Just saw this on Facebook and thought that it may be of interest.
For those who do there family trees and a bit of information for others. From today's Times.
“If you see what looks like a member of the Ghostbusters team walking around your local churchyard wearing a futuristic electronic backpack in the coming days, do not be alarmed.
Parishioners are being warned that surveyors with sophisticated laser scanners mounted on their backs are set to start the monumental — literally — task of visiting each of the Church of England’s 19,000 graveyards. Their plan is to map and photograph every headstone, grave and memorial, numbering well into the millions.
The project will create a vast, free database described as a “Google Maps for graves” to help those trying to find where their ancestors are buried. It is also expected to alleviate the pressure on vicars struggling to deal with hundreds of queries from amateur genealogists all over the globe who are trying to trace their English roots and find where their forebears were laid to rest.
When the project is completed, users will be able to type in a name and see the exact location of the grave and access a picture of the headstone to read its inscription for free. A subscription service may also allow people to explore detailed burial records held by churches.
The scanning is set to start in Cumbria within days now that funding has been secured for a national rollout. Among the first churchyards to be surveyed will be Grasmere’s — William Wordsworth’s resting place.
The back-mounted scanning kits cost more than £100,000 apiece and are fitted with five cameras, two laser scanners and a GPS tracker. Surveyors will walk along every alternate row of graves, scanning the position of every memorial, building, wall and tree, taking up to 50 million measurements in every graveyard.
“It does look a bit like Ghostbusters,” said Tim Viney, owner of Atlantic Geomatics, who invited The Times to see his surveyors at work in the first churchyard to be scanned: that of St Bega, a church on the shores of Bassenthwaite lake in the Lake District. “We ask permission [from each parish] and get asked all sorts of questions as we go round.”
Viney’s company will have about four teams who can survey up to three graveyards each per day, spending a couple of hours at each.
The project has been funded by Historic England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund as well as by Family Search and My Heritage, the genealogy websites. Parishes will not have to pay.
“We are notifying parishioners that there will be people walking around churchyards with high-tech equipment,” said the Venerable Richard Pratt, Archdeacon of West Cumberland in the Diocese of Carlisle.
“When I was a vicar in Carlisle, our church was one of the oldest in Britain. It had a very, very long history and we used to get loads of ancestry requests,” Pratt said. “I tried to answer them all to begin with but soon discovered there was no end to it.”
His diocese, the resting place not just of Wordsworth but of fellow poet Robert Southey, as well as John Dalton, the chemist who first drew up a table of elements organised by atomic weight, will be among the first to be scanned.
The Bishop of Ramsbury, Andrew Rumsey, a lead bishop for church buildings, said: “This impressive national project will make a huge difference to those researching family history, as well as easing the administrative burden on parishes.
“It will improve management of burial grounds and make information more fully and freely accessible than ever before, supported by additional services by subscription for those wishing to go further.
“It will soon be possible to visit almost any Anglican burial ground in the country and see in real time the location of burial plots. For those researching at distance in the UK or overseas, the digital records will place detailed information from churchyards at their fingertips.”
The first digitised churchyards will be searchable by this autumn but the entire project will take up to seven years to complete.
Viney’s company will also scan burial records to help people track down those who may be buried in unmarked graves, and the project will eventually incorporate data from a nationwide “biodiversity survey” providing information on rare flora and fauna to be found across Anglican churchyards, which cover an area equivalent to a “small national park”, the church said.”
Keith
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