Owners of lairs

[sandyjose]

 Recently,while trying to find burial records for Glasgow cemeteries,I came across a site listing lair owners,unfortunately no cemeteries I'm interested in but it got me thinking.What happens when a lair doesn't have a living owner?
 I found the deeds to my grandparent's grave when my father died and I had them registered to me but there must be many, many lairs that "no-one" owns.
  If I found graves belonging to family but that have no owner,could I claim them as a relative.
   Thanks for any info

[Skoosh]

Sandy, once you become the lair owner are you not maybe liable for annual maintenance bills, or in the event of a stone becoming unsafe, being possibly charged to make it secure?

Skoosh.

[sandyjose]

Yes I can understand that,the cemetery where I have a lair is Craigton where a little boy died recently after being hit by a tombstone falling.This Cemetery used to be privately owned by the Craigton Cemetery Co,but it was taken over by Glasgow council.Glasgow council now own most of the cemeteries around Glasgow so maybe the lair owners don't mean anything any more.

[still_looking]

A bit of info on lairs and cemeteries

http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=11324

S_L

[Forfarian]

The Scottish Government has recently been consulting on a proposed bill about exactly this matter.

http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2015/01/2869

[Skoosh]

There was a case a couple of years back when dozens of stones in a cemetery had been cast down and the council had difficulty tracing the present owners of the deeds, presumably to bill them?

Skoosh.

[sandyjose]

 Many thanks for the info,very interesting reading the proposed changes.
   Does anyone know where the lists of lair owners is kept?

[Forfarian]

Does anyone know where the lists of lair owners is kept?

The list of lair owners is kept by whichever council or company operates the cemetery. In the case of Glasgow, it's probably the City of Glasgow Council, who charge for looking up their burial records. There may be a microfilm copy of the list in the Mitchell Library.

[sandyjose]

 Yes I know that The Mitchell has burials in Glasgow and as you say they are probably on micro fiche which is a pain to look through unless you have dates which I don't.
  I came across The Glasgow and West of Scotland Family History Society(I think that was it)and they have burial records on CDs so I'm going to look into that.
 In the past I've bought CDs of burials in different places to find non of my ancestors were on them.
 You can end up spending a fortune and getting nowhere.There's another place in Motherwell,will see what they have.
    Thanks for the help