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This page was updated on 16th September 2013.

Memorials are the most tangible reminder of our ancestors.

Most memorials are erected by families and have an individuality not found in the official records of church or government. Often they contain more information than a Death Certificate or Burial Record.

They're out there - somewhere - but how do you find them?

A very small proportion of British burial records can now be searched on the internet, on CD, or in libraries. Of these, a smaller proportion direct the researcher to the location of the gravestone - if one exists.

The number of transcriptions of Monumental Inscriptions (M.Is.) available to view on the internet is very small. Not all of these are complete, some just refer to a name, or name and date. Again, location details may not be specified.

Locating and transcribing inscriptions relating to one's ancestors is largely down to individual families. If you're an armchair, mouse clicking, family historian this might not be for you! You may be able to persuade the younger members of the family to do the fieldwork, otherwise it's on with the wellington boots and tour the cemeteries and churchyards yourself.

Can this be put off, perhaps later generations will do the fieldwork?

The simple answer is 'no'. Time is not on your side. Memorials are under threat from:

• Poor maintenance of some cemeteries and graveyards leading to memorials draped in ivy and other destructive vegetation.
• Increasing levels of anthropogenic acids in urban environments which degrade inscriptions.
• Vandalism.
• Administrators removing gravestones or laying them flat so that larger grass-cutting machinery can be employed. Anyone who has searched a graveyard will have noticed that inscriptions on flat stone do not last as long as those on vertical stone (carbonic acid within rainwater collects in the inscribed letters and can't escape).

How do I start ?

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