A comprehensive guide to burials and finding graves in County Durham. 

This guide explains how to find a burial entry in a church or cemetery register held at The Story and highlights some of the challenges you might encounter when attempting to find grave locations.

 

 

Many people contact us because they are searching for the location of an ancestor’s grave in County Durham. This can be more complicated than you might expect. Someone who has died may have been:

  • Buried in a church graveyard.
  • Buried in a public cemetery.
  • Cremated at a public crematorium.

This includes churchyards that were in County Durham before 1974, but which are now in neighbouring local authority areas.  You may have to search several different types of record to find them and, to make it harder, these records may be held in several different locations:

  • The Story including churchyard burial registers for the Diocese of Durham (this includes places now in Tyne & Wear and Teesside), some non-conformist burial grounds (for the current County Durham only), and cemetery and crematoria records (the current county only).
  • The church itself if it still manages the churchyard.  Typically, they will retain only the most recent burial register, with the remainder at The Story.
  • Durham County Council, which manages cemeteries and crematoria in County Durham.
  • Local councils in Tyne & Wear or Teesside for their administrative areas.
  • Other local archive services, Tyne & Wear Archives and Teesside Archives, particularly for non-Church of England churchyards and cemetery and crematoria records.

A death certificate (after 1 July 1837) will tell you where a person died and the cause of death, but not where they were buried or cremated.  Copy death certificates for County Durham can be ordered in Certificate Issue at The Story or online.

People who were buried did not always have a headstone, and many headstones have been damaged or removed over time. The Story has a large number of indexes for headstones (often called monumental inscriptions) in church graveyards.

Many burial and cremation registers survive, which will help you to confirm a burial or cremation at a named churchyard, cemetery or crematorium. Unfortunately, very few grave plans survive to help you establish an exact location or plot number.

Remember that the people who managed burial grounds in the past could never have foreseen the huge interest today in finding an exact grave location for an ancestor. Many grave plans have been lost through time, forgotten after a churchyard was closed or not handed on to the next responsible officer. Some information was probably never written down.

 

For details about the burial and death registers held at The Story please search the church registers database, our parish and nonconformist registers database.  Please note that this database does not include civil registration death registers.

 

Church of England parishes

 

The Story holds Church of England burial registers for the Diocese of Durham, which is roughly the area of the historic county and includes Gateshead, Sunderland, Hartlepool, Stockton, and Darlington. The registers usually give a date of burial, the name of the person, age, and sometimes an address and occupation.  They very rarely give cause of death. 

 

For more details please see our Church of England parish registers user guide. The registers are digitised and available to view in the Search and Discover space at The Story.

 

Burial register entries very occasionally give references to burial grounds or grave plot locations in notes in the margin.

 

Non-conformist churches

 

While most burial registers held at The Story are for Church of England graveyards, we do hold some registers for non-conformist burial grounds.  Roman Catholic churches keep a register of deaths, which often also give details of burials, whether in their own churchyard or in another cemetery.

 

Churches, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, sometimes kept a register of grave space allocations in the churchyard, with an accompanying plan. Typically this was for a new extension, rather than the whole churchyard.

If a churchyard is still in use today, the church may still have a copy of this plan and register.

If a churchyard has closed, these plans rarely survive as they were kept by the sexton, rather than in the parish chest or vestry safe. Very few have been transferred to the parish collections at The Story.

Details of the grave registers held at The Story can be found in the church registers database.

The table below lists burial grounds where we hold useful grave plans that can help to identify the location of a grave. Plans with plot numbers are only useful if the corresponding grave register, or a burial register which includes plot numbers, survives.

Plan contents can vary enormously and may include:

  • Names or initials of the dead person.
  • Plot numbers or co-ordinates.
  • Register entry reference numbers.
  • Burial dates.

The approximate date range given here for the graves on each plan has been estimated by comparison with the burial and grave registers.

To view any of the grave plans listed below, please book an appointment for the Collections Room.  You will need the grave plan reference number to request the item.

 

 

The Story holds transcripts and indexes of monumental inscriptions carved onto gravestones. These have been compiled by antiquarians and local historians concerned by the fading of inscriptions, by the tidying of graveyards, and relocation of gravestones, from the 1830s onwards. They record the legible inscriptions on gravestones and memorials in churches and churchyards. There is no guarantee that they mark the actual burial place of the persons listed on them.

 

Until the nineteenth century, the overwhelming majority of the population were buried in parish churchyards. The Society of Friends (Quakers) maintained their own burial grounds but few other non-conformist churches did so. However, with the rapid increase in population and the growth of large towns, Church of England churchyards were no longer able to provide enough space for burials and other provision had to be made.

In the early part of the century many private cemeteries were opened by private acts of parliament, but most cemeteries were opened under various Burial Acts from 1852 to 1906 and were run by local authorities, in most cases a burial board. Later acts allowed parish councils and district councils to take over the powers of the burial boards.

Some cemeteries had areas set aside for the unmarked interment of infants while some burial boards recorded the interment of stillborn babies.

As many new cemeteries opened in the second half of the nineteenth century, there were fewer burials in church graveyards, a trend that is particularly noticeable in urban areas and continues to this day. 

Civil or municipal cemeteries are now managed by a local authority (the civil parish council or unitary authority) and, in most cases, registers of burials and registers of grave spaces are still in the custody of the managing body. Sometimes a copy can be found at a record office or library. These documents may include records of grave purchase, grave plans, grave registers and databases of burials. Some are available to search online.

 

Cremations are recorded primarily at the crematorium where the ceremony took place. Sometimes the registers include a note on the location of the interment of ashes and some churches set aside an area in churchyards for this purpose. For these churchyards, interment of ashes is recorded in either a burial register or in a separate cremations register. There may also be a record in a church’s register of services if there was a funeral service as well as a cremation ceremony.

Crematoriums are now managed by a local authority (the civil parish council or unitary authority) and, in most cases, registers ofcremations are still in the custody of the managing body. Sometimes a copy can be found at a record office or library. Some are available to search online.

  • Durham County Council cremtoria. You can search burial records for cemeteries operated by Durham County Council.  Durham County Council’s Bereavement Services will search burial registers for cemeteries within the current County Durham boundary area. Please note charges apply.

 

  • Anglican (Church of England) churches, and some non-conformist churches, kept registers of services, many of which have been transferred to The Story. These usually include funeral services and may contain information about burials in civil cemeteries. You can search for registers of services on our online collections search. If you find a register of service you would like to view, please make a note of the reference number and book an appointment in our Collections Room. 
  • Local newspapers often print obituaries or funeral notices giving information about burials. You can view digitised copies of local newspapers in our Search and Discover area, with no need to book.
  • There is an index to obituaries in the Durham Directories [1856 - 1916] available on our online catalogue. The directories themselves are available to view in the Collections Room.
  • 'A guide to cemeteries in County Durham'. This includes a list of the council’s cemeteries and crematoria in the area of the historic county of Durham (the area covered by the present County Durham boundary plus the city of Sunderland, the boroughs of Darlington, Hartlepool and Stockton on Tees, and the metropolitan boroughs of Gateshead and South Tyneside). It also gives cemetery names and locations, opening dates and the location of the cemetery records, either in The Story or elsewhere.The guide is available in the Collections Room and we are currently working on sharing a version of the guide online.