottingham - sandstone caves. Since the middle ages, the area around Nottingham was quarried for its sandstone, now known by the name of a nearby village as "Bulwell sandstone". From 1851, after the cemetery was laid out on the former sandpits, local people grew to know it simply as "The Rock". Church Cemetery Otherwise known as the Rock Cemetery on a

British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

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