A tribute to Local Authority Cemetery staff

[burlington]

As a volunteer photographer for the British War Memorial Project, I often have cause to visit public cemeteries to take a number, sometimes large, of photos of graves from all conflicts, not just WW1.

Unlike the CWGC cemeteries, these public cemeteries are not so well marked in terms of plots, rows, blocks etc, and the passage of time may have obliterated the location of a grave.

Before I visit I contact the local authority for a site map. This is always forthcoming but on many occasions the staff offer to mark on their plans the locations of the many graves that I need to locate.

Even when this has not been possible, a chat to the staff on site has proved more than fruitful and a guided search has often been offered.

Well done one and all. It makes our job that much quicker and does you credit.

Regards

Martin

[Tom Morgan]

From my own experience I can echo what Martin says. I wanted to locate the graves of the people killed in a Zeppelin raid on Wednesbury. I knew they were all buried next to each other on the same day, and the funerals were paid for by means of a local collection.

The Local Authority's Cemeteries Department got the registers out for me so I could find the record of the burials. This gave me the names, of course, which I didn't know until then.

Then a plan was taken out which showed that the burials were in an area where all the gravestones were removed in the 1970s.

A member of the Cemeteries staff then arranged to meet me at the cemetery the next morning and when I got there I found him waiting and he had marked out on the grass the exact location of the group of graves.

This is how I learned that the people who look after the Local Cemeteries are actually enthusiastic about them.

Tom