The Greater Kelsall Burial Recording Project

 


A prominent feature of Kelsall village is the roadside graveyard on Chester Road, close by, but mainly hidden, is the Methodist Church graveyard and further away is the Delamere St Peters graveyard – drive past, blink and you’ll miss it. Before these existed, the burial grounds for this area were at Tarvin St Andrews.

The Kelsall Family History Group – not Kelsall the surname, but people of Kelsall interested in family history - started photographing the Methodist Church headstones a while back and then began adding them to the "Find A Grave" website (FAG) Find a Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records 

The aim for this project is not to just list every burial near Kelsall but to link each grave to family members, parents, children and siblings. Additionally, we add photographs, biographies and locations to complete the story. No living person can be added. Where no gravestone can be found the burial details are taken from the original parish records dating back to 1822 for Delamere parish.

The Kelsall Methodist Church is almost complete with about 500 burials, Kelsall St Philips Church has 1500 burials and Delamere St Peters about 2500 burials. Other cemeteries are included where the person relates to Kelsall e.g., War Graves in cemeteries abroad. The task of adding the burials of St Andrews Tarvin would be a massive one!


Lists have been completed before but not usually with family groups of “ordinary” people and especially infants who only had short lives.

Is it worth it?  Sometimes laborious, then a puzzle comes along, a clue, a match and on to the next one. Hopefully viewers will see something useful in it.

Considering there are about 220 million graves listed on FAG and of these 10 million are in England it is still a small proportion of the total number of graves, and there are many graveyards not covered, perhaps readers may want to see what is near them. Or even start their own recording project?

Mister B

 

 

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