British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

This week, as Deceased Online adds records for four cemeteries managed by Wyre Council, I look at the oldest of these - the Victorian coastal cemetery of Fleetwood.    Fleetwood Cemetery I grew up in a village in the Wyre district , spending my early childhood roaming marshland reclaimed from the wild Irish Sea. The winds can be high on this part of the coast, with regular rainfall from its wide skies. This fairly remote, rural outcrop of Lancashire and overlooks the Pennines and the magnificent Lake District across Morecambe Bay.Its key towns are Cleveleys, Fleetwood, Garstang, Poulton-Le-Fylde and Thornton . Wyre is located in mid/north Lancashire, a short tram ride from bustling Blackpool. The council is named for the river which runs through the area. View of the coastline from Fleetwood Cemetery Since the history of Wyre is not widely known, I was delighted to discover that Deceased Online would be adding records from the region to its database . The a...

While the next cemetery data is being uploaded to the database, this week I thought I'd look into the fascinating concept of "taphophilia" - or a fondness for cemeteries.  Recently, I discovered that some of our Twitter followers describe themselves as "taphophiles" . I have heard a few terms to describe those of us who are interested in old cemeteries, but the word "taphophilia" seems one of the loveliest. The term comes from the Greek “taph” - for "tomb" - and “philia” - meaning "strong love or admiration". Although chiefly used to describe a love of cemeteries , the word is also associated with a fondness for funerals, epitaphs and the art of gravestones, monuments and tombs . Poets, novelists, lyricists and dramatists have long lauded the cemetery. Memorable literary scenes include Hamlet standing by the graveside with Yorrick's skull, the St Pancras gravediggers in A Tale of Two Cities, and the lines from The Sm...

This week Deceased Online uploaded a new collection for Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries. Inspired by a memorial in the New Cemetery, in this post I explore how the online database can help locate burial places of those interred in paupers' graves. Like me, you may have ancestors who were buried in common graves . These were often referred to as "paupers' graves" as they were the resting places of those whose loved ones could not afford to pay for a burial and headstone. Many had no loved ones at all.    Deceased Online this week added burial records for Camberwell Old Cemetery and Camberwell New Cemetery . Like Nunhead Cemetery , these burial grounds lies in the modern London Borough of Southwark . The use of Southwark place names has changed over the years. Parts of Camberwell on an 1881 census entry, for example, may be known as Peckham today.  Southwark was a highly populous area in the Victorian and early 20th centuries. The three cemeteries that are...