Church of England to launch a 'Google Maps for graves'

[Mart 'n' Al]

Church of England to launch a 'Google Maps for graves' within five years enabling family historians to search for burial records and locations in an online database.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8068893/Church-England-launch-Google-Maps-graves-five-years.html

Martin

[Kiltpin]

It is a good idea and a truly monumental one.  The records should not be a problem, but locations will be something else. Our parish church has had burials since before the Conquest, but there is no map of where these people are buried. 

Regards 

Chas

[Mart 'n' Al]

Monumental!

Martin

[Crumblie]

It is a very good idea but I think some people will be disappointed. From my own wandering round various cemeteries and graveyards I know how disappointed you feel when you find no headstones because your ancestors were too poor to afford them. Finding just bare ground is not the same as a stone with lots of details and dates.

[josey]

It is a very good idea but I think some people will be disappointed.

Make that MANY people!

Neither is knowing that where your ancestors are buried has been built over - like supermarkets or car parks [no I am not related to Richard III  ]. And some ancestors are buried in cemeteries that are now nature reserves, equally inaccessible.

[River Tyne Lass]

I think this is a great idea to launch another resource to help family historians.

Several months ago I signed up with Find A Grave and have been happily doing my bit around my local cemeteries.  They say we should get out walking more .. so why not fit in walks around a cemetery and do something useful with a camera in hand.

This is one of my latest additions, a lady who escaped slavery in America and who was supported in her new life of freedom by the Quakers of North Shields:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/207593255/mary-ann-blyth


http://oldlowlight.co.uk/breaking-chains-mary-ann-macham-memorial-fundraising/

If there is someone in your family who has no memorial you can add their names and a bio for them for other researches.  You can also just add 'no gravestone' to save anyone traipsing to find one.  I do think a lot of us would just be happy enough to know where someine ended up even if there was no gravestone.

[josey]

How are Google going to recoup their surveying & server storage costs & make it pay? Street view is littered with business pinpoints almost to the stage of obscuring what you want to see!

I wonder if they will they research cemetery plans & have them alongside the cemetery images?

[Nick_Ips]

Church of England to launch a 'Google Maps for graves' within five years enabling family historians to search for burial records and locations in an online database.

Seems.... ambitious. 

Speaking as someone still waiting patiently for Suffolk's PRs to go 'officially' online some 6 years or so after it felt imminent...
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=689451

...then I can only imagine the CofE project at launch will be a small fraction of what is really out there.

Hope I'm wrong though. 

[carom]

I'm not sure about the practicality of this. About 12 years ago I led a group from our local history society, recording the memorial inscriptions in our local rural churchyard and those within the church.
It's relatively easy to record graves up to about 120 years ago, but earlier than that there is the problem of lichen, weather erosion and stones which have fallen face down. We also found about 20 old gravestones which at some point had just been stacked against the wall at the back of the church.
Certainly rewarding but involves a lot of crawling around on hands and knees.