Following my last blog, a piece of serendipitous news. All graveyards, churchyards and burial grounds in England will be surveyed in the next few years. The National Burial Grounds Survey (NBGS) is happening right now. Who knew? I certainly didn’t until recently.
Since I wrote the last paragraph I have attended a Webinar about the NBGS and found out more. AG Intl Ltd are doing the surveying, working their way around the country diocese by diocese. The survey of Salisbury Diocese, free to the church, went live on the 24th November 2022 as consent is being sought from each parish, hence the informative webinars held yesterday.
NBGS was launched last year with the aim of mapping and digitising burial grounds. It is funded by MyHeritage and enabled by FamilySearch (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints aka the Mormons). They will recoup their investment by offering the information gathered to subscribers to their service.
The idea that all burial grounds will be searchable online in future is an exciting one, and will suit our needs here at Chitterne very well, but it needs qualifying. Not ALL burial grounds are included in this survey, only those of the Church of England. Burial grounds in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are also not included in the survey.
And I do wonder how it will affect all you folk searching your ancestry the old way. Will you miss your days out visiting churches? Will you still want to visit once you’ve seen photographs and information from the comfort of your armchair? How about the archivists who offer their expertise free at the History Centre? Will it do them out of a job? But I guess it will provide them with another resource.
Despite these reservations we welcome the scheme. The software Dave uses for making and updating the graveyard maps is getting out of date now he’s retired, so that’s a relief.
Here is the link for more information:
https://agintl.org/burial-ground-management-survey/: Graveyard Serendipity
Chitterne Now and Then 