Billesdon Churchyard Register

Billesdon has existed as a community for well over a thousand years, with the parish church, St John the Baptist, dating from the 12th century. A huge number of people must have been buried in consecrated ground there, with layers of burials raising the level, so that the churchyard stands several feet proud of the road, despite levelling in 1877.
Billesdon's Parish Registers date from 1599, are reasonably accurate and continuous, and show that many more burials took place than there are gravestones still in evidence. This survey records the 232 visible in 2014 with the oldest surviving stone (John Ogden) dating from 1703. The churchyard was closed to burials in 1870, apart from a few later ones of people who had already purchased spaces with their family.

click the appropriate button to search the stones listed

Structural changes to the church and churchyard in the past have led to disturbance of gravestones, though probably not of the graves underneath. Present-day comparisons with the 1970s survey carried out by the Women's Institute prove this to be the case. The care and maintenance of old churchyards can be problematic, with rampant foliage and modern machinery taking their toll on some stones.

For the purposes of this survey, the headstones have been numbered sequentially from 1 to 232, with the churchyard divided into 6 areas, A - F, for ease of identifying the location. (see plan). Graves are listed by name and by location; it is possible to view both the text engraved and a photograph of the stone. The text is transcribed as accurately as possible (given the stonemasons' liking for varied and unusual fonts) and in the order inscribed on the stone.

The name by which graves are listed is the family name of the first person engraved on the stone; where individuals with different family names occur on the same stone, there are entries in the list under both names.