Graveyard Audit

It is a strange set of circumstances that leads you to be found wandering around a graveyard with a tape measure, clipboard and pen on a sunny summer afternoon. However, this is how a small group of enthusiastic volunteers found themselves in St Edmund’s Church graveyard in June 2022.

The reason for their presence was to carry out an audit of the graveyard memorials. The intention was to gather information on their approximate position, inscription and design, along with taking a representative photographic image. The data was then to be pooled to assist the drawing up of a more accurate plan than had previously been available. It would also enable the compilation of simple readily accessible written schedules of memorials to assist relatives and researchers locating ancestral graves.

 
The two individuals driving the project were myself the author, who although I now live in Cheshire, I still have a strong interest in my Hargrave family roots, and Steve Archer, met by chance on holiday, who has worked with some of the international family research companies. Fortunately Steve has a wealth of knowledge and has plenty of experience of graveyard surveys, having carried out similar exercises nearer his home in Kent. We were also joined for sessions by local resident Paul Rogers, from the the Hargrave Heritage Society, who would be looking to publish our findings online on the HHS website. Then finally Paul Clayton, an old school friend of mine from Bury but now living in Ipswich who fancied a worthwhile afternoon of toil in Hargrave.

 

The ‘Workers’ take their lunchbreak – Steve Archer, Paul Clayton and Nick Newman.

Any audit including ours should start with a deal of background research to establish if there are any existing plans or records to refer to. Then the survey on site began with some necessary gardening and stone cleaning. Whilst generally the graveyard grass is well maintained some graves particularly on the tree and hedge boundary had become overgrown, so a sharp pair of hand shears was required.

      

The audit itself took place on the afternoon of Sunday the 12th and all day on Monday the 13th June, with a further afternoon Thursday 21st July by just myself to check on any anomalies or missed photographs etc. The latter being a worthwhile exercise as two further memorials were added.

(Above left) Steve Archer and Paul Clayton clear some of the undergrowth, and carry out some light stone cleaning.

(Above right) Then the gravestones had varying amounts of ivy, moss and lichen gently removed with a plastic scraper to ensure no damage to the stone surface, then lightly brushed.

      

Before and after cleaning.

Reference photographs were taken of all the 160+ memorials outside the church and those few inside.

Interpreting the inscription is then almost a skill in its own right. The angle, lighting conditions and time of day, all have a bearing on the quality of the image and how useful it can be.
 
Steve has provided the following advice on techniques for those that may wish to try it themselves:

In the past most MI (memorial inscription) recording projects were carried out using notebook and pencil. The inscriptions would then be typed up, either on a typewriter or into the computer. Some local groups still prefer this method. They may enjoy the challenge and the social interaction of recording inscriptions in the field, especially when working as a team. However, a more efficient way of working has emerged since the advent of cheap digital cameras in the early 21st century. It’s much faster to take one or more photos of each stone and to transcribe from these directly into the computer. There are websites such as FindaGrave and BillionGraves built on this model. They host MI photos together with the name and dates for each individual, and sometimes the full inscription. They also encourage the use of GPS to pinpoint the location of each stone, though in practice there are often issues of accuracy so a plot plan is still a desirable objective.   For difficult inscriptions the parish burial register will often help identify names and dates.   As regards lighting conditions for photography, modern gravestones rarely present a problem of legibility and can be photographed either in full sun or shade. Earlier stones can be problematical however. Those from roughly the first half of the 20th century are often composed of lead letters. These sometimes fall out leaving only peg holes, though there’s usually enough of the inscription left to reconstruct the original words, especially with the aid of the burial register.   Prior to the 20th century most inscriptions were incised, in other words cut into the stone. They may be extensively weathered or affected by growth of moss and lichen. For these, the angle and brightness of available light may be crucial in determining how successfully the inscriptions can be read. Bright sunshine at an oblique angle is often ideal. Since gravestones are generally aligned with the inscriptions facing either east or west, the hours around noon (1pm BST) are often best for illuminating stones with such incised inscriptions.   However, even on a sunny day some gravestones remain difficult to read because of shadows cast by trees or by the church itself, often exacerbated by weathering and lichen growth. For these, other techniques can be tried. Cleaning products should in general be avoided as they may damage the stone. Wetting the stone may help, but other lighting techniques can also be used, and some of these are described online. For instance, a reflector can be used re-direct sunlight across the stone. Alternatively an artificial light source can be used. A DSLR camera with off-camera flash can be very successful, with the flash directed at an oblique angle across the surface of the stone. Another way of achieving a similar result is to use a battery-powered LED light. A few years ago I built a lighting unit for about £30. This consists of four lengths of LED lighting strip mounted inside an old CD storage tower, powered by a 12v battery. This works best at dusk/dark, thereby not competing with ambient light conditions. Lighting example from St Peter's Church, Ightham, Kent. Steve Archer

 

Having gathered the photographic images of the memorials, they then needed to be referenced back to a plan of the graveyard, again a process requiring attention to detail.

It simple terms, using the church as a fixed point, datum lines were laid using two 50 metre measuring tapes laid at right angles. These provided individual locations and a provisional numbering system was used to identify each grave marker. As a back up to the photographs, the type of memorial and inscription was then recorded by hand against these numbers.

Paul Rogers lends a hand.

This information was then taken back to base and plotted on a new digital plan on the computer. Again Steve explains in more detail below how he completed this mapping exercise for Hargrave graveyard using online resources and commercially available software:

My usual technique is to create a base map in advance. This typically comprises just the churchyard perimeter, church outline, and any paths. Although it’s possible to start with a blank sheet of paper and produce a base map from scratch in the field with suitable measuring equipment, it’s better to arrive armed with a suitable map derived from published sources. What I generally do these days is to source a suitable map from the National Library of Scotland website. Their 25” to a mile series is now quite extensive for England (as well as Scotland), and their coverage for the 19th-20th centuries is out of copyright and can be used for non-commercial projects. After identifying the correct sheet I download the file (JPG format) from the website, and use suitable software to crop the image leaving just the churchyard perimeter – Photoshop in my case. Sometimes I rotate the map image in order to sit comfortably on an A3 or A4 sheet. I also remove any unnecessary wording that would interfere with the mapping. For Hargrave I used the drawing tools in Microsoft Publisher to ‘trace’ the church and churchyard outlines and thereby produce a ‘cleaned’ version of the base map. I printed this, enlarged to A2 size (i.e. two A3 sheets glued together). I attached this to a piece of board with masking tape for use in the field.   On our first day we decided first to check the dimensions of the church building, partly because the original porch as shown on our base map had been destroyed in an air raid in World War 2. We also measured the positions of doors and buttresses. We didn’t have access to modern survey equipment, we were using a couple of 50m tapes.   The next step was to lay out the first of a number of base lines. We decided to take our measurements with respect to the church itself, rather than from the churchyard perimeter which doesn’t follow straight lines and is flanked by woodland and vegetation. So we started by laying a 50m tape along the southern side of the church, taking offsets to each group of gravestones and plotting them roughly on the base map together with their measurements. The second baseline we laid out along the north side of the church, extending this by eye to the eastern boundary. Again we took offsets. We realised a bit late in the day that the churchyard must have been extended to the east at some point, but we managed to squeeze our measurements on to the A2 base map, to be plotted ‘to scale’ later on.   After our two field days, back at the computer I transferred the original base map (churchyard outline and church with its modified measurements) to a sheet of A3 graph paper, i.e. a smaller scale than the plan used in the field. I used the set of measurements taken in the field to plot the positions of each group of gravestones to scale. Graph paper helped with getting angles correct. I scanned this into MS Publisher, defining it as a ‘master page’. Then the final version of the plot plan could be made, using suitable symbols for headstones, footstones, chest tombs, kerbs etc. Steve Archer

In addition to the new graveyard plan, my task was to draw up two accompanying schedules. The first lists the grave memorials using a revised numbering system starting from the north west of the graveyard and progressively working south east. Any new graves can be numbered consecutively after this.

Then our inscription interpretations are provided along with thumbnail photographs to aid identification for those wishing to visit the site.

The second takes this information and lists the deceased burials alphabetically, surname first. It also provides key information if available including death date, age on death and actual or potential birth year. Also where a relationship is known to another deceased’s grave this is provided e.g. ‘wife of’ or ‘son/daughter of.’ Some of this data has been sourced online.

In addition from within the church, the two floor mounted stones, the war memorials and the wall mounted plaques to previous clergy have been added at the end.

Finally the intention is to load all the data with higher resolution photographs on to the Hargrave Heritage Society website, and theoretically the local Ecclesiastical website along with hard copies shared to assist the local clergy and churchwardens.

At this stage it is not intended to load the information and images on to other online resource tools mentioned above, the best known being FindaGrave owned by the US owned Ancestry.com. It is hoped by limiting the availability of the data, it may encourage more practical interest from those researching Hargrave related family trees and potentially resulting in improved maintenance of their ancestor’s memorials in St Edmund’s churchyard.

During the course of the survey two collections of broken and apparently discarded inscribed grave curb stones were found under the trees to the north of the graveyard. It is understood that these are to be relocated at least in part to a more dignified position adjacent to the church external walls
 
Appendix - Brief History of Gravestones and Memorials
The earliest grave markers are thought to have appeared around 3,000 years ago, although these were megalithic monuments covering whole burial chambers for families of some status. More commonly individuals were buried unmarked on their own land next to previously deceased family members.

Church burials became more common in the mid-17th century, and with them came the installation of gravestones made of sandstone or slate. Inscriptions were simple noting the name, date of death, age at death and sometimes date of birth.

By the Victorian era materials used had moved on to wood, iron, granite and marble, with inscriptions often becoming far more elaborate. Family relationships could be included such as ‘Wife of’ or ‘son/daughter of’ and verses or extracts from the bible added below. Depending on the cost, the memorial itself could become larger and more decorative with ridged or table top chest tombs, obelisks or crosses and depictions of angels, cherubs or similar religious iconography.

However the range of designs and materials meant that grave markers in whatever form were not just for the rich, although the better the materials the more likely it was to survive the ravages of time and the weather. In some cases movement and deterioration has been prompted through burrowing and undermining by wildlife such as badgers and rabbits.

In any case graveyard managers have a duty to monitor risk as several fatalities have occurred when memorials have fallen on victims. This has previously led some would say an over-zealous approach to laying gravestones particularly in local authority run graveyards in order to avoid potential financial claims for damages. Government advice on the issue was issued in 2019.

Today simple gravestones are still a popular memorial choice for many, where space in the graveyard allows, although the increasing practice of interment of cremated ashes takes a smaller plot, but can still be marked but with a suitably inscribed plaque.

 

Nicholas Newman and Steve Archer
August 2022