Mitcheldean Congregational Chapel headstones removal (General)

by rookancestrybest , United Kingdom, Tuesday, May 25, 2010, 20:55 (5373 days ago) @ ranger one

This is a matter of concern and I support you and anyone else in bringing it to notice. Gravestones are an important record of family history and once removed or destroyed that record is lost forever. I particularly feel that there's a lot to learn from gravestones, not just names, dates of birth but also something about the families if verses and sculpture is included. The idea of using up graveyards for building is also very disturbing particularly as people chose where they wanted to be buried on the understanding that this would be where their remains would stay forever. I recently went to a church in London where some of my non-FOD family was buried only to find that the graves had been transferred to another area so that the land could be used (there's a main road there now). When I went to where they had been moved I found most of the inscriptions had worn away and it was hardly possible to decipher any of them. Inside the church were lots of memorials in good condition but the church had no record of whose memorials they were which I thought was a real oversight on the church's part as many dated back to Georgian times (the church was typically Georgian in design, neo-classical). It would have taken little effort for someone to photograph each one and catalogue them.