British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

West Norwood Cemetery - the Victorian era   This week, I take a deeper look at the Victorian records of  Deceased Online's  new  West Norwood Cemetery Collection Above: Sir Henry Doulton's Grade II Listed mausoleum Like the other Magnificent Seven cemeteries, West Norwood is celebrated for its Victorian funerary architecture, particularly those of the gothic tradition, and its peaceful garden space and wildlife in a city environment. This week's post highlights some of the lives of the Victorians buried in the south London site. The Victorian records for this site o n  Deceased Online  cover 1837 to 1901. During this period, some of the city's most well-known residents were buried there. Isabella Beeton,  née  Mayson, photographed in about 1854 Mrs ISABELLA MARY BEETON (1836-1865)  As featured in last week's post, one of the most celebrated inhabitants of West Norwood is cookery writer, Mrs Beeton. Tragically,...

Today's taphophiles and family historians often enjoy the calm and greenery of urban cemeteries. But would today's cemetery users want to return to a Victorian policy that sought to convert burial grounds into public parks? The Hardy Tree in the grounds of St Pancras Old Church In the 1860s, the graves of the ancient pa rish churchyard of St Pancras were cleared. Among those who  helped clear and relocate burials from the old St Pancras Church graveyard to the new St Pancras and Islington Cemetery , was a y oung Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) .  A famous tree still stands in the old graveyard which bears his name.  Some of the church lands was taken by the Midland Railway. During this period, around 8,000 bodies were exhumed from their burial plots and some were relocated to the new cemetery in Finchley. Some headstones, like that of the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1759-1797) were left standing and can still be seen in the churchyard today. ...

A deeper look at the Victorian records of  Deceased Online's  new  Highgate Cemetery Collection Some of the Victorian monuments and headstones in Highgate Cemetery Like the other Magnificent Seven cemeteries, Highgate is celebrated for its Victorian funerary architecture, particularly those of the gothic tradition. This week's post highlights some of the lives of the Victorians buried in the north London site. The Victorian records on Deceased Online cover 1839 to the early 1870s, with a gap between 1863 to 1865. The first burial took place in 1839 in what is now known as the West Cemetery. Fifteen years later, i n 1854, the London Cemetery Company sought to expand the burial ground by purchasing the area opposite the cemetery, across Swain's Lane, that now forms the East Cemetery.  The Terrace Catacombs are located at the highest point of Highgate's West Cemetery Some of the most identifiably Victorian of the monuments and headstones lie in the ...

A recent discovery among old family papers has inspired this week's thoughts on how the ephemera of death and mourning, such as funeral cards, can help with family history research. Last week, my father was looking through some old documents belonging to my grandmother (and her mother before her) when he came across an envelope of 12 medium-sized cards dating from 1881 to 1941. On closer examination, he realized they were memorial cards for some of our distant relatives. More commonly known as "funeral cards", memorial cards are still used today but became popular in the late 19th century. In Ireland, they are sometimes referred to as "mortuary cards" or "remembrance cards". At the time of bereavement, mourners would send the cards to distant family members, friends and neighbours announcing the death and giving details of the funeral. The cards would then be kept in remembrance of the deceased. On the left side of each folded black-rimmed c...

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 ...

As all 430,000 records for Manor Park Cemetery go online, this week's post looks at other East London burials in the Deceased Online database In last week's post, I explored the Victorian heritage of the early sections of Manor Park Cemetery and Crematorium. Unlike that privately-owned cemetery, neighbouring West Ham Cemetery is owned and run by the Newham Council. In fact, it is the only cemetery that the Council owns and manages, and it appears on Deceased Online in the name of   'The London Borough of Newham'. Just a mile west of Manor Park Cemetery, West Ham was founded almost twenty years earlier, in 1857. It was one of the first publicly-owned cemeteries to be created after the Metropolitan Burials Act of 1852.The cemetery's plot covers 20 acres. All of the cemetery's 180,000 burial records can be found in the database . These include private burials and details of over 200 Commonwealth War Graves. George and Catherine Jane Allen (or A...