West Middlesex Family History Society

The Memorial Inscriptions Project

This project has been running a long while and is well advanced. Many memorial inscriptions were collected from the churches and churchyards within our area in the 1980s and 1990s. Then, from about 2008 it was recognised that the collected data should be indexed and submitted to Find My Past where the records could be searched globally, and royalties could be obtained to benefit the Society.

In 2012 the activity increased again, and memorial inscriptions were collected from several more churches. The activity is ongoing and about 90% complete, being a mix of visiting churchyards to read the inscriptions, and documenting the findings both in book form, and as indexed data to be submitted to Find My Past.

As a further development, in 2018, it is proposed to add photographs to our collection of 19,000 plus gravestones. This requires a revisit with camera to each churchyard where we have collected the inscriptions.

A particular challenge in documenting the inscriptions are those that are written in Latin. These need to be translated into English, and we are actively seeking a volunteer who will take this on for us.

Any volunteers looking for this sort of work should contact the Projects Co-ordinator.