Catalogue description General Register Office: Removal of Graves and Tombstones

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Date range

Details of RG 37
Reference: RG 37
Title: General Register Office: Removal of Graves and Tombstones
Description:

Copies of records of local authorities and the Church Commissioners relating to burial ground removals, although not all records have been received. A number contain a plan of the original place of burial, some with place of reinterment also.
Date: 1923-2007
Arrangement:

Catalogued by location, site title and years covered by inscription on the tombs and gravestones; the main date corresponds to when the graves were removed. At first each transfer of records was listed alphabetically, but from RG 37/198 onwards transfers are listed in chronological order.
Related material:

For matters relating to exhumation and reinternment (1887 to 1909) see HO 85
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

General Register Office, 1836-1970
Physical description: 237 file(s)
Access conditions: Open
Immediate source of acquisition:

From 1978 Office of Population Censuses and Surveys
Accruals: Series is accruing
Administrative / biographical background:

The origin of official custody of records of burial ground removals dates back to 1911 and arose initially out of a recommendation made by the Attorney General that such records be made and deposited with the local registrar of births and deaths. The Home Secretary agreed to the suggestion made by the Registrar General that they should be deposited instead with the miscellaneous records held by the General Register Office.

The provision was incorporated into various private bills under which the removal of graves was authorised, and subsequently in the Town and Country Planning (Churches, Places of Religious Worship and Burial Grounds) Regulations 1950 (SI 1950 No 792), the Disused Burial Grounds (Amendment) Act 1981 and schemes under the Pastoral Measures 1968, although it was omitted from the Local Authorities Cemeteries Order 1977 (SI 1977 No 204).

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