British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

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. ...

This week I continue my series on  Deceased Online's  Highgate Cemetery Collection with an introduction to some of the many artists among its records. Beautiful sculptures like the above can be found spread across Highgate Cemetery. Anyone who has strolled around the monuments and foliage of this Magnificent Seven cemeteries is struck by the number of unusual, artistic headstones. Mostly, these belong to artists who chose Highgate as their final resting place. Below I highlight some of the remarkable artists buried here along with images of their memorials. Artists of all kinds abound in the registers of Highgate Cemetery. These registers, now digitized and available to search on  Deceased Online , include the names (and sometimes addresses) of some of the most significant painters, sculptors and illustrators of the 19th and 20th centuries. Buried close by are also their muses. "Cromwell in the Battle of Naseby" by Charles Landseer RA The achiev...