Finding graves (general query)

[GillyJ]

We formed a little history group especially for our church bicentenary and one member wrote up a pamphlet on the memorial stones inside the Church, another is plotting every grave in the churchyard and took photographs as they went along - this is an on-going project. We discovered that there were some war graves in the churchyard and managed to get war grave certificates for these from the internet. We researched many facets of the church life and after several months we produced 18 panels depicting the history of the church as a time line with photographs and text from books and archives.
If there are enough interested people in the congregation prepared to meet on a regular basis and to support each other, then the work can be done together rather than paying an outside agency.
Our next aim is to produce a lasting book to collate all our individual pieces of information as a lasting memory of the Bicentenary.

[Barbara.H]

I remembered a news article on the BBC last year about a similar project - perhaps the same people that your history society have spoken to?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-30684803
same company in local newspaper
http://www.thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk/news/11734997.Drones_to_map_graves_in_Cumbria/?ref=mr

This company is a professional surveying company who will charge for sophisticated services and  relatively fast results. Local volunteers can do the same job with paper and camera (and their own drones if available); it will take a lot longer but at much lower cost. It all depends what your priorities are. Both approaches will encounter problems such as flat stones buried under layers of earth. There will come a point when you have to do some digging, whichever recording method you use!

  Barbara

[jc26red]

That's interesting Barbara.
It sounds like it could be the same company.  So they have already had a "business incentive" grant, now are looking for "other" ways to sell their research data (probaby already collected) to  profit from the project.   

In which case, I would question who else they are going to sell it to and who owns the rights to the data/photos?   I wonder what clauses were included in the initial grant regarding availability of the data?  I doubt if there were any as it's a business incentive grant. 
If it is the same company, I think I would contact Innovus, the company that funded the grant to see if they can shed any more light on the finer details of the whole project.

[aghadowey]

The company I mentioned earlier (and there are others) targeting cemeteries and graveyards to sign up for their services. Fromm all that I can find about them, they are possibly going to pursue the genealogy slant to their database at some point and theat will quite possibly involve membership or search fees for anyone wanting details.

Any group needs to think about how much detail they want online or available freely but it's not always to get enough people to work on, and finish, a project- usually one or two end up having enough time, knowledge and dedication.

[Mike in Cumbria]

Barbara
Well done - that is indeed the same company, and I suspect it was that very article in the gazette that prompted the History Society to contact them.

I have plenty of information and discussion points now to take with me to the society, so thank you all very much for your input. It's been a great help.

Mike