Finding a burial site?

[BreatheAndFocus]

I’ve found records of burials of a number of my ancestors in the online parish records, but they don’t appear to have a gravestone. I’ve searched Find A Grave and I’ve also talked to a person living in the parish where they lived, who’s walked around the church graveyard looking for any headstones or other markers with the surname. They say they’re not there.

So, some questions:-

i) With no apparent gravestone, how do I find the area of the graveyard they were buried in? Are there records online? Do burial records contain a plot number? Would the local authority (county council) know? Would they be in a common grave or would it be an individual but unmarked grave? I don’t know how things worked then. Two of them are children (under 12) if that’s relevant.

ii) Or, rather than the church, could they have been buried in the grounds of a local chapel, say, that has now fallen out of use? If so, how would I go about searching?

If it’s relevant, the burials took place in the 19th century (mainly second half) and the first half of the 20th century.

I’d be really grateful for any pointers. I’ve just started my research and I’m pretty ignorant so please don’t think you’re patronising me by stating obvious things. Any help at all would be welcome.

As far as I am aware, a church would have a map of the graveyard and should be able to pinpoint the site of the grave. Another option might be the parish or town council or what our local area calls the Joint Burial Committee. There should be a record of all the plots somewhere.

I found a grave using Deceased Online. This gave me the plot number and burial place and I found it using the graveyard map. I had to pay a small fee but was worth it.

Some parishes have different graveyards from different time periods, e.g. when they ran out of space. Sometimes you can google this and find out there is "St Matthew's Cemetery" but also "St Matthew's Old Cemetery" or similar - it could be they are in the other one. Ask your local contact if there are gravestones for a similar time period in the one they looked at.

Alternatively it could be that there was some kind of clearing, e.g. near me there's a churchyard where many of the graves were dug up for a railway so there's just a sort of joint memorial now.

You could try emailing the parish church or local genealogical society to get a sketch of the general history of the parish so that you can figure out what to search for (e.g. alternative graveyard names).

Thank you 😊 I’d never heard of a Joint Burial Committee, so that’s something to investigate. I thought there could be a map but I’d seen no mention of maps online.

Thank you - I’ll look at Deceased Online today 😊

Is there’s local historical society?

Thank you 😊 I really appreciate your ideas. I hadn’t even thought there might be a local genealogical society. I’ve tried to look online for other graveyards locally but as it’s in a rural area, it’s possible I’ve missed something, eg a graveyard close that also took burials from this area (rural area with a number of settlements).

Yes 😊 I looked at their website today. Still no luck finding a burial plot map though. I’m now worried it’s been lost or destroyed.

Yes 😊 I looked at their website today. Still no luck finding a burial plot map though. I’m now worried it’s been lost or destroyed.

Sadly for you, there may never have been a plan for the burials. Church graveyards would be the responsibility of the vicar and church wardens. Often these people literally took to the grave the information as it was in their heads. There wasn't a stipulation by the church to write this information down

I would suggest contacting the archive/record office where the parish is located, the church records should be held in the archive and therefore ask the archive is there a plan of the burial ground within the church records for any date. If there is it should be listed in the catalogue and you can either then visit the archive and look at the document or alternatively if they have a photographic service then ask for the document to be photographed and sent to you.