Burial books of the British Empire
Burial books for cemeteries across the British Empire, digitised at The National Archives, from Aleppo to Brompton, for families tracing historic and war graves.
- Book and register scanning
- Transcription
- Brompton burials, 1840 to 1997, scanned at Kew
- 205,000
- Scanning in The National Archives’ basement
- 6 weeks
- Burial books from Aleppo to Singapore
- Empire-wide
Where it began
The work began at Brompton Cemetery in London, one of the Magnificent Seven, and Britain’s only Crown cemetery. The Royal Parks, who look after it, held only part of the cemetery’s records; the registers themselves were at The National Archives in Kew.
So we took our scanners to Kew. Over about six weeks in the archive’s basement, the Brompton registers were scanned page by page, some 205,000 burials from 1840 to 1997. In June 2013 Brompton became the first of the Magnificent Seven to have all its records on Deceased Online.
What we found
At The National Archives we found, and digitised, burial books covering cemeteries far beyond London: registers of British burials across the Empire, from Aleppo in Syria to the military garrisons of Malta, Cyprus, Egypt and Singapore.
They are the records of soldiers, their families and the British communities who lived abroad, often the only record that a grave was ever made.
What it made possible
Scanned and transcribed, the books are searchable by name, so families and researchers can find historic graves and war graves that would otherwise be lost in the archive, and see the original entry for themselves.
