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Family History Documents and Artefacts => Graveyards and Gravestones => Topic started by: toby webb on Tuesday 04 August 15 17:53 BST (UK)
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I am trying to fit a certain number of graves into a given area. Is it realistic to allow a space 7 feet x 3 feet for each grave so as to make allowances for some space between plots? Can anyone help? Many thanks, Toby.
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I've just got to ask - what on earth are you doing ? !!
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A good pun if intended. Otherwise it is a question of trying to fit 4 burial grounds into a given area. I know quite a bit about the dimensions of 2 but only the number of graves in the others. T
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Depends on the size of the coffin and who's going in the hole.
American-style caskets are huge.
Children's coffins are small.
have a look here
http://www.kensalgreencemetery.com/memorials/index4.html
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Thanks dawnsh for your comments. The Kensal Green Cemetery link has proved very useful and from that list paricularly the charges for reclaimed graves 6' 6" x 2' 6" or 7' x 3'. That would therefore be for older graves and so is relevant. My 7' x 3' seems about right. T
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A good pun if intended. Otherwise it is a question of trying to fit 4 burial grounds into a given area. I know quite a bit about the dimensions of 2 but only the number of graves in the others. T
No pun intended.
I just could not imagine why you were sizing up a piece of ground to see how many people you could bury there.
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lizb,
you were n't the only person wondering! Imagining something clandestine.
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These days, graves can also be 1, 2, or 3 deep. You buy a plot depending on how many will be going in it. In olden days, they buried many more in the same grave. What was referred to as Pauper's Graves were 6 bodies together and without any identifying stone. Just think how many more when stacked high.
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Thanks dawnsh for your comments. The Kensal Green Cemetery link has proved very useful and from that list paricularly the charges for reclaimed graves 6' 6" x 2' 6" or 7' x 3'. That would therefore be for older graves and so is relevant. My 7' x 3' seems about right. T
There was a lot of thinking and calculations that went into the size and depth of grave plots (some up to 15 ft deep). In part this was to produce a profit for the shareholders but also to ensure there was enough room for the deceased population to be buried. Mortality rates were taken into consideration as was the water table and many other considerations.
Around 1856 the London Burial Board drastically reduced the number of grave spaces when they laid down grave plot size as 9ft x 4ft and the charge was put up to 5 guineas (£5. 5s .0p.) from 7.5 ft x 3ft costing £3. 15s. 0d.
Cemetery Boards also liked to fill the space between first class plots with "pauper" plots as these were not allowed to have marker stones above them, this gave the effect of a more open cemetery rather than a crowded one.
One interesting book on the subject is This Garden of Death (History of the York Cemetery) by Hugh Murray (ISBN 0 9517737 0 4) if it is still available (I have had my copy for possibly 10 or 15 years.)
Cheers
Guy
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I think Yorick may be a member of Rootschat. Perhaps he will comment. I know him well. He digs graves in a small church in a nearby Hamlet.
Martin
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I have the grave papers for my grandmother’s grave,
1916.
It cost a few pounds,The family were unable to pay so her brother from
Shropshire paid for it.
It took the family over two years to pay the undertaker,a few shillings now and then for the coffin etc.It only (by today’s standards)cost again a few pounds.
In graves atvManchester’s General cemetery(Queen’s Park) the stones, many of them flat are massive,at least four feet by seven.But not much space between them.How the gravediggers managed I can’t imagine.
Viktoria.
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The original poster's question cannot be answered with any degree of certainty, before the 19th Century Burial Acts in England and then there may be other peculiarities, even after the Burial Acts?
If you want the exact answer, have the time to check if the answer survives and it is a Cemetery after the Burial Acts in England, you might find your answer (1800 to 1900) in Government files and correspondence, or in some Local Authority correspondence in County Archives or with the Council or County or Local Authority if a cemetery in their possession.
Also check the first Burial Book or Churchyard Book a notebook (sometimes called the Sexton's Book) if it survives (besides the Burial Register), or newspapers of when a 19th Century burial site opened, or when it was in its planning / development stage, because sometimes depths, water table depth (water table should be well below the deepest burial).
Also records of local Burial Boards.
Surviving plans (Sexton Plans) of the Grave layout of Cemeteries and a measuring survey of the Cemetery (assuming the original boundaries can still be determined and not been extended or reduced). Also part or all of the burial ground might be built over (which I feel should be banned), but measuring might give some idea, like buried near this spot.
Also look at, or near the base of surviving headstones, they might have a grave reference.
Look for Compartment Markers on Corners of a whole sectional area, sometimes where two paths once met or alongside paths, where they survive.
Also there may once have been paths through a 19th Century cemetery, where nobody was buried.
But a Grave Plan I have seen doesn't distinguish which burials were on top, or which were side by side grave burials! ???
A Husband and Wife may have purchased two Freehold graves, so that they can lie side by side (nobody on top), whereas some other Freehold graves will have burials on top.
Under some Headstones is a Vault (seen a brick chamber being built with Engineering / Blue bricks near my Son's grave), concrete beams are built in near the top and concrete panels fit into the beams (like a Bison Beam house floor), a concrete layer seals that, then soil and grass. These Vault graves with one headstone, can take up to two or more side by side burials and burials on top.
Some ancestors purchased a Freehold grave for two and only one was used. The Wife moved away and was found buried in another town. So nothing can be assumed.
BURIALS
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_ep=Burials&_cr=HO&_dss=range&_sd=1800&_ed=1900&_st=adv
BURIAL
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_ep=Burial&_cr=HO&_dss=range&_sd=1800&_ed=1900&_ro=any&_st=adv
BURIED
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_ep=Buried&_cr=HO&_dss=range&_sd=1800&_ed=1900&_ro=any&_st=adv
EXHUMATIONS
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_ep=Exhumations&_cr=HO&_dss=range&_sd=1800&_ed=1900&_ro=any&_st=adv
You may find more under Cremation and other related words.
This is basically only a "HO" search via The National Archives website and other Government Departments took over from the Home Office and inherited records from the predecessor Department, so you might need to see their Departmental records too. See The National Archives Guide covering Burial Correspondence and Records held separately by Government, that went to the Public Record Office (P.R.O.) name changed to The National Archives.
Parish Churchyards were so overcrowded that they were digging up the bodies and bones of those previously buried and throwing them back in with the newly deceased and at one place people were seen carting the previously buried dead away in wheel barrows.
Goodness knows where some ended up :o
If you go into a parish churchyard in a flattish town surrounding the churchyard and need to go up steps from the current street pavement and the cemetery churchyard is level with, or near the top of the boundary wall, it is possible that the Churchyard has been built up by the addition of soil.
Sorry if this puts you off your breakfast, but the body matter was seeping out the bottom of churchyard boundary walls and onto the street, in some towns. Hence the need for the State to become involved and bring about the Burial Acts (someone else has mentioned).
I was also surprised that the floor levels in some churches have been changed too. You will likely know if the church floor has been relaid, if the floor memorial stones have some of the writing cut off.
It is no wonder that there was terrible disease in the local population and polluted water.
Later, you had to get Planning Permission for a Pig-sty, as some were too close to wells and drinking water was getting polluted.
Mark
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Some more gruesome reading on a blog "Finding the Graves of Your Catholic Ancestors" on Catholic Family History Society website. The article focuses on 3 graveyards of Catholic churches in 19thC Manchester and Salford. See the paragraph "19th Century Attitudes to Death and Burial".
https://catholicfhs.wordpress.com/2018/03
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Matk’s statement re no wonder there was so much disease in former times reminds me of Haworth Parsonage, the Bronte’s home.
The house is below the graveyard—not sure of the water supply but there must have been noxious substances in the soil around the house.
The dresses and shoes indicate the girls were not sturdy ,well we know they ha T.B but before that they were tiny and must have been quite frail to begin with.
Their shoes are so slender,even small for a child of today.
That reminds me of a story told me by an ex pat lady in Belgium who was there during the war.
She and her Belgian husband had built a bungalow which was later commandeered for the German High command in their area,being on a very small hill but nevertheless a commanding position in very flat countryside.
Shortly after the owners moved in they became ill with typhoid which was traced to the spring supplying drinking water.
They recovered but had to cap off that supply and connect to another.
Along came the Germans and took over the house.
The owners camped out in the garage where the connection to the unused spring came into the property and also the new uncontaminated spring.
Having seen some of his workforce lined up along his factory wall and shot
the owner felt perfectly justified in swapping the connections so supplying the bungalow with contaminated water again .Needless to say the Germans became ill, very ill,dead ill in fact !
The fresh water source was never found by the Germans as a possible piped source.It just looked like natural seepage from the hillside.It did however provide clean water to the owners of the bungalow..
What a story and the lady’s comment was “It was our little war effort”.
Viktoria.