It has just been announced that all Church of England burial ground records will be available to search within five years under an ambitious new laser-scanning survey scheme. Records of the burial grounds for two West Yorkshire churches – All Hallows’ Church in Kirkburton and Emmanuel Church in Shelley – are now available online, and the Church plans to survey all 15,000 burial grounds by 2025.
Nick Edmonds, the Church of England’s senior media officer, said: “It’s a
system that has potential for enormous growth and future usage. It
can help people with their family history and accessing burial grounds
that they didn’t know about before." Each burial record will include the name of the deceased, their burial date, their age at death and a photograph of the grave.
The databases will be available via the Church Heritage Record. Currently the Church Heritage Record website contains over 16,000 entries on church buildings in England covering a wide variety of topics including architectural history, archaeology, art history and the surrounding natural environment. The website is still currently a work in progress and is by no means complete.
The Church will provide £250,000 towards the project and has received the same amount from Historic England, which has also provided spatial data records to support the project. The scanning also has ecological benefits, by measuring the growth of trees and plants in the graveyards. It will also help church authorities identify where empty space is available for new burials.
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