Hildenborough Burial Records and www.findagrave.com

Hildenborough Burial Records and www.findagrave.com

The following information has been provided by Tim Asquith of Hildenborough and might be of interest to Leigh researchers.

During the last year Hildenborough’s burial records have been made available so that people can research their deceased relatives or friends. The vicar of Hildenborough, Tim Saiet, has kindly allowed the existing burial records to be transcribed. These records have been kept since Hildenborough Church came into existence in 1850. The existing records were either on Excel spread sheets or on A4 note sheets and they have been transposed into a more easily readable state. The records show the name of the person, date of burial, age and plot location. The difficulty arises where out of the 4200 burials within the churchyard some burials are missing plot numbers. The remaining records have most or all their details available.

The church graveyard has been divided into 11 sections for investigation. All these sections are separately displayed on spread sheet formats and give more information than the existing burial records, such missing records and dates of birth taken from the present gravestones.

The intention is to make these records available by the end of June of this year (2016) at the public library in Riding Lane on opening days . The book has the plans of the church burial areas and information about the persons and plot numbers including a “Memorial Number” in the churchyard.

This “Memorial Number” is automatically produced by a website called “Find a Grave”.com and by using this number the person can be found. You can also search for a “Person” or search for a “Cemetery”, by writing “St John the Evangelist Church” and select “England”, click “Search”, scroll down until you find Hildenborough church, then click “View all internments”. These persons are in alphabetical order so a grave of a relative or friend in Hildenborough can be easily found. Finding the person on the site gives you the ability to correct or add information, such as adding photos and a biography of that person. When this information has been submitted, a request for permission for the addition or correction goes through to the owner, or the main contributor of the site and he or she has the right to approve or decline the request. The “Plot Number” from the website can be used in the library to locate the position of the grave in Hildenborough Churchyard.

“Find a Grave.com” has been running since 1995 and has over 143 million burials on their worldwide site and is connected to “Ancestry.co.uk”.

I hope that the information provided at Hildenborough Library and on “Find a Grave” will prove helpful to you to find your relatives or friends.

(May 2016)