British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

Deceased Online now holds searchable burial records for over 150,000 individuals from 100 sites across Aberdeenshire. I am especially pleased that these include registers from the old county of Kincardineshire, the home of my JOLLY ancestors. In celebration of the new Kincardineshire and Aberdeenshire records being uploaded to the database, this week I look at my family connection to the history of Benholm parish and its cemetery. My great great grandfather William Jolly (1842-1889) enlisted in the Royal Engineers in May 1867. He was shortly transferred to England, and by 1871 he was living in barracks at the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria & Albert Museum). He would never live in Scotland again. William Jolly R.E. in England in later years William had been born in Montrose, Forfarshire (now Angus) where his father, James Jolly, worked as a salmon fisher. But within a few years the family dispersed and William went to live with his grandfather, also Willia...

This week, I'm looking at some of Deceased Online's less-known datasets, focusing on Kettering, Corby and Rushden in the county of Northamptonshire John Speed's map of Northamptonshire c.1676 There are a total of 12 cemeteries and 1 crematorium in Deceased Online 's Northamptonshire collection. All can be searched on the website in the UK records section, under "East Midlands" in the drop-down menu . Being landlocked, Northamptonshire is an interesting region to have ancestors. Many inhabitants moved back and forth to neighbouring counties. Northamptonshire is unusual in sharing borders with nine other counties: Leicestershire, Rutland, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, the former county of Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. The county is largely rural, although heavy industry predominated in Corby from the 1930s. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Northamptonshire as a whole was most celebrated for its manufact...

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...

Deceased Online's Bunhill Fields collection has proved very popular so far. Thank you to all who have been in touch about the nonconformist ancestors (including Huguenots) you have found in the database. This week, I look at the later years of the collection, 1800-1854. Headstones and monuments in Bunhill Fields By 1800, Bunhill Fields was well-established as a burial ground for nonconformist Londoners. Some of the most important figures in the Methodist movement were interred there, including Susanna Wesley and Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon . Buried in 1808, Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1808) , one of the founders of Unitarianism, lies nearby. So significant to dissenters was the graveyard that even those who died away from London were brought to Bunhill Fields to be buried: the Scottish minister Henry Hunter (1741-1802) died in Bristol but was laid to rest at Bunhill on 6 November 1802. Burial entry of Jabez Carter Hornblower (1744-1814), showing his date of bu...

Deceased Online is very pleased to announce that 71,100 of the records for renowned City of London cemetery, Bunhill Fields, are now online Thanks to our partnership with the UK National Archives at Kew, we have digitised their entire collection of Bunhill burial records which covers 1704 to 1854. The collection includes some of Britain's most celebrated nonconformists, such as literary giants Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) ,  the hymn writer, Isaac Watts (1674-1748) , and the poet William Blake (1757-1827) . In this post, I look at the history of the cemetery up to 1800. Bunhill Fields is one of the oldest nonconformist cemeteries in London, dating from 1665 in the reign of King Charles II. The current Grade I listed graveyard lies between the bustling City Road and Bunhill Row, but was originally part of the much larger Quaker Gardens . This land was the first freehold property owned by Quakers in England. Across the City Road from the burial ground is Wesley's House , th...