BBC TV "WDYTYA?" Series 5 Episode #8: Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen

[klewis]

Well, I've often thought about the feasibility of starting up a site which catalogues gravestones from graveyards around the country (even the world).  When I visit a small graveyard, I photograph every gravestone in it, for future reference, and I often upload pictures of gravestones to my Ancestry tree.  It would be great to have a national (or even international) site catalogueing photos of gravestones.  However, the logistics of such an enterprise, and who would actually fund it, is always the stumbling block.  I know that there are sites already with photos of local gravestones in some areas, but it would be great to have an archive, particularly since many stones will be unreadable in another 20 years, because the upkeep of some graveyards is so poor.

Have you thought of adding your photos to http://www.findagrave.com/? They mainly have US burials, but I think you can add graveyards in England too.

Kathryn

[Windsor87]

The most amusing part was where Laurence  stood back, and let two elderly gentlemen get down on their hands and knees to lift a carpet for him. 

I was abit concerned early on when they seemed to take it for granted that he was related to the 'squire'. I thought that was a bit sloppy (I suppose they would have traced it behind the scenes).
I found his trip to Germany as a complete waste of time. For a document like that, I'm sure they could have emailed someone to look for them. I didn't understand what the obsession was with the sunk ship - afterall - no-one died. I also thought he was a bit ratty to the German researcher. 'My Grandfather was on that ship' - as if the poor man was supposed to grovel and apologise for what happened 90 years ago.
Apart from that it was alright.

[wyndham]

This is the only one in this series I have not seen.  I recorded it but having read ALL the previous remarks I do not feel very inclined to watch it.  If I have a spare hour to kill maybe I might make the effort.  Anyway I will see!

[Aulus]

Well, I thought it was quite good, precisely because it was all a bit dull.

Like my tree!   

No histrionics, no miraculous discoveries, no staged telephone calls or unexpected parcels arriving in the mail.

I thought it was interesting that for this programme they were looking at census returns on microfilm (what an enormous machine too!), rather than Ancestry, which they usually use.  Perhaps Auntie's subscription to Ancestry had run out!   

[jc26red]

perhaps they will have library visits to view Ancestry in the next series

[silvery]

I thought it was interesting that for this programme they were looking at census returns on microfilm;D

I did wonder how he knew what to look for going through the fiches. 
How would you do it with no transcibed index?   

[kizmiaz]

I thought it was interesting that for this programme they were looking at census returns on microfilm;D

I did wonder how he knew what to look for going through the fiches. 
How would you do it with no transcibed index?   

Probably used Ancestry first, then got out the old machine, dusted it down, re-read the instructions and fired it up just so it would fill an extra few seconds of screen time. 

[silvery]

Probably used Ancestry first,   

Well........I thought of that.

But then what was the point of using that big old fiche reader.  Purely a rhetorical question,  just another point to illustrate the way the programmme makers fudge information, and are economical with some of it.

[lizdb]

I did wonder how he knew what to look for going through the fiches. 
How would you do it with no transcibed index?   

Takes me back to the days before the censuses were indexed - and to find anyone you did have to go through miles and miles of microfilm ..... for the area where you thought they may be. If they moved to a different area there was no hope.